Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.
Translator's note: 'Urusai' means 'shut up' (more or less - sometimes it can be more polite than that). 'Ksa' is a deliberately misromanized form of 'kuso', which means 'shit'.
Author's note: I would like to acknowledge a tribute to Tarol Hunt's Goblins in this chapter. Also, in case you didn't know, a daisy cutter is one of the most powerful (non-nuclear) warheads that are considered acceptable in conventional modern warfare.
"Uh, Okaasama, I would never lie to you -"
"-Uh oh," Ichihime grimaced. "This sounds bad."
"You're not going to believe this."
Ichihime's eyebrow raised as she studied her eldest son. Vojiro was obviously in deep trouble, because he had brought Sarashina with him for support. She was always backing him up. Not that Vojiro was a bad kid - he was actually a true gentleman and a good soul - but you know how it is. Teenagers find their way into all kinds of messes; especially ones that are not of their own making. "Pray tell. What is it now?"
Surprisingly, it was Sarashina who took up the next sentence. "So, you know how you asked us to keep an eye on Lulu, right?"
Ichihime's attention was now fully seized. Lulu, the second youngest of Ichihime's and Adame's twenty-two children, was still rather young - still an overcurious toddler. In other words, adorably cute and highly prone to getting herself into trouble. Ichihime's voice flattened. "Where is she?" the head of house leveled at her eldest heirs.
"...She's on top of the clock tower," Vojiro admitted, flinching.
"On top of the clo- what? Vo-kun, how in the world did she-?"
"I'll answer that," Sarashina volunteered, sticking up her finger voluntarily, interrupting her mother in exceptionally rare form. "She flew up there."
"She fl- what?"
"Uh, yeah, she flew," Vojiro muttered in agreement, rubbing the back of his neck and letting his platinum bangs hide his eyes to escape his mother's wide-eyed stare. Oh kami, she was totally going to blow a gasket.
"And just how exactly did that happen?" Ichihime stared coldly at her daughter. This must have been some seriously backfired kido. Sarashina's kido was superb, which means either Vojiro was attempting something stupid, or Sarashina had been trying something extraordinarily stupid. The latter was unlikely for Sarashina, but it was the only possible explanation that Ichihime could muster. Although the Banzo family was historically well known for its kido prowess, Vojiro had inherited his mother's more mundane skill level in the demon arts. (It was the price for inheriting her exceptional close-quarter combat skills, she supposed.)
Vojiro stammered. "Well, Okaasama, you see - "
"- Lulu turned into a bat," Sarashina finally explained.
"A bat?"
"...Yeah, a bat. And that's why she's on top of the clock tower."
~ The discovery that animorphistics (a rare ability previously only known in the Shihoin family) had been introduced into the Banzo bloodline, circa 150 years into the future
"...I suppose improbable and impossible are not the same thing."
~ former 14th seat of the 12th division, Rantao Kiku; upon learning that she was to be promoted to lieutenant of the 12th division; not too long ago
There are so many variables in destiny that we can never predict what can happen. One:
Thanatos flung himself quickly through the Void, constantly checking over his shoulder. He had played his cards wisely (so he believed), but one could never be too careful.
The instigator of the vasto lorde rebellion, Thanatos was annoyed with Hallibel-sama. She had selected a team of loyal vasto lorde subjects to accompany her on a mission to Earth; where they would dine on the hollows of Europe. Thanatos had wanted to go on that trip; permission to leave the dreary moon-rot skies of Hueco Mundo was rare. True, he would have to abide by the Secret Peace, but at least there would be a change of scenery. And, as much as he would have supposed to "abide" by the Secret Peace, there was always the possibility of a few... ahem, unexplained incidents.
Most of the vasto lorde complied with the Secret Peace begrudgingly, including Thanatos. It used to be that Hueco Mundo's most powerful hollows were solitary creatures; until Aizen had started to unite them. Hallibel, unquestionably the most powerful living hollow in any known dimension, had succeeded over her predecessor Barragan in whipping the other vasto lorde (who, unlike Hallibel, were not arrancar and thus could not even remotely compete with her strength) into submission. It was fear of the Shark King that kept most of them in line.
Hallibel had a few stalwart supporters outside of her two arrancar subordinates, Neliel and Gantennbaine. Kresus and Kronor, two ancient, powerful menos grande who had once run from the Royal Guard, were relieved that they would be left alone if they restricted their diet to other high-level hollows - a worthwhile tradeoff considering that the taste of an adjuchas's meat was far more delicious then the empty gillians or piddling non-menos. It wasn't human or shinigami flesh, but Kresus and Kronor had no desire to cross blades with Nikayui Shirani again. The other stalwart subject, Jezebel, was the only female vasto lorde in Hueco Mundo after Hallibel; and much preferred The King's protection. There were a few others - Viscous, Biter, and Damasek - who were less concerned about the Secret Peace but generally remained loyal to the Shark King in hopes that they could court her.
