Prologue

The sky is dark, no feeling is coming or going, the world is fading to nothingness, yet I cannot seem to find fear in myself. Perhaps it is because I know what I must face. There is a red and orange glow to all within my vision. Fire? But I feel no heat. Then again, I don't feel the cold either. The sky was a black void, no stars or moon. The smell of burnt flesh and hair filled the air, but an undertone of blood and flowers burning only added to the nightmare. 'Who am I?' - That was what truly need to be asked. I was as good as a lone. Even as I saw people dressed for battle enter then leave my vision. I laid there, with blood dripping on me as my own flowed out of the confinement of my body. I was to die this day, Kami it must be your doing. When will a shinigami make me leave? I don't want to go. Wait what is a shinigami? The world is fading and growing doll. I'm dieing. I know it. Why am I not scared?

"Promise me, you'll live after this." I was eight years old, staring down a fifteen year old. He was a general. But it was he who feared me it seemed. But that is my 'home' for you.

"I kinda have to don't I?" He may have said it like it was a question that only had one answer, but it really had two. Still he said his answer with a smile, trying to get the same from me.

"Yeah." I may have smiled at him. But there were unspoken words between us.

'So long as I survive.' Were those words. After all what's a home without a person to claim it as such. We both had to live. I was not going to live though. I may love him, but I was not going to let him die.

Bright, almost electric, courin blue eyes are looking into my own. They are why I wish not to go. "Grimm~ don't die in... this war... like me." The words had to be said, if not- the great general that could save the little village would throw away the war that I had just died for. 'What happened?' A general at 15, the greatest thing he said he accomplished was saving me and he's a general at 15. The idiot. "Do not... let... this be... in vain." My lungs filled with liquid, I coughed up as much as I could, before I grew to weak to from the labor. 'What am I doing, laying like this on the ground?' I stained his clothes with more of my blood. He was guaranteebly soaked with the blood of an eight year old child, yet still he holds all the tighter to that child that to him is like glass. 'Who is this boy, man, that holds me?' An over grown house cat, he will never change- at least that is my hope. 'Where do these thoughts come from?'

"You're gonna fall kitty." I said looking up the branches of the odd willow tree at the very edge of a small village. It was where his home claimed him. And it was the place that would be ours even if we take our last breath. Young as I be, I knew somethings about the afterlife.

"If I am a cat, I should land on my feet no." Said a boy with hair the color of morning clear sky. Said boy, who was twelve, just so happened to be my home.

With a roll of my eyes I picked up a stone and throw it at the trunk by his head. He fell and amazingly landed on his bare feet. "Overgrown house of a cat." I said with a laugh. He always had a way of proving me right. He growled fearsomely at me, before falling back to sit down and leaning against the tree. Sunlight streamed through the green leaves landing on elder of the two. The worm breeze of summer ruffling our hair. I walked up to him and plopped down on top of him. Together we napped like that.

Our meeting was bound by a line of fate cast by Kami, the Soul King as the Deaths Gods call him. We will remember it till after we die. This tree was important. It will be the thing at the center of everything. That is why, under the roots, I had chosen to place the only thing of my mama.

His eyes hardened above me. "Your death shall not be wasted ...*..., I swear to you that." I Could not hear my name roll from his lips as he spoke it, it is becoming harder to remember things as I lay here dying. 'Dose this person know my name?' Do I know... the man above me? "Wait for me as long as you can, watch me as I protect karakura Village." Yes. The man's sky colored hair brushed against my face as he leaned in. I wonder what he is doing. 'I am loosing my mind.' What was his name? "I love you always, my angle." The whispered words touched my ears as soft chapped lips touched my own. He only ever kisses me, not wanting to defile me; so he told me. -How do I know this? His eyes were closed, and as he drew back they opened. Sorrowful, jaded, hard blue eyes looked at me with determination that said 'the world could end tomorrow, but I'm not gonna end with it.' So strong, how could he always tell me he loves me when I'm so weak. Again, how do I know this, are these my thoughts? 'I am forgetting.' He will keep a promise he made to a skeleton of a boy, that's just the type of person he is. Will always be.

"Who are you?" Asked a blue haired boy.

"I's is no-one. I's is nemless. So they tol' me's." I said with a shrug of my little shoulders. I shivered as a breeze swept past me. It was windy and the odd willow tree was the only thing besides a tattered blanket stopping the cold from getting at me. Though it did not help I was outside of the village.

