Paradox of Nihilism
A/N: Okay, I promise I'm trying to updates these as fast as I possibly can because you guys have been so awesome. I cracked the triple digit barrier! Thanks, guys!
Just A Simple Friend
He was running, but he couldn't feel his legs anymore. He was breathing, but he couldn't seem to feel the air moving in and out of his lungs. His entire body was numb. He feared that if he rubbed his eyes or scratched his arm, he would simply shatter into a million pieces. The slightest amount of pressure against the gigai holding his soul would make him disintegrate into dust.
Shinji looked up, realizing that he'd run all the way to the Shiori house. He could see a light shining from the back of the house out from the front window. When he turned the knob, the door swung open for him.
He walked in and she was there, curled up on the couch. She was...sleeping.
"Thank god!" he cried, holding her smaller form against his chest. She was not shot. Not stabbed. She was sleeping. He stroked her now short hair and breathed in the beautiful scent of lotuses that always came from her skin. "I thought ya were dead, koibito!"
A shadow covered her face as Hisagi stepped into the light coming from the kitchen. "Hirako-san," Shuhei said softly "She isn't asleep. She's...she's gone."
His very soul seemed to freeze up and he held her more tightly, willing her to just breath in for him with all his heart. But she never did. He lowered his face to that long, pretty neck where no pulse fluttered and no blood rushed anymore. "She's warm," he whispered hoarsely, hugging her to his chest where he was so very cold. If she was dead, why was he the cold one? "How can she be dead if she's so warm?"
"I had Kira put a Kido spell of preservation over her body so that she...she wouldn't...decay." Shuhei sounded like he had to force himself to say the words. "She's warm because the spell keeps her an hour deceased the way I found her. But she's actually been dead for the past three weeks, Hirako-san."
"How did she die?" he asked, putting her gently back on the couch. She still looked like she was sleeping, no matter what he told him. The only things that seemed out of place were how usually thin and pale she looked.
"According to Unohana-taicho, she contracted a highly contagious disease called Tuberculosis. To my understanding, this caused her to cough and spit blood. It would have been like having the flu. That's why she looks as though she's only sleeping – technically, she is. Unohana-taicho says she fell asleep...and choked herself to death. She never woke up again and she probably never realized what was happening to her. I doubt she was in much pain."
"So where is she?" Shinji asked, looking up at the dark-haired lieutenant. "Ya didn't perform the soul burial yet, didja?"
Shuhei looked at the carpet. "No, to my knowledge, no one has performed a konso on Misao."
"Not ta yer knowledge?" Shinji repeated, a horribly sick feeling beginning to develop inside the bottom of his stomach. "Ya mean ya don't know where her spirit went?"
"We've spent everyday since her death searching for her," he admitted. "That's why I've spent three weeks hiding her death. I wanted her to be here before revealing it to anyone. I think..."
"Ya think?" Shinji prompted with steel in his voice.
"There's nowhere in the human world that would hold her I haven't already checked. And her reiatsu is not anywhere inside Soul Society." Shuhei sighed heavily. "We may have to begin accepting the fact that Misao...has met the same unfortunate fate as her parents."
"Misao wouldn't have been eaten by a Hollow!" Shinji snarled.
"Then what other explanation do you have?" Shuhei asked in a beaten down, defeated kind of voice. "Because there are really only two other explanations – either she got turned into a Hollow herself or...or she...she went to..."
Shinji's honey-brown eyes widened. "NO. Never." A vision of her smiling face on the day she left flashed before his vision. A smile of a thousands stars which took his heart for its sky. "Misao didn't...Misao doesn't belong in Hell!"
Momo sat beside Shuhei as they both stared at his niece as the ceiling fixtures above the coffin lit up her pale face, now frozen into an expression of tranquil slumber for all eternity. The mortician had convinced Shoka not to cremate her, saying that she had a perfectly lovely face and there was no reason she couldn't have an open casket. She did look strangely beautiful – more than when she was alive. Even if that scarlet lipstick they'd put on her looked kind of obscene. "Why didn't you tell me, Shuhei-san?" she asked him softly, dabbing her eyes with the handkerchief she brought especially for the purpose. "I would've helped you look for her."
"You're too close to Shoka," he replied. Somehow, he felt like this might be a form of payback. Shuhei hadn't been able to attend his little brother's funeral, and now he was the pallbearer at his daughter's. "And I didn't want to do this to him. I didn't just want to hand him a body."
"You told Kira." It didn't sound like an accusation. It was only a simple statement.
"I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown when I told Kira," he said wryly. "And he liked Misao, too, you know. She was his little apprentice after she went to college. At least in Kido. The more I tried to hide it, the more people I had to tell. Kira finally made me realize that I couldn't just cover it up anymore. I mean...she's dead. She's dead and if only I'd been there an hour earlier, she...she'd still be here, Momo."
