The next realm was another that had gone to wrack and ruin and I narrowed my eyes, noticing a pattern. The Shadow, which had, by all appearances, been doing nothing but steal children for the last long while now seemed to be just hopping from Realm to Realm and gate to gate. All the Realms it visited seemed to be uninhabited by anything but indigenous spirits gone feral. After the first two or three attempts by Isana to make friends with them... that had resulted in her nearly being ripped apart and eaten, I'd called a halt to all friendly overtures to anything with teeth bigger than Zabimaru.
At least the journey wasn't completely boring. The various hostile creatures that attacked us along our way through the Realms kept my attention sharp and my body active. Isana, however, did not look at all happy about being constantly attacked. I liked it because it gave me a chance to fight, but she looked at the Realms surrounding her as we walked along with wide, worried eyes and started at every little noise and movement. She was like one of those skittish little lap-dogs that rich women carried around with them.
"Will you relax?" I finally asked her after two hours of watching her jump and startle at every little noise and movement.
"You saw what the last one looked like," she said nervously. "It had teeth as long as my forearm!"
"Yeah, but it still wasn't a match fer me," I replied easily.
It was true, the last feral creature we'd come across, a huge beast that looked like someone had taken a bull and tried to make it look like an alligator, had been fun to kill. I'd barely even broken a sweat taking it out while the little missy had looked like she was in fear of her life. I guess that was what came of living in cities all the time, they made a person soft and unable to handle even the least little bit of danger.
"That's what ya keep me around for ain't it?" I added.
I didn't bother disguising the undertone of bitterness to that comment. Sure, I was having fun seeing places no other Soul Reaper had and fighting off my share of feral monsters, but when it came down to it, I was still doing all this under a geas. I resented that.
"What else was I supposed to do?" she said defensively. "I can't fight them myself."
"Helplessness is no excuse," I muttered. "Besides, you could have just asked me."
"Would you have let me come along if I had?" she replied archly.
Innate honesty prompted me to answer
"No, I'da made you stay in the Mortal Realm where Mortals belong, but I'da still gone after yer kid... I'd just have been able to move a lot more freely without-"
Another great beast popped up out of the local flora, springing at us with its jaws gaping wide open ready to try to take a piece from our hides. Isana screamed and grabbed my free arm, cowering behind me as I sighed in irritation and met it with a swing from Zabimaru, slicing it neatly in half down its length. It burst into stardust and the particles of light drifted away as had all the ones that came before it.
"...Having to keep a watch on you all the time," I continued not missing a beat as I walked along the pathway through the Realm, following the scent of Shadow.
"Well, I'm the one with the binding spell," Isana countered.
"Which I would have also, if those Elemental Court beings hadn't figured that I was just your Vassal and you were the real power in our little duo," I countered. "See, that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't decided to nab me for an adventure, whether I like it or not."
"Oh please, don't act like a victim! And stop whining!" she scoffed.
I was half tempted to dump her down the steep side of one of the nearby gorges in this world.
"You were going to go anyway," she continued. "And whether it's convenient or not doesn't matter. I'm not going to abandon my son. Even if you do seem like a nice person, I can't just leave his safety or his life up to anyone else. Besides, haven't I been useful?"
"Yeah, yer real good at picking up trouble," I muttered.
We abandoned the argument, which had been pointless and going no-where. I was under a geas and she was coming along, and that was how it was so it was pointless to argue about it. We'd just have to find her son and that Shadow before we drove each other crazy.
The worlds we gated to, in hot pursuit down that trail left by the Shadow, were all left in ruins. Whether they were the crumbling remains of pillars sticking up out of the dirt and detritus, or just a scrubby, overgrown wild nature, everything always seemed to be in a state of run-down chaos. There was something even stranger about most of them too, I wasn't sure exactly how to describe it except to say that they looked like they were coming unraveled. The realms looked "frayed" around the edges, like someone had taken a sweater and pulled on the string that knit it together and it was coming undone. There were all sorts of different places and environments. From crumbling old temples painted with Egyptian hieroglyphs filled with tiny little dried-up mummy creatures about the size of three foot high people (who attacked in droves), to strange jungle-overgrowths filled with weird tropical plant-animal looking things that moved up in the trees and along the ground with equal ease.
