Author's Note: How long has it been since I started writing this story? About 6 months ago? Well hey, I definitely can't say this has been a long ride. Hell, half that time I was on a 3-month long, Microsoft failure induced, hiatus. I've seen stories with wait periods longer than that, in between chapter updates.

Well, I can't brag about having a 'deep, awe inspiring story', but at least I can say I can write a lot in a short amount of time.

By the way, I have a complaint to file to the Bleach writer.

I was informed that if the PWCD kept offing hollows, than eventually souls would stop going into circulation and every human who was born would be born a soulless husk from then on due to all the souls being dead. From what I initially understood, souls went to Soul Society or Hell, and if they're (un)lucky, get turned into and/or eaten by hollows. From there, they reincarnated as humans to restart the process all over.

It's here that I've found a logical error. (Please PM me if I'm WAY off, because I'm only a passive fan of Bleach, not a dedicated one. It's likely I didn't hear something right.)

Now I assume souls in hell can't escape or go back into circulation, because they're bad eggs and they all need to be kept away from the good eggs (which if people like Mayuri are being labeled as 'good eggs', then I shudder at what kind of people must be in Hell). Also, the hollow population MUST be in the millions. Just look at how many hollows that have been seen at one place before in the series. In one point in the series, hundreds of Gillians were in a single place, which are in turn made of hundreds of normal hollows, who've each eaten who knows how many other hollows and souls. Despite the number of them being offed by the Shinigami Captains, they just kept coming. Then Vasto Lorde are supposed to be the result of what happens when you cram the entire city of New York into a single person, and there's supposed to be more than a few of them running around somewhere in Huecco Mundo.

So in that sense, adding Hell and Huecco Mundo means there are literally dozen to hundreds of millions of souls that aren't being included in the balance of souls.

So if a human dies, there's a good chance he'll be knocked off course into Huecco Mundo or go to hell, meaning a large portion of dead people are leaving the circulation of Spirits and, apparently not being replaced. The Gotei 13 don't kill nearly enough hollows to offset the population of the critters around Huecco Mundo. That much is established just watching how badly they handle the souls in Karakura Town, and that's supposed to be a MAJOR Shinigami stronghold in the real world!

Mind you, this means a steady amount of souls are 'leaking' from this supposed air tight system that the Soul Society has in place, and they've continued like this since the beginning of time. Despite this, I never heard about any soulless husks popping up. In fact, during the fight between Rukia and Aronierro, it was said that people who die in the soul society don't reincarnate at all! Their bodies break down into dust and join the countless other spirit particles in the Soul Society. If that's the case, once you die, you're just gonna die again at a later date no matter what. The only real difference between dieing as a hollow and dieing as a Soul is that one of the two doesn't become infused with the realm they're in. If that's the only difference, than the reason for the Quincy genocide wasn't nearly as justified as I thought it was.

This whole story I went acknowledging that the PWCD was probably screwing up so many spiritual laws that they might cause an apocalypse or something, but they wouldn't realisticly put anything else before the safety of the still living humans. If souls are doomed to dieing one way or the other anyway, than they actually causing that much harm at all. Souls apparently only reincarnate on very special occasions while the rest more or less turn into spirit fertilizer. In this case, the only reason humanity needed the shinigami was to keep the hollows from eating them all before they went to the Soul Society, and driving them to extinction. If someone else takes care of the hollow threat, than humanity doesn't have any real need for the Shinigami at all, save for cleaning up the few souls that don't pass on by themselves for whatever reason.

Then I'm forced to ask, if babies aren't born with their own souls in this series, than where are their souls coming from in the first place? They aren't coming from Soul Society or Huecco Mundo. This becomes an offshoot of the question 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?'. Did humans come first or souls, because there's no point to having a 'balance' at all if the answer is 'both'.

Then I don't even know where to begin on the matter of how with the Trillions of people who've died over history, how is it that everyone has unanimously agreed to live in a Feudal Japan setting. You'd think if millions of soldiers died during WW2 and woke up in what they thought was Japan, they'd all be flipping out and causing all kinds of trouble.