"You should go home if you're cold." Said the boy to me. He was strong. Not of this land. He too, did not belong. We were alike in that way.

"'Ome? This tee is 'ome." It was at that moment a stronger gust swept past and lifted my blanket from my body. When it rested, I put my feet on the corners so they couldn't escape again. No clothing did I have, for I had no mother or father to give them. Not true.

It was a long time ago when I did. I had been here alone for a long time. Yesterday was that day my mother died sometime ago earlier. My father I don't even know his face. Just his name. Or at one piont I did.

It was then arms wrapped around me. "Don't be so grim, I'll be your home. Oh and my name is Gracen John." The blue haired boy said.

With a smile I tried to say his name. "Grim Jow. Like nem." I laughed happily. Not even knowing I gave him a new one. It was at the point he growled that I gave him one other. "Osh kitty- 'omes not grr."

"Kitty?" Not even a moment later we were on the ground laughing. He became my home, and I told myself I would die before my home was taken away. It quickly left my mind as Gracen rubbed my head hard with his knuckles. I took the liberty of trying to bit his hand as it retreated.

"Only you would defy the Shinigami, Grimm." Was that my voice? 'This will be the last I see of this man.' A smile was all I could give as the only person that loved me, held my dying prone form. 'That is a belief.' My eyes were closing as I fell asleep for the last time. The world had faded to black. -That was one truth. He would never let me go.

"God of Death? You are polling my chain, right?" I looked sadly at my home. I may have only known him a year, but he was all I could care for. If it were not the fact that he saw ghost clearly as people, I would have corrected him. He alone could not tell the difference like everyone else. He was far more atoon than the rest of the people of this village.

"No, shi'ne'gi cut my mommy in holf. But, mommy did shoot one wif' a glowy blue ar'ow." I polled my hands to look like how my mother did.

"Then they were killers, not gods." I shook my head. My home could not see the masked monsters or the people that killed them, that dressed in black with swords. If he did, this would not be an argument. The 'killers' kept the monsters away.

Then again I got the feeling that the 'monsters' would be the ones to try and cut down the boy before me. Funnily enough, I also got the feeling that they would never succeed and die in the process. He was a stong human.

"Tenshi~!" Was a yelled scream, and the last thing I heard. I knew no more. I wonder if that could be my name. -'I don't have a name, never did. That's the other truth.'

"Such a sweet angle you are." I was squeezed tighter by my home, as I lay feigning sleep. "I finally have a name for you, my Tenshigo." He was crying, crying with no tears. "Tenshi; means angel, Go; meaning guardian." The pain was there, as I long since knew it would be after what happened this day before night fell upon the world. "Beautiful and fragile are what you appear, but you are a worrier even more so then I." His head rubbed, very cat like, against my neck. "I am nothing but a cat." He was so much more than that.

It was as his breath evened that I finally spoke. "An over grown house cat with claws like knives and stronger then diamonds." It was that alone than made my house do something it shouldn't. Not that I minded that my home can purr when others cannot.

The battle around us had seemed to end for now. People dressed black armor like the one that held me wore. Many covered in blood, holding bows or swords. Their eyes showed horror. I must look much worse than I thought. Even as an over grown house cat cried his tears on me, the only thing might not deny crying over, I could only smile. Even if it was filled with sadness.

A small village, one that was too close to the battle that raged below. Fire licking the huts, soot dusting the light brown dirt pathways of the small village. There was a familiar air about the place for some reason. Nothing really stood out, no, one thing did. A man, well more like a boy that was seen as a man, with eyes that were cyan bright, almost electric, blue. He welded a single katakana, nameless the sword was, it should have been three inches longer than what it was for the way he wielded it. But even with the small hindrance, his enemies fell before him as he danced like a panther in his enemies' ranks. Sometimes he would save others that fought with him as he cut down person after person. He was like a king... protecting his own. He was the leader of the small group of 30 fighters, both male and female, against a group of over a hundred. No sword touched him, no blood that covered him from head to foot was his own. To them he must of been a god. I found myself flying close to him, guiding him through battle.

"Why fight us? Punie farm folk, you will die were you went against the greatest force that is us!" One yelled loudly, a scream punctuating his own demise. He was the last to fall. He had lost track of the battle, not ever realizing that it was the farm folk that surrounded him.

"You said you were king. I guess I'm the king now. Pathetic, not realizing that you were all that's left." I found my self going towards the blue hair, like a target it was to me. He is important. I felt it in the very air that he stirred so subtly around him. He was probably not even aware of it. I let myself land on him. This was my place. His presence spoke 'home' to me.