Zabimaru and I were getting our groove back in his new form. Snaketail was still out of action despite looking recently a little recovered so I was using his "howl-form" instead of his "roar-form" it was easier to distinguish them by thier release commands than it was to go calling them "snaketail-Zabimaru" and "Baboon-King-Zabimaru" they were both Zabimaru, just different aspects of him that relied on different strengths. The enemies we'd come across so far had been nothing more serious than what I would have routinely faced on a normal mission, about the strength of your average, run-of-the-mill Hollow. It was sort of a relief, since it gave me an opportunity to practice with him at his lowest setting and work my way up (smae as I had with Snaketail back in the days) but truth be told I was getting a little tired of picking on wimps and I wanted something to fight that was, y'know, a real challenge.
"How close are we to finding the Shadow?" Isana asked with a tone like an over-tired child asking 'are we there yet?'
It had been a long trek for her, we'd been traveling since we'd woken that morning, gating from one world and hiking over-land, sometimes climbing up and down great vales filled with boulders or close-grown paths through dense vegetation or piking our way along a narrow mountain track along the side of a cliff to reach the next gate-portal. Isana wasn't in bad shape, but she wasn't in the kind of condition I was either.
On our journey so far, I had done a lot of the work; all of the fighting certainly, and when we reached a gate-portal I put her up on my back and flashed down the starpath through the Dark Between and into the next world. We needed to travel those starpaths quickly, before the portals ran out of the reiatsu I fed them and we no longer able to keep opne. In addition to that, if there was any truly steep and dangerous terrain to cover, I also carried her on my back in flash-leaps up and around it. If I wasn't already in good shape, and she weren't such a tiny thing, I'd probably be tired from playing both knight-protector and horsey as the occassion warranted. As it was, even Iwas starting to feel the effects of our non-stop trek.
"We should stop and eat," I said, effectively calling a halt by plopping down in a clear rocky space next to the path we were on.
The Realm was clear and I scented nothing that smelled remotely like danger. With all of the work I'd been doing my stomach was about to wrap itself around my backbone.
"I want to find my son," she replied firmly. "I can keep moving so let's go."
Of course you can keep moving, I grumbled to myself. Ya got me carryin' ya half th' time.
"I need food, woman," I replied. "I'm not used to being in a Mortal body and this thing needs to eat. It's no good if I have to face my enemy and I don't have the endurance to beat it down because I didn't refuel when I had the chance. We'll eat quickly and get back on the road. You look like you could use a rest too."
"I'm fine," she insisted, even as she plopped down across from me with a sigh and pulled her bag around.
She pulled out some kind of strange World of the Living food that came in a bowl with dried noodles and dried vegetables in it and began to heat up water over a small round portable stove. She also pulled out bottles of water and small packaged snacks which she had to show me how to open after I'd spent a moment trying to get at the food inside of it, some kind of grain mixed with fruit in a bar held together by honey. It was quick and it was filling and in a little bit we were back on the road again.
The trail of the Shadow was not difficult to follow. It left it's incense stench behind it ina figurative cloud where-ever it went. It was easy to track and I had to tools and skills now to defeat it, but there was still a lot about it I didn't know. By the time that Isana and I had crossed into our ninth new world for that day and started hiking over a strange new landscape of stormy grey seas, grey skies and rough jagged cliffs dropping in sheer vertical drops to crashing waves I began to wonder just how fast that Shadow could move and how much farther ahead of us it was since it had such a long lead on us. Did it need to eat or sleep? Or could it just keep going? If that was the case how were we, who were bound to the limitations and needs of mortal flesh supposed to catch up to it.
:Maybe it has a lair somewhere,: I thought hopefully.
It would sort of have to. It was going to the trouble of taking the (Quincy) children in the night instead of just killing them, which meant that whoever had ordered their capture wanted them alive not dead. In fact, in the Rukon District it would have made more sense rather than less to kill the children rather than make them disappear; a killing or a mysterious death among children was a common occurance there, it was easily explained and easily dismissed, but a disappearance was cause for alarm. A disappearance meant that someone was movin' on yer turf without permission. But the Shadow (or Shadows) had deemed that the gaining of the children was worth the risk of exposure, so that had to mean it was pretty important to someone that those kids be taken and gathered up.
:It could have something to do with thier ability to channel Reishin particles,: I thought. :Or it could be because thier spirit powers can kill the Shadows... theoretically.:
Or it could be something I couldn't even begin to imagine. If Aizen was at the center of this (and there was no sign other than just my gut feeling that he was) then that "something else" did not spell anything but trouble for anyone but me and mine.