(It was a pipe dream, Thanatos knew, but Damasek in particular was a vain and handsome hollow - relatively speaking - and it was a fantasy of many to bed the blonde. How safe that was, of course, was something they probably never thought about. Thanatos envisioned Hallibel biting off the head of her mate much the same way a praying mantis does - it was a reason he never even entertained the possibility, as desirous as Hallibel was.)
Damasek and Biter had wooed their way to Earth to dine on rampant hollow flesh, but Viscous had already met his end in Soul Society at the hands of Ukitake Jushiro. (Fool, thought Thanatos. You don't mess around with the white-haired ones. Even if you kill them, you risk the King's wrath. Unwise, unwise.) The remaining group of vasto lorde - a group of twenty-or-so misfits - had kept the Secret Peace out of fear of the King. It was said that if you put your ear to the King's stomach, you could hear the wailing screams of atrocious agony and the begging and pleading of the many hollows who had ended up nurturing the King. Whomever had the audacity to place their ear on Hallibel's stomach and live to walk away with it - that, Thanatos wasn't sure about.
Riling up the other less-than-loyal subjects of The King had been easy (only Viscous needed any real convincing), and with the diversion in place, Thanatos led the others to an easy exit into Soul Society. There, they had managed to whet their appetites with shingami flesh before the captains showed up. Thanatos knew that Hallibel would certainly come to punish them, and so he had pre-devised his escape plan.
Exiting Soul Society before Hallibel could show up, Thanatos would travel to the World of the Living; finding the juiciest place on Earth to sink his hideous bony jaws into human flesh. If Thanatos was lucky, he could devour a few hundred thousand or so - possibly more if they were weak - before darting back into Hueco Mundo to proclaim his innocence. 'No, Hallibel-sama, of course I did not join them!' Thanatos would claim. 'Liars! All of them! I was here!' he could say.
In his mind, it was a reasonable plan. To us, it was a bit naive, as we all can realize - but then, Thanatos had never been the smartest hollow in the hole.
For when he opened a garganta into the Land of the Living - into the 'juiciest place on Earth', as he desired - well, perhaps he should have been a little less greedy.
-:-
Destiny manifests in parts and forms. Two:
What Rukia was witnessing before her eyes was an explosion of a scale she had never seen before. The supernova that former captain Haru Isuzu-Mia had thrown into the fray put Rukia - one of the strongest shinigami in the Gotei 13 - on the brink of life and death, surely as it had done for all the others on scene. And, like the others, Rukia's instinct hurled her into that split-second wartime evaluation in the mind; that moment of danger that is seized as an instigation to battle your inner soul to beg it for a solution. It was a trait that her husband Ichigo was famous for, but was an escalation that rarely came to the calculating, deliberate soul of Kuchiki Rukia.
Still, Sode no Shirayuki had seized her attention at that very moment. It was do-or-die. Rukia-sama, you must contain it!
How? Rukia asked - but she already knew the answer. This was not something Rukia could turn to her katana for. This was about an area that Rukia had yet to fully capitalize on: for as good as Rukia's kido was, this was where she had room to grow; to expand; to learn.
'And what a sisterly tie it is' / 'That seizes soul and sequesters bonds' / 'For hearts join by love o'er birth' / 'As dost the twining thou discover', Sode no Shirayuki whispered subconsciously.
These words of the poet Kobayashi could have been none more prophetic. For while Rukia's deep love and endless bond with her husband was an unparallelled depth of entwined soul, they suceeded because they were different. Because they were, in so many ways, opposites. They complimented each other, supplemented each other, made up for each other's deficiencies and shortcomings.
Yet when it came to the wellspring of power that resides in the soulcore, Ichigo could not have been more different than Rukia. His power was a surging upflow that was a limitless fountain of energy, matched to his limitless selflessness for the protection of others. It was a resolve born of self-efficacy; of a humility - that others were what gave him the power to be strong. Without them, he was nothing.
Rukia's soulcore, however, was not so. It did not burst forth with an unstoppable force of protective instinct. Hers was an essence no less noble but so very different in substance. Rukia's great force came from an altogether different means: responsibility. Rukia had once given up on herself, and it had thrust her into despair and failure. She had lost the motivation to succeed. It was only after she had been reminded of her responsibility to avenge, to live, to honor the expectations of the fallen - and the trials that followed that proved she had the means to meet those obligations - that she emerged with bankai; a power so elusive yet so astonishingly strong. Her role as Grand Lady of the Kuchiki House; her responsibility to move forward from Head Lieutenant and become a captain despite her sentimental constraints - it was responsibility that drove the core strength in Rukia's soul.
Now, she had a responsibility: to defy death. For her, for her comrades, for all.
It was in this fashion that Rukia took after someone else so dear to her: her "nee-san", Ise Nanao; whose own soulcore was bound to duty. Duty is different from responsibility, but they are similar both in nature and in function. Kobayashi understood: sister in soul is just as potent as sister by birth. Therefore, it should surprise no one that, as Rukia's reishi began to flow forth, her soul - bearing responsibility as much as Nanao bore duty - that Rukia's path reflected that of her nee-san.