Sorry, I'm starting to get off track.

Anyway, the PWCD has probably killed a couple thousand hollows by now, counting the arrancar. If you translate the hollows into souls, than the PWCD has probably offed around several hundred thousand souls. That many hollows are probably 'born' over the course of a few years, taking all of the world into account. So, to avoid this huge plot hole altogether, I'm just stating that everyone in this series is born with their own souls, and the reincarnated Souls just manage to squeeze their way into the circulation somehow. Any other explanation I could think of for how this balance works just doesn't make sense.

By the way, I kept hearing questions of why the humans didn't stop killing hollows once they found out they were once human. To answer that question, we kill other humans while they live, look, talk, and act just like us. There are countless points in history where we murdered each other down to the women and children, in the most inhumane ways, without a second thought. Does anyone here really think we'd hold back just because those giant, skull-headed, man-eating, things used to look like us once upon a time? I imagine that if we have no qualms about dropping nukes on our fellow man, than no one's going to lose any sleep repeating this on a bunch of cannibalistic monsters.

Everyone on the same page?

Okay then, here's the final chapter.

xxXxx

Patience

January 8th, 2009

"The world is in a state of anarchy as we find out that we're not alone, not just in this universe, but on our own planet!"

click.

"Almost 100 million people dead in a matter of days! The entire nation of Japan was nearly wiped out in a single organized attack! Those abominations calling themselves 'Youkai' aren't simply dangerous! They're threats to humanity! We can't possibly even consider forgiving them for this, regardless of what 'promises' they try to make!"

click.

"A cease fire is being called between the U.S., Chinese, and Japanese coalition force, and these beings who call themselves 'Youkai', which translates to the English language as 'Specters'. A delegation of these 'Youkai' arrived at the United Nations meeting in New York, denouncing the invaders of Japan as terrorists and extremists while asking for an end to the hostilities that have been 'unfairly' placed upon them. Early into the negotiations, all forms of media of any kind were asked to leave the room. It is being heatedly debated whether or not the Youkai should be believed."

click.

"We have seen not only monsters, but confirmed visuals of some form of super soldiers fighting these creatures throughout the entire country during the war. Thus far, there have been no clear markings or symbols seen on them to indicate their allegiance. The United States, China, and Japan, all deny any affiliation or ownership of these soldiers. Many wonder if these super soldiers were some form of monsters themselves."

click.

"Economic aid is being funneled to Japan from all over the world, as relief efforts go into full effect. An estimated 75% of the population was killed in the initial attack. The military presence in Japan is only increasing as days go on and pockets of Youkai resistance still refuse to surrender. This is the single largest outreach effort in human history, as countries on the other side of planet supply Japan with several hundred tons of food and supplies. Estimates say that even with so much aid being given, it will be decades before the once thriving country of Japan recaptures its former glory. Not to mention, mass graves are beginning to undergo construction all around the country as corpsmen go through the tough job of identifying bodies and either burying or cremating them."

The President of the PWCD shut off the T.V., feeling a mild migraine starting to set in.

It was times like this, that he remembered why they had to hide everything they did from the public. If they don't, shit like this happens. The knowledge that monsters existed was blowing up the media. He was certain that in a matter of weeks, the most isolated, uncivilized, back water places in the world would know all about this. In addition, sightings of PWCD super soldiers were beginning to set off some controversy. He was certain that once the monster hysteria died down a bit, however long that would take, he'd have thousands of human rights advocates riding his ass about the moral ambiguity of modifying humans past their pre-set limits. He'd have people accusing his organization of such nonsense as 'trying to play God', or 'evolutionize the human race'. In reality, the augmentation process was simply made for ground soldiers to have a fighting chance against the creatures they had to fight, and if he had anything to say about it, that was all it would be used for. On the far other end of the spectrum, people would be demanding that they receive augmentations as well, or perhaps try to imitate it the process to their own ends. There's no telling what uses a dictator could get out off having access to super humans.

