What They Take With Them, and What is Left Behind

A phantom pain shot through Tatsuki's soul, and he looked out through the Gate. "…Urahara's gone."

Uryu heard these words, and closed his eyes in sadness. Single tears streamed from his eyes. They were tears of sorrow and tears of happiness. "Yhwach is finally gone, too."

They turned to look at one another. Uryu stood there holding the Koryu at bay, and they both turned to look back at the Gate.

"We can't go back now," Uryu told her. "We made a promise to Urahara."

"I know, but…" Tatsuki lamented her situation. "We have nothing left in this world, and the world we are going back to…We do not belong there."

"Maybe…But, Tatsuki," Uryu reminded her, "perhaps it is a world where our child can live in peace."

A flash of heat passed over Tatsuki's face, as she blushed and placed a hand over her stomach. The new life in her was almost two months old. It was barely noticeable, but still there. "But it will be very strange…For us and our younger selves."

A blush crept onto Uryu's face. "I never thought about that. We'll have to reveal who we are eventually." Uryu noticed something up ahead. "Here it comes."

Tatsuki looked up, and the light of Koutotsu appeared in the distance, becoming brighter and brighter, until its form was distinct and visible.

Tatsuki ran forward, and placed her hands on Uryu's shoulders. "…No matter what happens, Uryu."

Uryu disconnected the Kaikyo Kotei, and reached a hand to touch Tatsuki's hand. "…No matter what happens."

Koutotsu, a Being of Reason, bore down upon them, and fired them through time and space, as light escape the Choujikanmon.


Beyond the outskirts of the Rukongai, in a place near where Urahara Kisuke and Yhwach met their mutual ends in battle, two Shinigami, in hiding for the past two years, emerged from the depths of a forest. Both were kind-faced young Shinigami. One of them had five white hair clips adorning his black hair, three on one side of his head, and two on the other, a symbol of his former Clan.

The other, whose face was framed by two bangs, bore an armband on his left arm, displaying the symbol of his former Squad: a Snowdrop, and the number thirteen.

"I…I cannot believe it," Yamada Hanataro, former Vice-Captain of the 13th Division spoke. "I could only tell when both reiatsu fell, but…that was Yhwach and Urahara-San!"

"Are they both dead?" Yuki Ryuunosuke, the former Third Seat of the 13th Division, asked his superior.

Hanataro gulped. Even after twenty five years, he was still the same nervous Shinigami that Ichigo once met in the Soul Society, although the last two years had tempered him with the responsibility he had faced for the past two years – keeping those Shinigami he was able to evacuate from the Seireitei hidden and alive.

He remembered that dreadful day as if it was yesterday. An explosion of darkness consumed the 1st Division Barracks, and Captain Kuchiki ordering him to take as many Shinigami as they could and run from the Seireitei, as if she knew that no one who fought the resurgent Yhwach would survive.

It was supposed to be a happy day, Hanataro thought often, whenever he remembered that day.

So he took them, and they ran. He only turned back once – to see a towering mass of darkness consume Sokyoku Hill and the rebuilt execution scaffold. A "symbol of peace", it had been called by the Central 46 who had commissioned its building.

They ran through the Rukongai districts until they reached the unexplored areas of the Soul Society. He did not realize that, far beyond the eighty Rukongai districts, that the Soul Society had an ocean, spanning as far as the eye could see. It was Hanataro and Yuki's first time seeing an ocean. Its pristine blue waters were a stark contrast to the darkness and destruction they had left behind.

The forest they had emerged from in the present had extended all the way out to that ocean, and that is where they hid. As beautiful as it was, Hanataro told the survivors to stay away from the ocean.

Once, one night, he sensed "something" looking upon him from the ocean.

"The only way we can be sure is to go and look." Hanataro told him.

Nodding uneasily, Yuki followed Hanataro as they moved with haste to the sight of the battle. Hanataro came to a stop and froze once he reached a distant hill overlooking the sight of battle, and Yuki gasped in horror behind him.

Stretched out before them was a ruined crater, extending so deep that the debris at the bottom from the parts which collapsed from above were shadowed, and so wide that you could drop a small city within it. The forests, hills, and mountains surrounding it smoldered in ruin, trees burned, and the landscape looked as if Gods had carved through it with their weapons.

Hanataro could not sense either Urahara or Yhwach's reiatsu anywhere.

"Whatever happened here…" Hanataro muttered. "I do not think anyone could have survived!"