Shuhei bent over, running a hand through his hair. His eyes were distinctly red-rimmed. Momo covered his shoulder with one of her soft, petite hands. "Unohana-taicho made it sound like she was really sick, Shuhei. I don't think there was anything you could have done for her," she said sympathetically. "Misao just pushed her human body too hard – even when she was ill."
At the back of the funeral home, Shinji sits and silently contemplates the ceiling with burning eyes. One arm is wrapped around Mashiro's shoulders as the green-haired girl sobs into his best shirt uncontrollably. "She's not dead, Mashiro. She's out there somewhere."
Mashiro shook her neon head. "Shinji..."
"No," he insisted softly. "I know she's out there. I saw her."
"You saw...?"
"Yeah. I saw her last week, but I thought it was a hallucination," he admitted. "She disappeared almost as soon as I realized who she was. She had Shojohime with her. She ain't dead, Mashiro. And she didn't turn inta no Hollow, either."
That was his mission now. Every night, from sunset to sunrise, he looked for the missing spirit of Misao. He would mask his reiatsu and shunpo his way through Karakura Town, furiously searching for any sign of that woman.
As fate would have it, he found her in the one place he never expected to find her: his own front door.
He spent that entire night wandering the rooftops for a chance at a sight of her, but got no reward for his efforts. As usual, he had to return to the warehouse near sunrise disappointed and exhausted from overexerting his flash-steps.
She was on the roof of the building across the street, sitting at the edge with Shojohime draped across her lap. Considering her level four years ago, her reiatsu levels were rather astonishing. A voice he'd heard only once before in song echoed across the business district.
"-Take me to your heart.
For it's there that I belong
and will never part.
Love me tender
Love me true.
All my dreams fulfill.
For my darling, I love you
and I always will.
Love me tender.
Love me dear.
Tell me you are mine.
I'll be yours through all the years,
till the end of time.
Love me tender.
Love me true.
All my dreams fulfill.
For my darling, I love you
and I always will."
Why doesn't she just kill me?, he thought, dazed. It would be so much faster. He recalled her telling him that 'Love Me Tender' was the first song she ever remembered hearing.
At the end of her little recital she stood, drew her sword, and stabbed the Hollow coming up behind her through the eye. All her movements were beautifully smooth and graceful.
He opened his mouth to call her name, but found that someone else got there first. "Misao."
She crouched at the edge of the roof and looked down at the person who called her by name. She held Shojohime's sealed form loosely in her sword hand as she leaned over the gutters. Her low, bored voice said "I'm here."
A man in an open, white cutoff jacket stood below her. His hair was bright blue and he seemed irritatingly familiar. "So what – ya fucking serenade them into coming to ya? Who the fuck do ya think ya are?" he called in an irritated growl. "Do you know how fucking gay that would make me look, Misao?"
She snorted. "It's not the singing that's important," she retorted. "You just have to lull them into believing you're an easy target, Grimmjow."
Grimmjow? Shinji clenched his fist. He remembered that name. He also remembered the man who went with that name, too. He'd tried to turn Ichigo and Rukia into cat food. Shinji gave him a nice taste of his Cero for his trouble. Cocky fucker didn't do too well after that. Misao is with the last living Espada?
Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez scoffed in disgust, a large scowl planted firmly on his face. "Fuck you. I like my way better."
Misao jumped down from the roof. He didn't see any Hollow hole on her. Why would she associate with an Arrancar? Even more concerning – why would an Arrancar associate with her? "Your way has no finesse and destroys half of the surrounding buildings," Misao said snidely. "We're done here. Let's go."
Wait, WHAT? Go? Grimmjow waved his hand and a Garganta opened in place of the door at the warehouse across the street. She would really go to Hueco Mundo?
Shinji's teeth bared in a silent snarl of rage as Grimmjow grabbed her hand and they ran at the gate in Hueco Mundo together. The gate closed behind them with a gentle 'pop'.
Have you found someone else to touch you the way I did, Misao?
They charged onto the white sand of Hueco Mundo and Misao yanked her hand out of Grimmjow's iron grip. "You know I hate it when you do that," she snapped, massaging her shoulder. "You're going to pull my arm out of the socket and then where will we be?"
He shrugged. "It's the only way I can be sure you're not doing to fall off into fucking space or something. Just heal it with that thingy ya do. Ya know, that thing ya did on me.
She punched him in the shoulder, though she knew it wasn't going to hurt him much. "How many times do I have to tell you – it only works on someone who's wearing white!" Misao spat. She tugged at the hem of her yellow tank top and elbowed the heavy brown backpack weighing her shoulders down. "Does it look like I have any white anywhere on my body, Grimmjow?"
Grimmjow responded with a fanged grin. "Well, fuck, I don't know about what's underneath."