"Let's hear it for Grimmjow!" Was the yell that all followed with the name shouted loudly. The blue haired man snarled much like the creature he imitated in battle.

The general thrust the nameless blade into the ground making the crowd become silent. "Don't defile the memory of your captain. That name is only to pass Tenshigo's lips." The name held a spark to me, but it was gone as soon as it came. I shall fallow this man. He holds answers, maybe if I watch him long enough the world will make more sense.

Without detrition cries of "General Panther" came forth instead of the name that was held sacred. The name, too, was like a tether. So many things seem to be ingrained in me about him.

Many years pasted as I followed the mortal man. He battled in many wars, visited a single grave when ever he could, never did he marry, always looked out for the homeless kids, and eventually died a quite death at the age of seventy-three though he didn't look it. Upon death he turned. He became a monster, like the ones that walked as they pleased with a masked face. Unlike all the others I've come across thus far, he was smaller, he was stronger. But no fright did I feel, even as he looked right at me. He flicked his tail and turned away. It was only after a few steps did he look at me. "It is time we go, this is the world meant for the living and the weak. We are neither. Let us go, Angle Guardian of mine." With a flutter of my wings, I followed him, not even knowing why. I followed him as he wondered. I watched as he devoured. I fluttered along with him into a black void that was never meant for me. Still, I could not leave him.

Upon leaving a void of darkness; cold and desolate it 'twas, we found ourselves in quite the place. As we wondered, many things became clear. The sky never changed. The white silver moon never dimmed in its glow, or did it ever leave, lessen, grated, not even did it glow brighter than it already was. The moon was a lone in the sky, never to know a star. From the friendlier old ones, they had spoken of there being but one at one time or an other. The old ones would gladly share what they know, but killed if you tried to gain their power. The sand was white as the moon; but instead of giving light, it took it/ drawling it in. The sand smelled like fresh blood, and teamed with power all over its own. The trees in this white sand could only be called crystals. There is a chasm, that is as black as the void that brought us here. It be the very end of this place. There is also a forest, it has the name Menos Forest. This being because it is where all the menos seem to gather, or at least a good part of them. It was a place the panther only looked on at, at a distance. Never going near enough for those there to even read his very well hidden presence. So much more was there, when there was little to see. It was sure to be nothing, if not the feel of spiritual pressure. Harsh was the wasteland to be, for all I could see in it's desolence. But, if you looked, there was life in everything. Even the air. What would this large feline do, monstrosity that it is, to survive; I had wondered at one point. Before I realized he knew this place.

This was this creature's home, even if it was avoiding a certain part of it. I would ask why, but it is not my place. I fallow him to understand myself. It matters, some more than others as others are less, but still we all have things we wish not to remember or reveal. I can just watch. I can only watch.

I fluttered down in front of the bone plated, blue haired, panther demon like creature. Hovering for a moment, before resting on it's nose. 'What are you going to do.' I asked it through its mind, for I had no other way of communicating with it. 'There is little that could challenge you here.' I had come to understand this being quite well, it hated to kill the weak. And it was king and high ruler of this night world.

"I shall cherish the strong ones that believe they can kill me, it is what I have always done here." He said with amused, but sad eyes glittering at me. But I knew none could even scratch him. At least, those that were crazed enough to challenge the beast.

'What, you've been here before?' I sent the color brown to him, acting as a way to describe feeling. I already knew though, just by the way he walk across the desert, through the dunes, and rubbed against the rock and stones. This is his home.

He huffed, a light chuckle like purr vibrating me. "Yes, long time ago. I don't much remember. A long loss memory, or my mind could just no longer just be mine. A hollow's memory, one that's been here." His eyes clear as a crystal lake, but definitely deeper, seemed to go far off as he spook. It was his own memory though.

Of that I was sure.

We had come across many, in varying states of falling apart. Becoming crazed. Driven by a hunger that never ends. It was only those the the panther killed. He did not, however, tack any power he could had gained from them. Instead, it was like he was putting them to rest.

My wings fluttered as I perched on his nose. The air curling around them like a lover's fingers though their beloved's hair. I got the feeling that we were close at times like these. "We will never know." As at that moment our conversation could not continue as I lifted off of the feline's face. He then went to the side, or seemed to, as not even a second later he was at, what would have represented a huge porcupine, was no more then sheds. Funny how, it seemed, that be it human or feline- he always stood between me and the other hollows. More came, all found themselves no longer with in moments of popping up for their ambush from the white sands. One was at his back, I wanted to help, it was at that moment the the world froze. He would not die, but it be fatal. This one was not normal.