There was so much going on right now that he was certain he'd start having dreams about being chased by paperwork and smart-ass bureaucrats.

Well, at least his soldiers performed as well as one could expect, given their situation. They focused on rescuing civilians and neutralizing hostiles, being as efficient as they could in both tasks. As far as he was concerned, he'd find a way to give each and every one of those brave men a proper shore leave for their valor. They were thrown into battle as front line soldiers, even though they functioned as a Black Ops organization. Not a single one of those men were intended to dig in and fight in trenches and straight up combat, yet not a single one of them had any complaints about doing it. He was still working on his idea of securing an out of the way island that PWCD personnel could go to for R&R without worrying about civilians and prying eyes.

He'd also have to organize a funeral.

The President cursed, realizing he'd have to find a way to honor the deaths of people who, as far as the rest of the world knew, had never existed. Not only that, he was still rushing operatives out to go and secure all the suits of power armor they could find before anyone else got their hands on it, as well as disposing of hollow and arrancar bodies. In between, sweeping the whole arrancar/hollow invasion under a rug, trying to legitimize the use of not one but two nuclear weapons inside a city occupied by friendly forces, and trying to deal with the shinigami situation in an unnoticeable way, he was certain he'd have to lay those Island plans off to the side.

Not to mention every country in the world suddenly had the right to criticize the effectiveness of the PWCD, seeing as the entire country of Japan almost got wiped out. He was certain that if he hadn't gone into detail about the threat level that Aizen and his arrancar possessed, and why it was necessary that they be neutralized first and foremost, the UN would've moved to have the PWCD disbanded for incompetency. He was certain that the many people saw the simple presence of Monsters at the United Nations as a horrendous failure on the PWCD's part.

Of course he couldn't blame them.

The PWCD was established all those years ago to specifically stop this kind of thing from happening. However, no matter how widespread, asking a single organization to regulate the hostile actions of an entire species, while going incognito about it was asking a bit much. It literally only took a few minutes for anyone with a camera phone to record something they shouldn't have, and post it up on youtube or somewhere. In addition, they found themselves suddenly at war with the entire afterlife, dealing with soul devouring monsters, and ghost samurai. No one could possibly blame them for something like that happening.

The President broke off from his thoughts when one of his aides came in, gave him a look of pity, and plopped a 3 inch thick stack of paperwork on his desk before walking back out.

The man started wondering how far away he could run before anyone realized he was gone.

xxXxx

In one of the PWCD bases set up in Japan, a large group of 5 arrancar were calmly walking down a hallway and conversing, barely acknowledging the lingering glances they aroused from the nearby humans. Though the sight of arrancar had become quite common in recent weeks, it didn't make the people residing inside the structure any less wary. Harribel, her fraccion, and Neliel were all walking together, all of them in their resurrected forms save for Neliel, who was wearing PWCD issued fatigue pants and a tight fitting t-shirt. It was a rather odd sight to the humans that resided here, seeing their former enemies casually walk around their headquarters.

They had, after all, just ended a war between their two species less than a month ago.

"Are you sure of this Harribel? I mean, this is a pretty big step your taking." Neliel stated, walking alongside one of her new found friends.

"Yes, I am sure."

A door opened in front of them, where a pair of engineers were dragging out some sort of large mechanical object on a cart. It was apparently heavier than it looked, because an augment was on the other side of the cart, pushing it. The 5 women allowed the humans passage, pausing their conversation. When the 3 humans passed through they continued walking, the 3 fraccion in the back abruptly getting into an argument over something trivial.

"But how do you think the others will look at you? I mean, wouldn't this be seen a bit like betrayal?" Neliel pressed

"They will eventually come to their senses and realize I was correct in my decision. Then, they'll follow suit." The tan skinned woman stated with certainty.

"Well...I guess bu-"

"Why are you trying to talk me out of this decision? You made it yourself, and seem quite happy with it." The current tercera stated

"My circumstances were different. I didn't have anyone else to go to." Neliel stated in an almost fiery tone.