"And I can assure you, you never will." Unfortunately for him, Grimmjow's smile did nothing for her (other than reminding her what kind of whack jobs she was friends with these days). Then again, she suspected that things like love and lust weren't emotions Arrancar experienced. She also had a theory that insanity was not optional but her only other basis for comparison was...
"Mimi! MIMI!"
She cringed.
...Nel.
Misao landed squarely on her ass as something crashed right on top of her. She blinked up into Nel's huge hazel eyes. "Hi Mimi!" she yelled in her ear. "Pick me up, Mimi!"
From her position facing the blackened sky of Hueco Mundo, Misao sighed heavily and sat up, shifting Nel so that she could carry her on her hip. "Where's Ashido?" she asked the Arrancar child. "We're too close to Nuevos Noches to be safe here."
They glanced at the foreboding white ruins of Los Noches. Inside the white-domed shell, roman pillars hundreds of stories high thrust into the air. The sky was overcast with rust-red clouds and there, lightning cracked and flashed across the sky. A shroud of dark mist shielded their eyes from seeing the buildings at ground level. This was 'Nuevos Noches'. "Ashi went scoutin' near the Forest, Mimi."
In Hueco Mundo, one did not walk the sands without a sword drawn. Of course, things had gotten easier since she met Grimmjow, but it was not possible to be too careful. He led them off into the dunes with his katana out. Behind him, Misao had Nel in her left hand and Shojohime in her right as Nel gave them precise directions to Ashido. One of the Arrancar child's special talents was finding anyone she pleased. Since Ashido's reiatsu was not rising or falling sharply, he probably wasn't in any danger but it was never a great idea to be by one's self here.
That was how she convinced him to come with her in the first place. She persuaded him to trust her even though she was accompanied by a pair of Hollows. Nel she found wandering the dunes, sobbing. Hollow or not, Misao felt bad for the girl. Nel cried for hours in her lap (what an uncomfortable experience that had been!), saying that her brothers had been killed by The Prince. And Grimmjow...was just Grimmjow. There was really no story there. The former Sexta Espada was bleeding out in the Forest when Misao found him. She said he could either come with her and live or be eaten by an Adjuchas. Needless to say, he chose life. She half-expected that 'Virgin's Cleansing' would kill him, but apparently Shojohime thought he was somewhat savable. Honestly, she had a queer kind of respect for the adult Arrancar. He didn't do bullshit – he was always completely honest. Brutally so. Actually, pretty much everything Grimmjow did was brutal in some way. That was why Nel wouldn't go with him.
"Hey, Misao," Grimmjow grunted gruffly. "That's the fifth time I've found ya top of that building. What are ya looking for over there?"
She was quiet for a moment, adjusting her grip on Nel (she actually dropped her once before when an Adjuchas startled her, so she tried to make sure she had a decent hold on her now). "A friend of mine lived near there when I...when I was younger." She stared out into the darkened forest they walked along. She didn't have any idea if he knew what the concept of 'younger' and 'older' was. Sometimes she had to explain words he didn't understand. She felt her throat closing and coughed. "His um...family still lives there, so I think he...he must have...passed away."
Grimmjow probably wouldn't know what 'passed away' meant either but she honestly didn't think she could bring herself to say 'died' in relation to Shinji. She couldn't feel his reiatsu anywhere in Karakura or the area surrounding the town. She wondered how he...how he'd been...how he passed away.
"Mimi's sad." Nel said sympathetically, pulling on her short hair. "Even though Mimi doesn't look sad, Nel can tell she is."
Misao's arm tightened around her little sidekick. "I'm not sad," she said, putting extra effort into making her voice sound bland and dispassionate. "I'm...disappointed. I couldn't find any Hollows with a connection to The Prince tonight. And Karakura is the most Hollow infested town I know of."
Grimmjow huffed out a rough laugh. "Because it's the most spirit-rich place in the whole fucking world."
"Perhaps his power is waning." Ashido Kano walked out of the treeline and examined them with raised eyebrows. As always, his face was solemn and he moved with grace and a keen sense of the landscape. Misao liked Ashido. He had a deep well of sadness inside him, but it was a calm, steady kind of sorrow that never wavered. In a strange way, it was a kind of anchor for her. "But I fear that's being a little too optimistic. You were unable to find more Hollows with a connection to The Prince?"
"No, none at all," Misao sighed. "I'll have to try again tomorrow. Meanwhile, I brought dinner."
Grimmjow gave his feral grin and said "Did ya bring more ramen? Man, I fucking love that shit!"
Misao glared. "No, actually I bought it from the all-night Chinese restaurant on Main Street again. You're lucky Urahara-san agreed to loan me that gigai or we'd be in real trouble. As it is, I've run out of most of my human money. My uncle gave me a little money from Soul Society that I still have – not that it will do us much good."