And so without realizing it, Rukia cast her very first bahido spell. Bahido - a study of kido discovered by Nanao so difficult that it was only accessible to the most talented kido practitioners - was something that Rukia could not even put name to. Rukia, who had not yet surpassed the offensive kido skills of her once-mentor Hinamori Momo, channeled the incredible adrenaline-fused force bubbling up inside her. With words uttered in the Arcane Language of the Ancients, Rukia's arm snapped out, across, over, and balled into a fist; feeling the chi, chakra, reishi, reiatsu, and any other type of spiritual energy that man can describe. In that fist, it vibrated for only a moment before Rukia unleashed it upon the world.
Rukia never felt resolve so insistent, determined, perfect. So now, she knew how Ichigo felt as the words to the spell mysteriously found themselves upon her lips: "Bahido #57: Enter the Ironbound."
-:-
Timing is everything. Sometimes, even timing itself is part of Fate's plan. Three:
The shinnodake gate parted fast enough for a very agitated shinigami to come darting through at speeds far faster than a dive-bombing peregrine falcon.
What a pompous fool, she thought. That runt is going to decimate half of the human race.
As she approached, she spread her clawed feet wide in preparation.
-:-
There have been many times throughout history where our understanding of the universe has been flipped completely upside down. As physicists, cosmologists, biologists, and other members of the advanced sciences plumb existence for answers, they sometimes stumble across monumental discoveries that radically alter everything we know.
That the Earth was not flat. Copernicus; that we rotated around the sun, and not the other way around. Newton's discovery of Earth's gravitational constant; that it is the same for objects big and small. Antoine Lavoisier discovering the conservation of mass. Michael Faraday and electromagnetic induction. James Prescott Joule's first law of thermodynamics: the conservation of energy. Einstein's theory of relativity. The Heisenberg uncertainty priniciple. Arno Penzias's astonishing shock at finding proof of the Big Bang. String theory. The discovery of quarks and quantum computing. Every single one of these discoveries radically redefined physics as we knew it.
In case one was curious - so it shall continue. Four:
Approximately 75 years into the future, Professor Sarah Frankel-Koenigsburg will write a white paper entitled The Frankel Theory of Magnetic Dynamitism, completely shattering all known understanding about magnetic force and its relationship with electricity. It will enable the first wave of commercially viable hovercars. More importantly, hoverchairs will surpass wheelchairs as the primary method of movement for the physically handicapped, granting them unprecedented levels of freedom of movement.
Within around 130 years from now, Dr. Kingston Nueve Delmonaco De'Laquarza will finally establish the equations that define anti-singularity. These equations will become the foundations of the next five hundred years of travel through wormholes in space.
And 185 years in the future, the leading cosmophysicist of the era, Dr. Zahava Bar-Navon, will win the Nobel Prize for her ground-breaking discovery of the Implosive Law of Thermodynamics, ultimately revealing secrets about the Big Bang's state prior to its bang. It is this particular discovery that is of current interest to us at this time.
Today's scientists posit that prior to the Big Bang, all matter that comprises our known universe was condensed into a single point so dense that the explosion merely pushed existing matter outwards to form what we know today as the earth and sky and everything in between. The reasons for theorizing this is obvious: the matter couldn't just randomly appear - religious pretexts aside - and thus the explosion must have started will all of the matter we have today.
The challenge to that position is obvious: how could so much matter be compressed into something so small? The most accepted answer is that, since the universe started so small, there was no other place for the matter to be. Hence it was simply crammed in the known dimensions of the universe, and thus it had to fit somehow.
Through the use of an ultra-high-density particle accelerator, built on (in part) by the discoveries of Frankel and De'Laquarza, Bar-Navon devised and then substantiated an entirely different reason. She believed that - scientifically speaking - matter did not actually exist prior to the Big Bang; a claim that obviously earned her favor from religious leaders and skepticism from the scientific community. Until, of course, she could prove it; changing everything physicists understand about matter.
Bar-Navon started with the obvious: the densest material known to all of physics is, quite simply, the atomic core. Core atomic particles (protons and neutrons) are all smushed together at a density so high that it physically defines the substance matter. Bar-Navon defined it simply: all of the matter of the universe, all of the protons and neutrons and electrons that would become our universe, were combined together in one gigantic, singular, solitary super-atom.
The super-atom idea, of course, had been thought of before, but had always been dismissed; for a wide range of technical and semantic reasons that made it impossible to fit into the established equations known to mankind. That was Bar-Navon's brilliance: of course the equations don't work with a super-atom. They shouldn't. What they do corroborate, however, is an alternate substance to the super-atom. Instead, she insisted that the pre-Bang super-atom was not actually an atom. She instead insisted that it was actually just an atomic core of pure neutrons: no protons, no electrons. It was not an atom (not even neutronium!) - for it had nothing but neutrons, albeit with the density of an atomic core.