"And we do? Aizen has fallen, and with him, all of Huecco Mundo is back to its state of ravenous chaos." Harribel coolly responded.

To that, Neliel quieted.

Down the hall, the two tercera espada noticed a pair of augments, both of them wearing fatigues and bulletproof vests but devoid of their trademark power armor. They were both outfitted with an assortment of weapons. The arrancar had learned that whenever they saw augments in this building that were armed, it meant they were either just coming from a mission, or preparing for a mission. They didn't believe in always being prepared, as they revolved entirely around the concept of striking their enemies while they were unprepared and leaving without a trace. Humans also never really feared 'friendly fire' like other species had to constantly worry about, so were at peace to leave themselves unarmed and at each others mercy without worry. Neliel found that odd, as the Youkai were negotiating with the humans, and the spirit world as a whole was isolating themselves from the real world as they tried to rebuild. That being said, what non-human threats were left that would warrant augments to be sent? And if they were being sent, why weren't they in full armor? Without it, they were vulnerable to a number of deadly abilities hollows and Youkai possessed.

Neliel just huffed and ignored it. She was quickly learning that when it came to humans, the more you knew, the bleaker your outlook on life got. Maybe that was why most of the human leaders she met were slight downers to be around?

"Let me make this clear. I don't trust any of them. However, it'd be pointless to simply stay contained in our cells as if we're caged animals." Harribel stated, snapping the woman out of her thoughts.

"Harribel, you don't plan to betray them do you?" Neliel whispered to her harshly. In response, the other tercera shook her head.

"That would be pointless. Where would me and my fraccion escape to afterward? I simply think that if we're being forced to stay here, we may as well try to earn the trust of the humans here. There's nothing to be gained in simply staying in our cells and glaring." Harribel stated.

The 5 women finally arrived at their destination, the 3 fraccion still enraptured in their argument while Neliel and Harribel were tuning them out.

"Well are you ready?" Neliel stated, looking at the taller woman worriedly.

"Yes. Let's just get on with it."

With a nod, Neliel walked up to the door, which required a password to go through. With Neliel having become good friends with the HSF commander, she frequented this particular area enough that the man had extended her proper clearance to be able to enter the room without having to coerce any of the nearby guards into opening it for her. She partially suspected that some of the resident augments had complained about her ability to manipulate others into going where she wanted, and HSF commander just gave her clearence as an excuse to evade those complaints. Either way, she was more than happy to accept.

The woman slipped her name card into a slot at the center of the door. When she pulled it out, a 'click' sounded and the door slid open.

Mr. Miyagi, the commander of the Headquarters Security Force, and Jacob, the Squad Leader of Grave Team, were both engaged in a deep discussion over cups of coffee. Both men were wearing PWCD fatigues, with the augment wearing a long brimmed fishing hat. Neither of the war hardened humans noticed the entrance of the 5 female arrancar and continued on with their conversation, spontaneously breaking out into laughter about whatever it was they were talking about.

Neliel politely cleared her throat.

Both men turned their heads, and immediately tensed. Jacob snatched his side arm from his holster, and placed his other hand over it in case he needed to cock and fire the weapon. The HSF commander wasn't nearly as startled as to do something so drastic, but his right hand was reaching around his waist for something while his left hand was gripping the edge of his seat.

"Woah! Woah! Woah! No need for all that!" Neliel hurriedly sputtered out, trying to avoid conflict.

She noticed that when the augment had his gun out faster than she could blink, her fellow arrancar had balled their fists up for a fight. Since they were separated from their zanpokuto, and their powers were booby trapped, hand to hand was their only means of self defense. She dearly hoped that everyone would start warming up eventually. They were all allies and humans, to a slight degree, after all. Even the few non-humans she had met had been pleasant to be around.

"Neliel Tu Oderschvank, why do you have 4 dangerous prisoners out of their cells?" Miyagi asked, in a low voice.