Yuki surveyed the surroundings, and noticed a few small figures off in the distance, stopped at the edges the crater. "Vice-Captain Yamada, look!" He pointed Hanataro's gaze towards the group.

Hanataro raised a hand over his eyes to get a better view of the group of figures. Something about them seemed…familiar? He couldn't sense any reiatsu from them, so they weren't Shinigami or Quincy.

Suddenly, a sound seemed to carry from the group. It was the sound of a pack of wolves howling towards the sky in mourning.

"Ah! They are…!"

Hanataro did not hesitate to Shunpo over to the group. "Vice-Captain Yamada, wait!" Yuki followed suit.

When Hanataro arrived, he found what he was expecting, but not quite who. Standing before him, towering above any Human Soul Reaper, was a group of wolf-like figures, wearing Rukongai clothing that was sized to fit their bulky figures. At the head of the group, was large wolf, who barked at Hanataro in recognition.

Yamada Hanataro!

When Hanataro heard the wolf's thoughts, he began to weep uncontrollably, eyes growing wet and tears streaming down his face from happy recognition. He did not hesitate to leap at the wolf and grab him in a big hug. "CAPDAIN KOMAMUWAAAAA! I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEEEEAAAAAD!"

Sajin Komamura let out an exasperated sigh at the Vice-Captain's conduct, annoyed at the tears getting into his fur. "My brother did not die," one of the wolf-men spoke. "He simply could not face his fellow Shinigami with pride, anymore."

Hanataro, still weeping, looked in the direction of the voice and promptly stopped. Now that he was close up, this black-furred wolfman completely towered over the small Shinigami. "Ah," he said timidly, "Hello. Are you Captain Komamura's family?"

Yuki Ryuunosuke, who had managed to catch up, promptly froze in place at the sight. So many Captain Komamuras, he thought to himself, not knowing what to make of the group. At least the Gatekeepers, Giant souls who were native to the Soul Society, looked Human. All of Komamura's Clan had the bodies of Humanoid wolves.

"My name is Kirin Komamura. I am Sajin's litter mate. We gave refuge to Urahara Kisuke, Ishida Uryu and Arisawa Tatsuki."

"Urahara-san and…Ishida-san were both with you?!" Hanataro was not familiar with who Arisawa Tatsuki was. At best, he knew the name to belong to one of Kuchiki Rukia's friends, whom she mentioned when Hanataro was assigned to tend to her cell when Aizen had arranged for her imprisonment and execution. "What were they doing? What happened to Urahara-San? Where's Ishida-San?" He was hoping to hear any good news about their whereabouts.

Kirin raised his hands defensively. "Calm down, calm down, and let me explain, Shinigami. Urahara Kisuke died in battle against the Quincy known as Yhwach. Our Elder had betrayed their location to him. As for Ishida Uryu and his lover…They are now cast into the past."

"Eh?" The two revelations both hit Hanataro hard and confused him all at once. Urahara Kisuke, one of the greatest minds of Soul Society and Kurosaki Ichigo's ally, was dead. Hanataro realized: I am now the last Shinigami able to lead everyone else.

But the other part just left him with nothing but questions. Arisawa and Ishida were lovers? What did Kirin mean by them being "cast into the past"?

"Urahara Kisuke constructed a Gate using forbidden techniques," Kirin explained. "He used the Gate to exploit the entity Koutotsu to send Arisawa and Ishida back twenty-five years into the past, to the days when the Shinigami fought Yhwach and his Quincy…The days when Komamura became a wolf."

Komamura hung his head in shame as his brother recounted what he knew about Urahara's plan. He had been blinded by the desire for vengeance against the Quincy for Yamamoto's death, and had paid the price of losing his Humanity. The same vengeance he had warned his friend Tousen about.

"Why that far back?" Hanataro asked. "Why not just two years – no, fifteen years? To when Yhwach…?"

In his last conversation with Kuchiki Rukia before she died fighting Yhwach, he had learnt that Yhwach had made his return by taking over the body and soul of Kazui Kurosaki, Ichigo's son.

"I know not his reasons," Kirin admitted, "all I know is that he said they had to go back to a time before Yhwach searched for the future where he would destroy the Shinigami. Any later, and Yhwach would "see" it in his search of the future. Only then, he said, could events play out as they should have, and not as they did."

"But what does that mean?" Yuki asked in a nervous. "The war twenty-five years ago was about keeping Yhwach from killing the Soul King and remaking the world into…into what it is now. …This world that does not need a Soul King."