Thus, there was technically no 'matter' until the Big Bang. Just an ultra-dense core of neutrons. The process of the Big Bang was more than just rapid expansion: it was the actual splitting of each neutron into protons and electrons, thereby creating matter where it did not previously exist. Bar-Navon was able to successfully demonstrate this possibility by being the first physicist to split a neutron into a proton/electron pair - hydrogen - and then re-fuse it back to a neutron. Until that point, the idea that neutrons were actually capable of becoming charged particles (protons or electrons) was impossible to believe. The equations that she was able to derive from this experiment were so mind-bogglingly nonsensical that they rivaled the absurdity of the Heisenberg principle. However, countless experiments performed afterwards by her peers, as well as intense scrutiny from the entire academic field, proved that however absurd, the Bar-Navon equations defining the Implosive Laws of Thermodynamics - under what conditions would protons and electrons fuse into neutrons - were not only sound, but must be true.
Not only that, but Bar-Navon was able to prove that radiation - ultra-large atoms that are too big to sustain themselves and thus leak particles - is just the Big Bang on a smaller scale; a process by which super-dense atoms expand outwards. This exciting revelation led to new research in radiation which in turn caused many new discoveries, such as Quatresco's Law of Half-Spin Radiation; which led to new forms of nuclear energy that were safer and cheaper to build, finally reducing mankind's dependence on fossil fuels.
And so, two hundred years from now, every single high-school physics class includes material devoted to the review of Bar-Navon's exceptionally brilliant discovery in physics.
-:-
A great aspect of kido is concentration. Solidity of thought; deliberation; a measured steadiness of mental focus. That is the ultimate purpose of the incantation - to focus, to pinpoint, to concentrate and consolidate the thought into a needle-thin stream of energy that can be threaded through the fabric of space-time. Impulsivity has no place in kido.
Of course, the obvious consequence is that being disturbed in the middle of casting a potent kido spell is likely to severely inhibit it from reaching it's full potential. Perhaps not by much, but it may only be 70% of the anticipated potency.
Ise Nanao, however, had exceptional focus. It would take a tank battalion crashing into her from all sides in order to ruin her concentration.
Or, maybe, a bat in her hair.
-:-
Deep inside and all over Kathura's vile flesh, entire amino acids' worth of molecules were colliding with their antimatter equivalents. The energy created by the collision of such huge quantities of matter/antimatter molecular chains was so large that it could not be measured using any known metric prefix for watts or joules. The energy was unfathomable; immeasurable; infinite by comparison to anything that could be described in modern scientific lingo. It should have rivaled billions - possibly trillions - of nuclear bombs being dropped in the same spot; or if the sun that powered our solar system were to collapse.
It so happens, however, that combined with unique cicurmstances of physics associated with the sacrificial Supernova Terraforma, a threshhold was crossed. The pressure so precise, the temperature so exact, the amount of energy so massive - all of the details defining the immensely improbable; they came into perfect symphonic harmony at that very moment.
Instead of an explosion, an implosion happened - according to the as-of-yet undiscovered Bar-Navon's Implosive Law of Thermodynamics. The amount of energy created was so catastrophically large that it was enough to begin the process of proton-electron fusion into neutrons, and then neutron-core collapses until eventually, a super-dense mega-atomic core of pure neutrons was formed. By the limited calculations of today's understanding of modern physics, all of that light and heat and explosive force should have caused a nuclear holocaust so large that it would have vaporized North America, the Arctic circle, and ripped straight through the Earth's mantle; literally throwing the Earth off of its rotational axis. The sound waves would have been so powerful that they would have shattered the skull of anyone as far south as Venezuela. The radiation should have caused the entire Western world to become inhabitable for three thousand years, destroy the world's economy and plunge it into chaos, causing post-apocalyptic anarchy, and the eventual death and decimation of mankind to hunger and starvation.
But that's not what happened.
Because instead, all of that heat, light, radiation, and movement was enough to power an implosive process; sucking all of that immense energy into a ball so tight that it literally crushed Kathura into a stable atomic speck of neutrons no bigger than 1/100th of a bacterium.
Had Nanao been at full concentration, the amount of energy left over would have still decimated all of New York. It would have been worse than a nuclear bomb; it would have been catastrophic regardless. But at only 92.7% of its total potency, it was reduced just barely enough for a shinigami princess to affect it. That massive explosion still would have had an absurd affect on the Empire State, but the fledgling bahido spell was powered by a zotokai-class captain; and instead of plutonium-level destruction, out emerged your average fifteen-megaton daisy cutter disaster, an explosion of reasonably large destructive capability but mundane and trivial by apocalyptic standards.
In fact, that explosion would have easily killed Hisagi, Komamura, Byakuya, Kiyone, and potentially even Rukia. By all logic, it should have baked them from the inside out; especially since they were so close to the barrier. Thankfully, Fate had other plans, and a very stupid hollow (who thought that they could escape their fate) had managed to open a garganta right next to the source of the explosion; sucking in over 65% of the blast and vaporizing its traveler.
And so, to all those watching, Nanao's apocalyptic kido looked not much more than her average Hado #83: Hellfire. An assload of destruction, for sure - but it was so anti-climactic that Ise Nanao, Major General of the Kido Corps, had actually wondered for the very first time if a spell of hers had fizzled. After all, while many of the shinigami team were singed and scorched badly, it wasn't strong enough to kill any of them.