"Why did you do that?! You almost died! Tenchi. Look. At. Me." Grimm was ranting, my home does not understand. I lost my ear, he would not even be here. "I. Said. Look. At. Me." I looked him in the eye, like he wanted, and he look away. He knew well, that he would look away. The whole point was to make me see i had worried him.

Dryly I laugh. That made him freeze. 'Good.' "So, 're yoo no longer me 'ome'." I stood from where I was sitting on a medical cot in the church's forum. As disease and war was going around, our little church had cots for all that made need of them. Heaven for us street urchins. "Yoo leafe me? Grimm... did yoo care? I 'ought we 'ver par." It was low, but how else was a four year old supposed to get a thick headed preteen to understand that he was closer to death then the one that saved him. 'No one will touch home.' Was the declaration.

"No, Never." It was breathless, but that was because he now realized. I jumped at him hugging him around his neck. "Let's meet even in death, my fair angel guardian." He held me so close I could not truly breathe.

It faded, the memory. It was me, but it was also the feline. The one I could no longer see as I found myself in darkness. I have to... I must... I need... what... why do I... who... could he mean something to me?

"So, now you wish to pull me forth. But the thing is is you are missing something important. My power, you can use not." Was the echoing draw all around. It came from nowhere, and everywhere. It was everything as it was nothing. Existing but not truly there.

I looked down and saw a moon illuminating a world in what I could only guess was water. The moon, was Hoeco Mundo's. The hut's from the world of the living. Empty. A shrine, one that had the idol of the feline resting on it much like the one I have fallowed all this time. Trees from the Seiretei surround the village. And I walked walk on the flip side breathing in the water like it was air. On the roots of the trees, the floors of the huts I was looking at the black void of the sky below. I was looking down, at what felt like something that could of been. I look through the ground, at the ghost town that was filled with little- but much. Places that we had been. It was all right here.

"I... swore. I, cannot explain it. But it is a must I have to do." I tried to tell the darkness that was everywhere but below.

"I am aware, nameless soul. But still you miss much that is needed in order for me to be useful." The voice sounded close but far. "You have no true name, even I have a name to me." It came in a wispy echo. "You also are to pure for my power. You have yet to be tainted in all the ways that mater." It was smooth and lilting. "And finally, the biggest issue is that your not full; complete if you will" A siren's song, but some how it held no falsehoods. "So you must chose which is best"

It was then two orbs appeared. One was white with a black glow. The other it's opposite, black with a white glow. "Chose what?"

"Life or Death. Which one calls out to you now?" I reached. My hand touch the white orb with a black glow. "For your sake, I hope you chose correctly."

It all disappeared then, the scene once more of that which distressed me. "Shi" It was a whisper in my ear, like it came from with in my mind.

My form changed. I grew and had a human form. But I knew I had little time so without preamble, took action. "Shi!" I breathed in a breathless gasp that went unheard over the yells and cries of battle that surrounded us. I swung my hand down, killing the hallow that would dare. A blade materialized in my hand and cut the monster in half. And the moment after, I was gone.

The panther felt the blood and carnage hit itself as it shredded the crazed ones before it. They become ribbons thanks to his claws. He was sorry for these that know only insanity because of an unceasing hunger. When the butterfly that had fallowed it, that had been there at his rebirth; he could not wait for it to take its true form.

He heathed and panted. The fight finally over. He looked around at the bloody mess, once seeing a crazed brother cut clean in half; he looked for what what could have saved him. With his eyes searching, not one time did he see the butterfly. "Ten... Shi... Go!" It was a roaring hiss of sorrow and helplessness. None came close, too scared of the power that be out there.

It was then, that a phenomenon happened. It rained. The black sky let water drop from its hellish heaven. The sky cried, it cried in the panther's place. The rain wetted nothing, and filled nothing. The sand stayed dry, and the pools did not rise. It was a phantom rain. But it was in this rain that the panther let it's own tears fall.