"Won't someone from the living world recognize you if you keep going back, Misao?" Ashido asked as Misao opened the backpack and brought out a brown paper bag.
"I wasn't very well known in my hometown," she admitted, taking out the white cartons from the Chinese restaurant. "Even so, Yoruichi-san dyed the gigai's hair for me and gave me a set of fake glasses to wear. Instead of the brunette freak Shiori, they see a blond nameless nerd. Large Szechuan pork extra spicy with hot and sour soup? Agh, this must be yours, Grimmjow – nobody else here would eat this garbage."
"This is not garbage," Grimmjow contradicted through a mouthful of food. "This is food sent by the fucking heavens."
"This is food that's going to tear out your intestinal lining," Misao said, rolling her eyes. "Large sweet and sour chicken with white rice – nope, that's mine. Here you go Ashido: large beef and broccoli with shrimp fried rice."
After calmly chewing and swallowing, Ashido stated blandly "Feed that spicy pork to Nelliel and I will tear the six right off your back."
Grimmjow slurped his hot and sour soup. "Don't get your panties in a twist, Ashido. I know she'll be up all fucking night crying her eyes out if she tries this shit." Said Arrancar girl never got her own food – Nel always went between the three of them, casually eating off of who's ever plate she wanted most. Even as he finished saying this, he passed the bowl over to her and let her get down several swallows before taking it back and flicking her on the forehead. "Don't get your fucking spit in it, stupid!"
She only giggled and went to Ashido, giving him huge puppy dog eyes – which was completely unnecessary, because she knew he was going to end up giving her food anyway. He only sighed and shoved a nicely sized portion of beef, broccoli, and rice her way. Nel devoured it eagerly (knowing that if she went back, he would always give her more) and went begging to Misao, who simply handed her a separate container already filled with the amount of sweet and sour chicken she would give her. The girl already knew that trying to get more than that one container from the newly dead woman was utterly futile.
"We need a plan to get inside Nuevos Noches," Grimmjow said in between bites. "We can't stay out here in no man's land for the next hundred fucking years while The Prince drags all three worlds down to his control. I'm all for world domination, but this dude is a fucking nut."
Ashido nodded thoughtfully. "From what I can tell, he wants to enslave every being he encounters."
"We can't do it from the ground," Misao said, shaking her head. "I don't know why, exactly, but I feel something horrible down deep inside myself when I think about that mist. I don't know what's inside that, but I don't think we should go that way."
He turned her way, deep brown eyes always so thoughtful inside his serious face. "When do you intend to tell your loved ones where you are?"
She looked down at Nel, who was eating from the sweet and sour container she gave her with reckless abandon. "I don't know if I want to tell them," she admitted. "I'm afraid they would try to come after me here and this isn't their fight. Urahara told me he's going to spill the beans on me if I don't tell anyway so it won't matter what I do."
Grimmjow snorted indelicately. He was quite possibly the least subtle person she knew. Another reason she respected him: he never mixed words. "Face it, Misao – this ain't your fucking fight, either." He gulped down more of the hot and sour soup and wiped his mouth messily. "You're here through a fucking accident."
She lifted her chin in a manner that let him know she would not be moved – even with a fucking Cero. "If he gets the chance, The Prince will kill Shinigami I care about, too. Izuru-sensei, Uncle Shuhei, my brother Shoka, Rangiku-san, Hinamori-san...That makes this my fight. You might not be on board with this whole 'nakama' shit Grimmjow, but I am. And I'm not just going to leave the three of you here to die. Got that, you stubborn ass?"
"Bossy bitch," said Grimmjow, but he was grinning. "Fuck yeah, I got that. Ya practically shouted it in my fucking ear."
Ashido looked like he was valiantly resisting the strong urge to roll his eyes at them. "Getting back on topic – we still need to find a way into Nuevos Noches. I think we might need to start enlisting the help of those loved ones, Misao. Grimmjow wasn't able to clear the mist. I barely made a dent in it. I think it would take the power of several Shinigami to get through there. And then there's the matter of trying to bring down The Prince himself..."
Misao breathed in deeply. "Okay. You're right. But first, we need to come up with a plan to lure The Court out towards the Forest, where we have the advantage. If we can eliminate the Prince's Court before we go to him, he'll have lost most of his power. After all, they're the ones who actually enforce his ruling. Once we come up with a plan to destroy The Court, I can call in some people I know to help us cut them down."
"If we start slaughtering Forest Guardians, they can't fail to notice. Whether or not they will come is a completely different matter. I fear we will end up facing Vasto Lorde class enemies here, Misao." Ashido sighed. "At least Aizen was powerful in his own right. This man is practically an Academy Graduate for all his plots and plans. The Court is his only real source of power."
"Ya need someone to start killing things?" Grimmjow's grin made his turquoise eyes glow. "I'm your fucking man, baby. Tell me when and where."