Neliel subconsciously cringed. When he used her full name, it was his subtle way of showing that no amount fast talking would get her out of trouble. She could at least find relief in the fact that Jacob had put his gun back in the holster, but not relinquished his grip. Well she knew she'd get a chance to talk, if nothing else.

"Well, you see, we had something to ask you...but we didn't know when you'd come back down to the prison cells...and we were sorta hoping that-" Neliel fumbled her words.

"For the love of- We wanna join your damn group!" Apacci yelled out, tired of watching Neliel fumble her words around.

Mr. Miyagi cocked an eyebrow, while Jacob's eyes widened in disbelief. He may not have been all that surprised at the idea of working with non-humans, as his squad had done just that with the Shinigami, during the war with the arrancar. What he was surprised at was the idea of the PWCD, an organization dedicated to the defense of human interest, accepting non-humans as auxiliaries. The entire concept just seemed counter productive, and easily capable of backfiring. After all, if you fight non-humans, and accept non-humans as additional forces, then they are very likely to just defect back with their own kind.

"It is true. In our current state, we have nowhere else to go except Huecco Mundo, which in its current state is a horrible place to live." Harribel explained. Jacob grunted in response, not entirely buying it. If a trio of shinigami could just walk in and gather the hollows into an organized military, than whose to say someone else couldn't?

"I...see. I assume the other arrancar wish to join our organization as well?" The HSF commander hesitantly stated.

"No. They aren't aware of where I've gone, only that I was escorted out by Neliel after sharing a private conversation beforehand." Harribel continued, looking dignified and prideful all the while.

Jacob silently wondered how she could have such an Victorian attitude while wearing the most...interesting choice of clothing attire he had ever seen. Knee high armored boots, a bone skirt, and a bra/shoulder pad-like contraption were definitely on his list of 'Let's see if anyone ever does something like this'. Then he took a better look at the 3 girls behind her. A snake hybrid, an Amazon-esque with a mane, and a girl in a fur suit with antlers.

Jacob decided he hadn't gotten enough caffeine in his system to be dealing with something like this, and decided to grab his coffee and go elsewhere. This didn't involve him, and the HSF commander seemed to be very familiar with this scenario to begin with, if his actions implied anything. He politely excused himself out the room.

"Well Neliel, you know by now that my job is making sure no trouble is caused on this base. Drafting non-humans doesn't fall into my job description." The HSF commander explained, feeling put on the spot, now that his drinking buddy had abruptly left.

"Oh I know, but since you're good friends with the guy who is in charge of all that stuff, we were hoping you'd be able to help us." Neliel beamed. Miyagi frowned.

"You do realize that if I endorse this, and one of you fuck up-" Harribel's fraccion cried out in indignation "Than this all falls on my head, right?" Mr. Miyagi explained, hoping that the weight of what she was asking might be better understood.

Without warning, Neliel lunged forward and brought the man into a tight hug. "Oh I knew you wouldn't let us down!" The man sighed.

Apparently not.

xxXxx

February, 2nd, 2009

Gyokuro was furious.

She was currently on her way to a private jet to Africa. Her assets and resources were all frozen or seized. Fairy Tale has all but fallen apart. Issa Shuzen himself was booted off his rightful throne by Akasha Bloodriver. There was nothing in this country left for her. Africa was one of the few places in the world that the damn humans wouldn't be able to track her every move to, and the money in her pocket would still allow her to have a comfortable living. The only other place that would be viable would be Antarctica, which was nothing but water, frozen water, but water none the less. Even if the place wasn't a hazard to her life just to be near, she detested the cold. Africa was infested with humans, but so many of them were killing each over things that even monsters found petty, that anything she did couldn't be discerned from what they often did to each other.

Her plan of action was to simply wait in Africa for a couple hundred years. From then, she would move back into another first world country and find a way get revenge, not just on humanity, but on the monster world as well, for so readily selling her out so that they could grovel to those lesser beings. Then she would find a way to exact revenge on the traitorous bastard Aizen, that is, if he was still alive. She promised herself that she would see the world burn for what it had done to her, one way or the other.

"Gyokuro Shuzen."