"You loved that soul, King?" An echoing voice said. "I believe you had yelled at one point that you would never love, for you are none but a puppet." It was then that the leftovers of what was left came together. The bloody mess that surrounds the panther combining into a humanish-lizard. It was white with a long waterfall of orange hair. Red as blood freshly spilled fur covered it's wrists, ankles, and neck; almost as if covering hidden bonds. Strong looking bone armor covered it's arms and legs, leaving the joints open to allow unrestricted movement. It's mask had what could be mistaken as bull horns but were really dragon horns and three red stripes going down, covering the right side of the mask. It's lizard tail strong and free- and something about it made it believable it could never be cut off. "Tell me, who are you? Now, just to be clear." An almost insane echoey laughter left from behind its mask.

The panther shivered- with utter want to battle, but now was not the time for such. "Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez- home to..." the panther looked up at the moon, as if what was at the tip of his tong vanished into thin air. The name he had said before. "Tenshi... go." Tenshigo.

The creature cocked it's head. "Ohh, so you know the name you gave that thing. That weak, incomplete, but finally able to move on soul. Damnit, why'd ya let it stay so pure. It was your own fault 'at He ain't here."

As the lizard acted like a petulant child, which no doubt is do to the soul he bound himself to, something that made the panther chuckle. "Shu'd up Su."

"I bet you-" The lizard growled at the feline. "Of fricken' course, out of all tings to member it had~ to be that. Bastard."

"Your still a hallow blade, Tensa. Even as unique as you are to have your own body." Few and far between his memory my be, he could remember something now that he faced the one before him. "I bet the Emperor's nick name he gave you in order to lessen your power drives you nuts." The rain was lessening. "You hate not flouncing around your power."

"He will be born soon. Afta' a lil' over six hundred years. You were gone for 'bout a thousand an' ninety years yourself. Just sayin'." The echoy laugh rang out around them "Can't wait ta' battle ya'. Sad ta' say, my times' up." The smile on the mask before me stretched insanely wide. Already I felt the effects of the water that comes with the lizard weaken. My mind slipping to a survival mood slowly. All that had come to me in the time we talked fell away from my concise mind. I watched as the rain slowed to a stop, and the power of the moon's dust return to the sand dunes.

A glow of light, white and pure, appeared out in the middle of nowhere. The only witnesses being the trees and small vegetation within that area. It alone was privy to the coming of a single soul. The white glow receded living behind a child no younger than eight, but no older than nine. The child had long silver hair piled in a bun on top his head. A hair stick keeping it that way. It was a centimeter wide, leafed with spider lilies. From one end a small silver bar barely hung onto a broken link of the thin chain that was but tree inches long. The child's skin glowed like that of the moon with all of it's alabaster glory. Full lips, dyed red like white roses stained crimson with blood. The child's eyes shifted between red and royal blue, creating an interesting violet. She was doll like, slim and small, and most unbelievably male. A skirt of black silk with slits going up to the knee from the ankle low hem. It was an odd piece of clothing, but not that unusual. A red haneri that cut off at the shoulders was tucked underneath the skirt. A black silk haori was wrapped around the child like a short kimomo. It was covered in first bloom spider lilies that had a dark gray shadow under them. It was the golden obi that would make it the most believable that the child was female even though he was male. Under the haori there was a small aikuchi that had a three inch chain, the tsuka was red and a spider Lily was imprinted on the knife like blade.

The boy looked around him, amazed by the beauty of the greenery. It had felt like an eternity since he had seen, let alone touch, something a live and green. Irrelevant or not It was a rice farmer's hat that the child's eye caught first. It sat there on a stone of black granite, with small tin bells hanging every other inch around. It called to the child. So it picked it up, and wore it on its head.

It was with a smile that the child began its wanderings. It stayed mostly to the forest, and none took notice of it. Around this time, interestingly enough, that black and purple butterflies started to appear. They at first only worked for the head captain. But slowly those under him could use them too. Less casualties occurred, and the Shinigami took care of the hallows much faster.

There was a story, however, circulating around the Rukon districts. Especially the outer ones. It is said that a angel guardian aids the Shinigami, there before casualties could occur, gone before they can ask it anything. This was most popular around kids that want exploring in the forests and a hollow attacking them.

Many things await, the beginning has ended.

A door be before you

Wide open and inviting

The moment you take a step

It slams shut in your face

Walk on, this is no place for you

The streets you walk now is where you belong

Walk on, no home will take you in

A stray will always be just that

Open yourself stray

A home forever to one soul

You have room to hold your own

Be the king, be a home

Even as a last breath leaves

House the red string

One day you meet

The next you part

Walk on

Hold yourself

Care for no one

Never show weakness

Shi: Death - the white orb with a black glow