:The point,: I told myself. :Is that, Aizen or not, these kids have been taken at risk of exposure, it only makes sense to assume that these kids are not being held singly, but altogether where thier kidnappers can keep an eye on them.:
Which would mean that the shadows had to have some kind of lair or stronghold somewhere in the divine realms.
:I wonder why they haven't used any of these other Realms. I mean, all of them look wild and uninhabited, unless you count the ferals.:
One of the ferals I had just been thinking about popped out of a nearby bush and sprung at Miss Isana with a scream of challenge. I didn't even twitch as I reflexively drew Zabimaru, not even bothering to shikai him against the scrawny little hump-backed shell-beastie, slashed and stabbed in a quick movement letting it turn to stardust upon being killed as I continued on my way.
:Which seems a little strange,: I thought.
A person would think that if a Shadow was going to bother passing through all of these different realms and gateways that have nothing in them to pose a serious threat that he'd just use one of them to hold the kids in, but apparently there was another realm that was better than all o' these other ones they were passin' by.
:Of course, all of these little pocket-Realms all seem to be unraveling at the edges in one way or another.:
Some of them had large patches of sky that was just missing, like someone had just torn a hole in the blue, others had horizons that blurred to black along the edges of it. It was weird and by mutual agreement Isana and I stayed well away from those missin' bits... no tellin' what would happen if one of us accidentally fell in. I killed two more ferals before the trail of scent I was following finally led us up to a gateway platform and we crossed over into the next world.
This world didn't have any ruins in it that I could see right off hand. It was instead made of granite crags and cliffs, wrinkled monoliths of mountains carved by wind and rain. There were no paths through the extremely difficult terrain and an endless blue sky stretched up overhead, broken at oddly-regular intervals by weathered rock-spires carved by the wind. The place was cold and barren but there were no missing bits in this one, I noticed a few splotched of green growing tenaciously on top of rock shelves here and there and some spots of white leaping from rock to rock, local wildlife then. I scented around a bit and picked up the trail but Isana hesitated standing there on the platform.
"Whatcha waitn' on woman?" I called back to her impatiently, we'd just had a break after all.
"I can't get around in terrain like this!" she called over to me. "I don't think even a mountain-goat could."
I sighed and flash-leaped back to the gate-platform and knelt down behind her, signaling she should climb on my back. She did so and giggled,
"High-ho silver! Away!"
"Funny," I said flatly as I flashed leaped down the craggy mountainside.
The trail was easy to follow, especially since there didn't seem to be anything getting in my way. It led straight up a wind carved vertical cliff around a small maze of rock spires jutting up into the sky like the bottom maw of an enormous beast and down into a narrow valley where I could sense the presence of a gate-platform.
"Hey Renji," she asked, her grip murderously tight around my neck as I scrabbled by hand- and toe-holds up a near-vertical incline, the wind whipping around my face. I would have just flash-leaped up it but Isana always seemed to panic when I did that... then again, she did not seem to be liking this a whole lot better. I didn't see anything wrong with it personally, it had been a while since I'd done any cliff-scaling but I'd always liked the activity, probably something to do with my love of heights.
"Yeah?" I asked her absently, moving onto the next wind-carved little toe-shelf.
"That's a long way down," she noted tremulously.
"Yeah," I said, concentrating on moving to my next hold-spot.
"Please don't drop me."
"Then don't tempt me," I replied.
I leaped up from my current spot to the flat area I had spied out, a good sized shelf at the precipice of the tallest rock-spire, with a little wind-carved niche protecting it. I'd be able to get a good look around from that vantage point and map out the next bit of climbing I'd have to do. In a maze of rock like this place seemed to be, it'd be a good idea to get my bearings, otherwise I might get us lost. We ducked out of the winds. Isana took a little break, huddling in the little cavelet and I went back out and scented the winds. There was Shadow-scent for certain, but I was picking something else up as well. I wasn't sure what it was, but whatever it was, it had a sizable amount of power. We were being either followed or watched, I could just feel it.
"Wow!" Isana exclaimed, joining me up on the spire of the precipice and looking at the immense and majestic vista granted by our little perch in a place that birds would probably think twice about.
The view spread out before us was... well, surprisingly magnificent.