The vampire immediately spun around in a combat stance. Undoubtedly, the PWCD must've been here to kill her. No one else in the world knew where she was, and only the black ops organization had the resources and interest to find out her location and intercept her before she got there herself.

So imagine her surprise when she found herself not staring at a hunter/killer team of super soldiers, but instead, a taller woman of a slightly darker skin tone who was wearing all white. The woman also had a rather large sword in her possession that was wider than she was.

The woman relaxed, seeing as no human soldier would dare approach her in such a garb. She must be a youkai of some sort.

"Why yes, I am Gyokuro. May I ask who you are?" Gyokuro drawled, watching the woman for any odd movements. She was slightly disturbed to find the woman was standing perfectly still, as if she wasn't even breathing. Only zombies could do that, and she could see no signs of magical seals or anything that was reanimating her.

"I am Tia Harribel, the Tercera Espada of Aizen's late hollow army."

Gyokuro's eyes widened in surprise at the revelation. She was a spirit, of course. She had seen an example of the power the arrancar possessed. She almost found it hard to believe that such a powerful species had been defeated by such a weak and meager species as the humans. Given their situation, she was certain that the humans were doing their personal best to exterminate the entire arrancar species as they spoke. The humans feared the prospect of something being greater than they were, and if they couldn't control it, they'd destroy it. So that meant this arrancar must've sought her out for sanctuary.

"You're one of Aizen's commanders? You realize that man betrayed me? Had he kept to his bargain, we may have defeated the humans and claimed the planet as ours. But instead, he blundered and sent us all to a fate of being ruled by these inferior beings." Gyokuro said.

Harribel could only watch in silent amazement. This deluded woman truly thought that by partnering with Aizen, her pathetic attack had a chance at succeeding. From what she had read on the human's perception of the war, Gyokuro had only killed 75% of the population of Japan, which translated into a little under 1% of the total human population, not counting those individuals that humanity labeled as 'non-existent' such as the various spies and black ops operatives under their employ. Her attack was literally just shy of being a 100% failure and talked as if this failure was Aizen-sama's fault. She must've been truly demented.

"Regardless, may I ask why you've sought me out? I'm in a bit of a rush and I doubt this a social call." Gyokuro said, ending her sentence with a smile.

"I've come to destroy you." Harribel said with a cold chill in her voice.

Gyokuro's smile immediately faded in alarm. Harribel found out during the fighting at Karakura, that using her spiritual pressure to bear down on others was ineffective on augments. Their power armored suits had built in life support systems, and after encountering the weaker of hollows, modified their armor to be able to function in high gravity. The combination of these feature made them unaffected by her attempts to bring them to their knees. This lowly Youkai had no such protection.

Harribel glowed bright yellow as her spirit pressure came full force. With that accursed booby trap removed, and her having over a month to heal from her injuries, she was back to her full strength.

Gyokuro was suddenly surrounded by that same yellow glow and crushed against the ground with such intensity the the concrete splintered and cracked beneath her. The vampiress found herself unable to breathe, feeling like she weighed thousands of pounds. She couldn't even cry out in agony as she felt a few of her bones being bent in angles they weren't meant to. Harribel watched impassively as she steadily increased the pressure.

It was funny in a way, the tercera thought. She had heard of humans using similar means to kill as a form of execution long ago. They'd tie people to the ground, and stack blocks of stones on their chests in succession, until their ribs were crushed under the weight. Her spiritual pressure was doing exactly that, but to all of the vampiress' body, while asphyxiating her at the same time. There was no way she'd live if she kept up like this.

"This isn't anything personal. The PWCD wanted to test my effectiveness against Youkai. I found it quite insulting. They had so little faith in me that they placed several snipers around the area in case I failed."

To hear that, Gyokuro eyes grew to the size of saucers. The women released all of her youki energy in a single burst, wiggling and yelling in outrage as she tried to escape the hold the tercera had on her. She appeared more like a caged and cornered animal, screaming curses, growling in rage, flailing wildly.