So just like that, Kathura was gone in a blaze of fiery death, with only one casualty - Haru Isuzu-Mia, who had offered herself up on the altar of grace and compassion. And no one in the world - including Nanao herself - would ever really understand exactly what happened.
-:-
Nanao was stupefied. One moment she was casting an apocalyptic kido spell, and the next moment she was suddenly yanked backwards by her hair with violent force, the strain tugging at the roots of her scalp enough to make the iron-core woman flinch in pain on the ground.
"You urchin-blooded excrement from a fool's turdhole," a woman's voice said, flicking her to the ground. "Do you wish to get us all killed?"
Nanao's ear was hot and sore from where it struck the dirt. It was then that she realized that she was still alive - so, by all measures, a swollen ear wasn't much to complain about. She could hear another voice - a man's this time. "Now, now; no reason to get snippy, darling."
"Don't call me darling," the female snapped. Nanao's vision was still too clouded from the concussion to make her out clearly when she looked up. Then she realized her glasses had been dislodged. She readjusted them as her assailant continued. "Please; the only reason I put up with you is because I must. Now shut thy mouth; every time you open it you are an insult to circus clowns worldwide."
Nanao's replaced glasses allowed her to see who was talking. She groaned as she began to lift herself back up, allowing her eyes to trace up the woman's form.
Now, Ise Nanao was not a lesbian; although considering her lustful tendencies, she had not necessarily been opposed to dabbling with another of her gender just to see what it would be like. The woman before her, however, would have converted Nanao in an instant. She was undoubtedly the sexiest, most luscious, delicious, sultry woman Nanao had ever seen. She was of average height - perhaps a touch shorter than average - with sculpted curves; a perfectly-shaped teardrop bust with tiny, perky nipples poking through her second-skin spandex Onmitsukido uniform. The woman was of Indian/Bengali ethnicity, with tinted brown skin, almond eyes and a seductively thin brow. Round cheekbones framing aligned gleaming white square teeth and silk-straight feathery black hair were flawless; Nanao could tell from the woman's seductively slanted hips that her ass must have been to die for. Even her barefoot feet were attractive; slender, sloped, and impeccably manicured. In fact, the only thing not sexy about the woman was her scowl of petty disdain.
In the process of Nanao's admiration of the woman's finer points - oh god, I wish I had boobs like that - Nanao realized the woman was wearing a red scarf. Turning her attention to the man, Nanao did a double-take. He was wearing a red cape but was otherwise a perfect replica of the late Banzo Tanabi, except aged a good few centuries. Unlike Tanabi, though, he had a soft, kind look; a jovial one that was seemingly friendly. It was a complete mismatch from the permanently etched contempt she had come to see on the face of the cruel man she had assassinated a decade ago.
"Get up," the woman ordered, kicking Nanao in the ribs. The air escaped Nanao's lungs with a sickening crack in her side; sending a blossoming flower of pain throughout her entire torso.
"Stop that, Shiri-chan, you - "
Nanao didn't even see how the woman's tachi (which came out of nowhere) made it to the man's throat. "Call me that again and I swear I will cut out your voicebox, eat it, shit it out, and put it back."
The man did nothing more than smile. "Kiri-chan was thinking about enrolling you in an anger management class. She's always watching, darling."
"Hikifune can suck my crotch."
"Well, given her sexual preference, she might like that very much, I'm sure," the old man laughed. "Now if only your lonely husband would be able to witness that spectacle; I'm sure he would be rather entertained."
"Urusai, Geezer-san," the woman snapped with a disgusted frown, the tachi vanishing in a wisp of smoke. "Go juggle some unicycles. Royalty or not, you aren't worthy to speak of my husband."
By now, Nanao had made it to her feet; but her side ached like an absolute bitch. That kick must have broken a rib or two or three or seven. This was not exactly how she would have envisioned her first face-to-face meeting with the Royal Guard. In between wheezes and the shit-that-motherfucking-hurts pain in her ribs, Nanao could barely squeeze out a question as she applied medical kido to her side. "What... are... you... guys... doing... here?"
"That's a good question, I must say," the elderly statesman said whimsically. "I suppose it wasn't to join you for elderberry wine and raspberry truffle crumpets, with saffron-sauce-laced scallops - "
"Urusai, you discombobulated, wrinkly, addled farmboy," the woman snapped to interrupt.
"Don't mind her," the older man said askance to Nanao in a jovial smile. "She just hates to miss tea time."
The west-Asian woman scowled even harder but otherwise ignored him. She returned her attention to Nanao. "Listen to me, you little commoner clod-footed fuckup, if you so dare as try another stunt like that, so help me I will shove that forbidden apocalyptic kido straight down your bankai hole until it pushes out your spitwick."
Nanao had no idea what a spitwick was, nor could she understand how someone of seemingly noble background could have such a foul manner of speech; but she wasn't going to push her luck. Despite three minutes of healing kido, her ribs still hurt like a bitch. "Yes, ma'am."