What I had taken to be nothing more than rough granite crags and mountainsides were in fact, viewed at a distance, a whole city-complex of stone carved out of the mountains. They were all made to look like weathered rocks and tumbles of stone, but all of them were to regular and perfectly placed to be and accident. Great minaret-like rock spires jutted up into the sky with weathered pillars of stone holding up wind-carved arches in the fave of the nearby mountainsides. The spires sort of reminded me of those sorts of sand-castle decorations you got when you took a handful of wet send and let it dribble out through your fingertips, they looked natural but also strangely intricate as well. I wondered how who or whatever called this place home got around in the difficult terrain... maybe tunnels underneath? Oh well, I wasn't there to explore, just the surface of the place was incredible enough for me. I'd never in my wildest dreams imagined anything like it before. Stared for a moment more, taking it all in, then pointed to a gate-platform off to my right that I could see in the distance.
"The Shadow headed that way," I told her. "My guess would be for that gate."
Isana looked down over the edge at the near-sheer vertical drop down the other side of the rock spire we were standing on and said
"That's great, but how are we going to get down?"
I smiled. It was probably my scary-looking smile. She backed up a pace but knew she had no-where to go. I could see the panic building behind her eyes.
"Renji, no! I don't w-"
The end of her protest was lost as I veritably pounced, scooped her up and slung her over my shoulder. Call me petty, but I made sure she got a good, long look at how far away the ground was before I paced over to the side, gauged my distance for a heartbeat, and casually stepped off the edge.
She screamed like a girl.
I chuckled a bit as I controlled my downward momentum by skidding down on the soles of my feet. Her panicked struggling on top of my shoulder threw of my balance a bit but I compensated for it well enough. The incline widened out by increments the closer we got to the ground and I was able to slow the decent a little more. It was sort of a pity that Snakey was still asleep, his chain-blade feature would have been useful right then, now that I'd managed the trick of sliding down the flats of the blade. Even with the slight skid, it was more of a free-fall which was fine with me, I liked the feel of the wind whipping around me and tugging at my clothes, it felt great! Little Missy wasn't as enthusiastic about it as I was though. As the smaller rock-spires loomed closer in my free-fall I pushed off the side of the cliff, flipped in the air and my fet landed against the side of the nearest one. This one had a more gradual slope, which was what I was looking for to help us slow down. We kicked up a small cloud of dust on the way down. I spotted the next point I'd made n my mental map and pushed off again, sending us carreening through the air in a tight spiral, whipping out Zabimaru, shikaing him in mid-air and thrusting him point forward into the cliff-side. The large blade stuck and I used it as a fulcrum to change directions on a pivot, heading for my next target. The little Missy had stopped screaming in terror by this point and was blessedly (but a little disconcertingly quiet) on my shoulder. Well, it'd be over soon, just two more points left to go and we'd both be back safe on the ground. After pushing off the first and flipping to the second I slid down the long gradual incline of the skree slope at the bottom. We skidded to a controlled stop just shy of the little path at the bottom of the Valley that led directly to the gate-portal.
"There!" I said proudly, flipping the little missy off my shoulder and holding her at arms length to set her down on her feet. "See? Nuthin' to-"
I paused, she just hung there limply, shaking. There were tears streaming down her face and she was panting and sobbing hysterically. Oh dear. I hadn't meant to make her cry.
"Missy?" I said giving her a little shake.
She just hung there, trembling like a leaf. I bit my lip and felt terribly guilty.
"It's okay now, yer safe on the ground," I said tentatively. "See? Good old terra firma."
Her head snapped up and her wide, dark, tear-filled eyes looked up at me with unthinking terror. I felt about three inches tall.
"Aw geeze, I'm sorr-" I began.
"Sh-shut up," she sobbed. "I-if y-y-you s-say one w-word to me, I'm g-going to f-fucking k-kill you!"
"Um," I said, not certain how to make amends.
The woman was no kind of warrior and that had been awfully juvenile of me. Granted, it was the fastest way to get where we were going but-
"Missy don't cry," I said, trying to be as soothing as I knew how. "I wouldn't let anything happen to you. As long as yer with me, yer as safe as these two arms can make you."
Her answer was nothing but big hiccuping sobs that shook her tiny frame. Even worse. Shit.
"There there," I dithered (actually dithered!) flustered.
"Don't you 'there there' me!" she snapped. "You big jerk!"
That was better, angry wasn't scared.
"I know, I'm s-"
"You!" she snarled.
Power gathered about her.
"Bad Renji! DOWN!" she screamed, enraged.
It felt like the time that Kuchiki had unleashed a whole lot a reiatsu all at once, like the force of gravity in the world went from normal to four-G's in under half a second. I didn't just drop to my knees, I was pushed face-first into the dirt. The geas-collar around my neck flared emeraled green.