'In death, she shows her true colors' Harribel thought.

With but a thought, the tercera espada doubled the current amount of pressure on Gyokuro. The ground beneath the vampire exploded as she cried out in pain and agony. She felt her bones break under the pressure and slowly compress downward. She felt her ribs pushing upward and into her vital organs. Were it not for her vampire healing, she would've died by now.

Harribel walked over to the agonized vampiress, looking down at her with an unreadable expression.

The arrancar realized that the PWCD operatives tagging along with her were getting restless. They feared retaliation from their enemies so much that they killed their them while they were still unaware. While she understood the logic behind it, she still frowned on it. To her, it was too-...impersonal she should say. As an arrancar, she felt that as a warrior, she should let her opponent know of the person who had bested her. While she agreed it was inefficient, she was never one for efficiency unless there was absolutely no time to squander for such rituals.

"My name is Tia Harribel, late Tercera Espada, and now a warrior of the PWCD Black Operations military arm. You have been defeated, and as the victor, I shall decide your fate." The Tercera drew Tiburon from it's sheath on her back.

The PWCD figured that if these arrancar wished to serve alongside their augmented soldiers, than they should be sent out to fight in a manor that they were familiar with. As such, once the radiation in parts of Karakura disappeared, the arrancar who had pledged their loyalty to the organization were flown back to the city to locate both their and the prisoner's weapons using reiatsu detection (which was only Her, her fraccion, and Ulquiorra so far. Starrk and Lilynette were satisfied enough with the free meals and virtually endless sleeping time that they received as prisoners, while Grimmjow was simply being difficult). After their blades had been thoroughly washed and cleansed of radiation, they were handed back so that those stuck in their resurrected forms could return to their 'sealed' state. Harribel couldn't properly express how much more secure she felt to have her prized blade back in her hands, though her current circumstances demonstrated that she certainly didn't need it.

Gyokuro was so heavy from exposure to the Tercera's reiatsu that she couldn't look up to see her own demise. The arrancar had considered letting up on her only briefly, than cast out the idea.

Tia Harribel felt that giving the woman her full name, title, and honorifics, was enough of an honor. At least she knew the person who had passed her on to the next world was someone of great power and prestige, and not some random person behind an expressionless helmet. That thought going through her head, she finally decided to end it.

"Due to the requirements of my mission, I am forced to chose death as your sentence. Farewell, Gyokuro Shuzen."

With that said, Harribel swung her blade through the air, channeling and sending a sharp wave of her own reiatsu through her own sword and at the grounded vampire.

The woman's head rolled away from her shoulders, her facial expression permanently frozen in crazed fury.

xxXxx

Author's Note: Well it's been a fun ride.

Finally, I can say that I've finished a story! I can't tell you just how fun this has been to write out for you guys, though I may have to go back to the beginning and rewrite a few parts. I noticed that my later chapters were a lot better than my initial ones. I've already edited about 6 or 7 of the first 10 chapters and it still doesn't look satisfactory to me.

And sorry about not delivering on the Claymore and Elfen Lied crossovers. I extend the same apology to the lack of Youkai Academy being mentioned throughout the story. There was too much going on at the time to add them in, lest I turn a semi-coherent story into a giant mess. I promise to try and satisfy all those of you who wanted to see more of that in the coming sequel.

Not sure what I'm going to title the sequel though. I can't keep ripping off Star Wars movie titles. I think 'Master of Patience' had a nice ring to it, but the title makes it sound more like a mystery/horror movie/suspenseful thriller. I'm not going for any one of those genres.

Feel free to leave suggestions for Titles. Something that grabs attention. Seeing something that said 'Humans Strike Back' in the Bleach and R&V sections of Fan-fiction (anime series that downplayed the worth of average humans) made people click on it just out of idle curiosity. I want to try and make lightning strike twice, and I need the help of YOU the people who put the 'Fan' in 'FANfiction'!

Yes! I am aware of how corny I sound right now!

Thank you all for staying along for the ride, and see you all in the next story: "Untitled until otherwise"