The woman slapped her across the face with a savage backhanded swipe. It really didn't help Nanao's concussion. Not one bit. "That's 'Hai, Nikayui-sama o gazai mashita,' you slop of whore's twatjuice."
Damn, Nanao thought, inspecting the inside of her jaw with her tongue to make sure none of her teeth were broken. Given what Nanao had gathered, this must have been Banzo-sama's mother-in-law-to-be, Nikayui Shirani. It was hard to imagine that Ichihime's mother-in-law had an even more vulgar sense of profanity than the Banzo princess herself. "Hai, Nikayui-sama o gazai mashita," Nanao repeated deferentially, bowing. In her mind, she was thinking up how to inflict eighty-six different forms of violently painful torture on the woman. Most of them involved some sort of sexual satisfaction on Nanao's part, too, although she thought that perhaps that was crossing the line between righteous vengeance and sadistic sin. Which, in Nanao's case, was a very thin line.
The other one, who had to be the eccentric Banzo Jirobu (Ichihime's grandfather, who was by marriage and adoption Nanao's great uncle - Nanao had heard stories about him from Papa), patted her on the shoulder. "Come now, darling," he said, addressing Nanao with the odd term of endearment this time. "No sense in getting your wild horses bridled with candy canes over a spade of cobblestones, now?"
Huh? was all Nanao could think. Uh... okay, yeah, whatever. Well, at least you're not interested in slaughtering me for killing your son. Former Head of House Banzo Jirobu had been the Major General of the Kido Corps immediately after the vanishing of Tsukabishi Tessai, so Nanao knew from the Kido Corps files that Jirobu was an exceptionally powerful mage; one of the strongest the Kido Corps had ever seen. He had far outclassed his son and made Tsukabishi look like a novice - it was no wonder he had been recruited for Division Zero. Nanao had no desire to cross kido with him.
"We must be going," Jirobu continued. "Deal with Lunatic the Nutcase over there. You've seen the biggest problem - that zanpakutou of his contains the demon sword Shishi-Oh. It allows him to summon any mythical monster from any dimension. We, of course, were here in case you failed to deal with Kathura. Now that you've managed to mop up that spilt honey-mayonnaise dressing, we can leave the rest to you. Unless it gets too challenging. Oh, look at that, it appears to be that he's summoning the Minotaur. Sounds like you'll have some fun!"
"You piss me off," Shirani muttered. "Both of you. I'm leaving. Cat-Lady Kirio can shove her tongue up my ass for all I care." In a poof of smoke, the lady vanished; replaced by a large brown bat with sleek wings that flapped away. Nanao could have sworn the bat was sneering at her.
Jirobu chuckled and gave Nanao a sympathetic look. "You would have your hoosijymee in a perplexed krissia if you ate four hundred mosquitos an hour, too."
My what in a perplexed what? Nanao wondered, confused. "Uh - "
"No matter, we depart!" Jirobu announced enthusiastically with a flourish of regal pomp, and a gate opened next to him. Nanao had never seen a shinnodake gate before, but it bore enough resemblance to a senkai gate that she realized what it was. The old mage walked through while humming the 1812 Overture, and then Nanao was alone.
That had to be the most bizarre battlefield huddle I have ever had, Nanao mused, befuddled considerably more than usual. Shaking off the experience, Nanao rushed off towards the battlefield, wincing at the pain blossoms in her side. She was sure that, no matter how much her kido must have fizzled (or been stopped by the Royal Guard? Who knew what had happened?), there were likely very bad injuries - and all of them were her fault.
-:-
Hinamori, slumped over Isane's shoulder, screamed in agony as three Japanese giant hornets - that had somehow been faster than the darkened swarm-cloud of their hornet brethren still behind them - stung her in the eyebrow, scalp, and cheek around her artificial eye. The flaring, burning pain caused Hinamori to howl; the venom began to liquefy the flesh, causing her skin to sag and the nerves inside to roar with a torturous agony that could not be believed. Momo began to claw at her face and scalp like a rabid animal; anything to get rid of the god-ringing agony.
Ichihime, who was carrying the human over her shoulder, heard the yell and promptly slashed through the invaders with a single swipe of her tanto; almost nicking Momo in the face. The three halved hornets fell and the group continued. "Kotetsu, can't you do something? Invoke some kido or something!"
Isane shook her head, pointing to her mouth. Ichihime realized that she was chanting healing kido, hopefully for Momo's face.
"Sonuvacrap," Ichihime muttered. My bakudo sucks balls. I couldn't contain a swarm like that.
Actually, why not just burn them out of existence? Shiji suggested. Captain's Bankai Power Boost, right? Your hado is much stronger now. I bet you could pull off something grand.
Wow, you are actually being helpful for a change, Ichihime grinned inside. She hadn't thought about that - while Ichihime's bakudo was very weak and her medical kido nonexistent, she was fairly talented in hado in comparison to most shinigami. Alright, let's try.