:Okay, totally deserved that,: I acknowledged.
"DOWN!" She shouted again.
A heavy weight like a boulder slammed into me, making me groan, followed by another and another as she yelled
"Down! Downdowndowndowndown!"
At last she left off, panting for breath and now able to regain her composure a little.
"Ow..." I gasped, unable to move after having been effectively pummeled like bread dough in the hands of an overly enthusiastic chef.
"Serves you right!" she snapped, sounded exactly like her soul-sister Rukia.
I snorted, curling around my pain and trying to decide if I had enough in me to try sitting up. I just lay there for a minute waiting for the pain to subside.
"Oh get up," she said disdainfully. "You're not that hurt, you big baby."
Yep, definitely just like her sister. It was a wonder I'd survived Rukia... if this was a taste of the kind of relationship me and the missy were going to have as travel companions, maybe this nice little rock valley wasn't such a bad place to have as my grave-site.
"Try being pounded on the back with a wrecking ball and see how you feel about it," I muttered at last getting a proper breath into my aching lungs.
"You deserved it!"
"I said I was sorry! What do you want me to do, prostrate my self in abject humilty? Kiss the ground before your feet? Present my head to your sandal?" I snapped.
"It'd be a start," she replied, glaring at me.
"Hold yer breath while ya wait," I suggested.
Talk about ungracious! I felt bad that I'd scared her so much, but she could at least acknowledge that I was trying to make amends!
She looked like she was thinking about using the magic whammy on me again so I quickly warned
"I wouldn't. You've had your pound of flesh and I'll grant you that, but anything more than that is excessive and I'm not a pushover."
She paused, considering. Good.
"Fine," she said. "But next time you want to... do scary, dangerous things involving terrifying heights and dangerous plummets and no ropes, you talk it over with me first!"
She kicked my shin. I wasn't expecting it and flinched a little at the unexpected sharp pain.
"That's the kind of stunt my son would pull," she continued, glaring me down. "And you're definitely too old to be acting like a juvenile!"
I took my chastising with grace if not dignity. She was right, but I couldn't say that I liked being scolded, even if I had earned it. I had to hand this to her however, she was good at it, and reasonable enough once she'd gotten past her fear.
"Fair enough," I said. "Truce. Truce. I'm sorry I frightened you so badly. I'm not used to the world from a mortal perspective, I've been a warrior in the feild for many decades so the sorts of things that you might find frightening simply don't phase me Missy. I'll try to be more aware from now on."
She nodded, still a little grudgingly, but was willing to accept the truce. We continued down the path to the waiting Gate Platform. The world had been quiet except for our little spat so I wasn't really expecting it when the ground before us started to tremble like and earth-quake as we approached the gate-platform.
"None shall pass!" a basso voice rumbled from out of nowhere, the deep ponderous tones of it, like a mountain given voice, caused my chest to thump in resonance. We both looked around us, bewildered and trying to find the source of it. What I had taken to be nothing more than a harmless tumble of boulders next to the gate platform, a cairn of rock like so many of the others nearby, shook for a minute and then unfurled itself, stone by stone, resolving into the shape of a giant man-like thing made of stone. It stood up and up and up, literally towering over us, a good twenty feet high. Isana crowded closer to me and I pulled out Zabimaru, ready to fight.
"Trespassers in this Realm, you shall go no farther!" the rock-thing told us from a gaping, weathered maw made of craggy stone.
"Well," I said, smiling and pulling the un-shikaied Zabimaru out before me prepratory to releasing his blade.
I smiled my Eleventh-Squad smile as I said
"That's more like it!"
Ah! Finally! I had troubles with this chapter. When I had originally written it I had marked it for revision, not knowing exactly what I was going to do with it, just knowing that I wanted it to be different. When it came up on my posting list as I was doing to final editing I decided that it would be the perfect time to start to flesh out a little bit of what Renji and Isanas interpersonal relationships and reactions to each other were going to be like. The chapter would have more or less written itself except that I never had time to write it! It was maddening! I'd get snatches of five minutes here and ten minutes there in between my work and my summer classes and study-time and travel-time and just as I was starting to get into my groove there'd be something else to interrupt me! I about took someone's head off at one point. I've been trying to write, polish and post this thing since Monday! Graaah! Now I've finally finished it and I must say, I'm much more satisfied with this version. ^_^ It's about three thousands words longer and much better than what I had originally written. Let's hear it for revision!