Ichihime darted left and right to try and stay ahead of the swarm, but devoted most of her attention to the incantation she was reciting under her breath. It was long and complicated, and Ichihime was positive it was beyond anything she had ever tried to use before. Still, it was a gamble she could take. When the pit of reishi welled in her chest enough that Ichihime thought she might actually pull it off, she stopped on a dime, turned, and extended her palm forward. "Hado #58: Wall of Scorching Fire!"
With a blaze of arson, a huge sheet of flame erupted straight out of the ground just as Isane flickered past. Ichihime could feel the razing heat prickle against her skin; it caused a sheen sweat at the stifling roaring-oven blast of sizzling air that cooked all around them. Ichihime couldn't believe what she had done: a wall of searing blazes ten meters high and over two feet thick, burning so hot that it hurt her eyes to even look into it for too long. It wasn't very wide - only twenty feet or so - but it caught a huge swath of the hornet swarm, incinerating their bodies, baking them instantly; anything that was left came through with little momentum and just death-spiralled into the ground.
Most of the surviving hornets that made their way around the firetrap did not do so well - they were badly disoriented by the heat and smoke. Isane made sure they met their partners' fate with a simple Hado #31: Shot of Crimson Fire; a fireball large enough to eradicate them and fly straight through the firewall towards a cackling Q.
Far out of range of the madman, Ichihime set down the human next to Isane, who was desperately trying to get control of a flailing Hinamori. Together with Isane, Ichihime held down the bucking woman, who was desperately ravaging her face with her nails; clawing away at the melting skin. She was screaming a wretched wail of affliction, seizuring in a paroxysm of frustration, her eyes watering in burning pain. Isane, for her part, was urgently trying to repair the damage with kido; but Hinamori's violent movement made it difficult.
"Lookk owt!" Morgan called. Ichihime's response time was fast enough to raise her hands to catch an enormous wooden club the size of a small oak tree come crashing down on her. It crushed through her arms and into her shoulder, shattering her collarbone in a burst of breath-stealing pain - but her stance held, taking the brunt of the impact and saving Isane and her two patients from under the monstrous weapon.
The club lifted and Ichihime was looking at a huge man with the head of a bull. Holy fucking hell, that's a goddamned minotaur. Ksa with a double side order of fuck.
Ichihime readied for the next blow to crush her into a pile of broken bones, but quick thinking from Isane - who could cast hado and bakudo at the same time she used medical kido - saved her. A significantly sizable Bakudo #39: Arc Shield stopped the monster's implement from smashing Ichihime's skull in.
"Banzo-sama!" Isane called. "Are you alright?"
Ichihime winced. The pain was so intense that it brought tears to her eyes every time she breathed. "...No," she gasped, and collapsed to the earth in an incapacitated heap. She was losing blood through a punctured hole in the cavity between her neck and chest; the soft spot between her now-demolished collarbones.
Roaring an inhuman charge, the minotaur blew steam out of its nose and swung its club down again on top of them. Isane moved the Arc Shield, but she was running out of time. The pounding came down over and over, chipping away until the bakudo shield finally shattered into a trillion pieces.
Withdrawing Itegumo, Isane braced for the worst. There was no way she could save the three of them unless she figured a way out of this.
Seeing a defiant shinigami, the minotaur roared a bellow so loud that it could be felt all the way down in Isane's knees. The club raised to strike, and when it swing down, Isane was prepared to experience quite a few broken bones.
But only air swooshed past as a massive, gory burst of blood sprayed forth from the minotaur's arm, the heavy club falling backwards and clunking it on the head.
Startled, Isane looked around, but she had no idea what happened. Her attention was distracted when seconds later, the beast's lower jaw was torn out in a sudden flicker of speed that Isane couldn't even see. Raging in choleric violence, the minotaur swung its remaining arm haphazardly as though it were trying to swat a fly; and another spray of hot steaming blood doused Isane's face as the mythical beast was severed at the knee, toppling it over.
Isane didn't hesitate. Normally, she would - she had suffered a lifetime full of hesitations and doubts. But not anymore. Isane was done with hesitation. Never again. With a swift and vicious upswing, she tore Itegumo straight through the creature's exposed neck and throat, cleaving off the head like she was holding a golfer's hatchet.
"Nice job," came a voice behind her; and Isane turned around with a relieved smile.
"Thought you could use a hand," Hana Tsubaki smiled. With one hand, she flicked her zanpakutou downwards to clean it of its kill, and with the other, she handed Isane a 4th division emergency medical supply pack. "I got it from here, Kotetsu-san."
Isane's relief was unparalleled. She took the supply pack from the 2nd division 3rd seat and got right to work. "Target is the man in the suit, about a hundred yards from the firewall."
Tsubaki nodded. "Save them," she wished Isane earnestly, and then she vanished in a haze of speedy shunpo, leaving behind a tender afterimage of someone far too nice for the job of a cold-blooded killer.
-:-
The steel that met Q's blade was so mighty that it knocked him off his feet. He hadn't even seen a strike coming, but before he could react and scamper back to his feet, he had been sliced, diced, hacked, and severed limb from limb. Whomever he was fighting was faster than a jackrabbit; speedily darting across him, over him, around him, and through him too fast for his eyes to train. Soon, over ninety percent of blood in his body had gushed out over the dirt as Q was gazing at his body in multiple pieces strewn all over the place. "What... the... fuck...?"
A beautiful woman - very young, tall; with long black straight hair tied up in a ponytail atop her head and a cute turned-up button nose - sheathed her sword. "Die," she ordered him.
Just this once, he thought, and faded to black. I'll see you again soon, you little bitch.
-:-
Nanao reached Rukia first. She was a mess; a fainted limp body with severe burns. Nanao was not one for hysterics, but she began to cry in a fearful panic that Rukia hadn't made it. When she felt a heartbeat, strong and steady, she flashed away from the body over to Shuu, feeling the same pit of worry. He was in bad shape; the whole left side of his body was badly roasted. His skin was black with char and white blisters. Kiyone was close by and was even worse, although Abarai was not as bad. His condition was 'severe' rather than 'grave'. A quick inspection indicated that Byakuya had been scorched but was still in passable condition; Kuukaku had rescued him in the nick of time.
"Shiba Taicho!"
Kuukaku landed next to her, still in bankai. Her flames had dwindled down to the surface of her skin, and Nanao could tell she was running out of juice. She was frantic and emotional, as could be expected from her. "Quickly - Komamura is gravely injured, he might not make it - I sealed his reiatsu to keep it from leaking, but - "
"I will tend to him," Byakuya offered, sitting up. "Ise-san - take care of Hisagi and Kotetsu. Abarai-san will hold out."
Nanao nodded in agreement. "Shiba Taicho - go check on the others. I think I heard Hinamori screaming - she should be with Banzo Taicho."
"Ah," Kuukaku accepted, and burst off so fast it left behind a small sonic boom.
Kami-sama, what the heaven am I going to do? Nanao panicked as she looked down on the charred forms of Shuu and Kiyone. She was good at medical kido, but she wasn't 4th division talent. She couldn't heal two people at once. On top of that, she was pretty depleted; more than she had been in a long time.
Oh god, Shuu, I swear I am so sorry, I am so sorry, oh god... Nanao worked to place a yellow glowing reishi containment box around the two subjects, and slowly started to fuse reishi inside. It was good hospital practice but bad battlefield medicine: it was a safe, steady process that promised good results, but it took a long time and left her open and vulnerable to attack. It was the best that Nanao could think of: she hoped that the others would be able to help keep her and the others safe.
Shuu, Shuu - please, you have to make it through this. I swear, please, I promise. I love you too much for this; you cannot die, you can't. I swear, I'll do anything. Anything. I'll even fucking goddamn marry you and have kids if you want; just please, you have to get through this. Kami-sama, please, please, please... Make it, please, dear god, please...
-:-
Kuukaku landed and closed her bankai next to Isane, who was struggling with three patients. Momo wasn't in danger from anyone but herself: she was having a full-blown panic attack. The human was the best of the bunch - he was in shock but didn't seem to have any life-threatening or immobilizing physical injuries. Banzo, however, was in awful shape. To Kuukaku's relief, though, it was evident that Tsubaki-chan (who often babysitted Hisako) had arrived with much-needed medical supplies. She was helping Isane, listening to instructions; pressing gauze here, applying bandages there, sorting through pack goods, and otherwise assisting Kotetsu any way she could. At the moment, Isane was providing Ichihime with a much-needed blood transfusion.
"Tsubaki-chan!"
"Hi, Kuukaku-sama," Tsubaki smiled nicely. "Rantao Fukutaicho called for backup. Youruichi-sama and Omaeda were busy, so they sent me."
Kuukaku smiled as she moved to cradle Momo in her arms. The girl was shivering and was having hallucinations. Isane had bound her hands with bandages so that Hinamori couldn't claw at her face, which was a slop-mess of rotting, peeling skin and oozing flesh. Hinamori looked awful; like a gaunt and deranged crackhead who has gone way too many days without a fix. It was a horrible sight to see. In Kuukaku's breast, however, Momo seemed to calm down; Kuukaku was glad that the raving patient found peace and safety there enough to settle down, even if it was only a little bit.
"What happened?" Tsubaki asked, finally soaking in everything. "This place is a warzone like I've never seen before."
"I happened!" Q stated proudly, from about twenty feet away. "I am the gift that keeps on giving! Say, I hear zombies are popular nowadays - let's do some zombies! And how about a dragon while we're at it? Dragons are awesome!"
The sound of his voice irritated Ichihime so much that it stirred her from her torpor, much like the hundreds of bodies that begin to dig themselves out of the ground all around them. "Goddamned fucking troll." Zombies are so last year's fad. This bitch is going down.
Reviews please! Hope you all found this a satisfying continuation from last chapter's cliffhanger - curious to hear your thoughts. Next chapter: Epic awesomeness is epic. Don't worry, I won't have Q trolling forever. :)