Hanataro only realized the implications at that moment, and he let go of Sajin and looked around. Ryuunosuke was right. Yhwach possessed the power of the Soul King, even taking the power of the Soul King that was made to replace the original one. He had used that power to re-make the worlds into one – one where all Humans could see spirits, and where hidden paths between the three worlds linked to one another.

Hanataro had discovered one such path in the forest where he had hid the remaining Shinigami. It had led to a forest in the Living World, and he had to make a group of Humans who had stumbled across the path in an ancient temple promise to not speak of it, lest their haven be discovered. As one of the Humans he came across said: "it is like the paths to the underworld in many ancient mythologies".

And now with Yhwach dead, the power of the Soul King had died with him. And with the power of the Soul King, died the knowledge of anyone who could re-create the power. Yet the world was still intact.

"Wouldn't the only thing that Ishida and Arisawa could do in the past be to kill Yhwach before he could search the future?"

"No…" The realization was like a thunderbolt in his mind. "I think that Urahara-san…Wanted the world to become like it is now…But on his terms and not on Yhwach's terms."

Yuki's eyes widened and he looked over at Kirin, one of the few whom he entrusted knowledge of his plans to. "Is this true?"

Kirin nodded in affirmation. "The old world was one where none but the Shinigami were allowed to hold power or authority; a world where the Shinigami would prefer the Quincy extinct rather than alive; a world where my Clan has no place and cannot come out of the shadows.

"But in the new path that Urahara has created by sending those two into the past…None will be the case. And perhaps…it will be a world where my Clan's curse is broken."

"That's a very interesting story!"

Everyone present shook at the sound of that voice, and the feeling of a reiatsu they all dreaded. Quincy…! Hanataro and Yuki turned towards the voice, and placed their hands on their Zanpakuto.

But rather than one of the new Quincy or Stern Ritter that Hanataro had heard about, these Quincy were dressed in the garb of the Vandenreich. A brash-looking, one-armed Quincy with a red Mohawk and a scar over his heart looked down at them, his one arm resting on his knees, a black band with skull and crossbones woven into it adorning his arm. He was the one who spoke.

Beside him was a stoic-looking woman with white hair done up in a bun, and oddly white eyes with black sclera. Hanataro thought it strange; no other Quincy he knew of had eyes like that.

"Ah…B-Bazz-B!"

Hanataro knew the Quincy with the Mohawk. He was one of the Stern Ritter who, having been betrayed by Yhwach, had aided the Gotei 13 in the construction of the Gate to the Soul King Palace. But no one knew what happened to him after the battle. Unlike his two companions, his body was never found. He looked at the woman and the scar on Bazz-B's chest. Did this female Quincy save him, somehow?

"But hardly something I'm interested in!" Bazz-B sounded like he didn't care, but Hanataro thought he heard otherwise in his voice.

Bazz-B stepped down from the hill in an instant, appearing at the edge of the crater. The female Quincy simply stepped down from the hill, and slowly walked towards the group. Hanataro looked at Bazz-B, and saw the look on his face. One of contemplation…And then one of rage.

Before Hanataro could understand what happened, Bazz-B's eyes seemed to become fire, and flames seemed to erupt from his body. He thrust his arm backwards for what looked like a pushing motion. "Burning Full Fingers!"

A torrent of five bands of heat in a spiralling cone erupted from his hand, and he pushed the conflagration inward towards the crater. The heat vaporized the debris it came into contact with, and expanded along the entire inside the crater, melting the and floor of the crater not vaporized into lava.

"Th-that was unnecessary!" Hanataro pleaded, shielding himself from the heat radiating from Bazz-B's body.

"Huh?!" Bazz-B turned to Hanataro, his irises ablaze with fire. When he blinked, the flame remained, but the fire emanating from his body dissipated. "I am just making sure the bastard is dead!" His eyes drifted back towards the now-burning crater.

"Yhwach. You called me "a powerless child"; said I only amounted to anything because Jugo made me a 'genius'. I realize now, that you likely phrased everything the way you did just to drive a wedge between me and Jugo…" The female Quincy looked on at Bazz-B worded his realization, and closed her eyes in sadness, "and to make Jugo, who wanted nothing more than to belong, completely obedient to you."

Bazz-B chuckled maliciously at Yhwach's funeral pyre. "But in the end, he gave me just enough power to survive when your eyes would believe me dead; he ordered Elsbeth to heal me, extract the Still Silver from my heart that would have killed me, and told her to hide the both of us in the Soul Society. He may not have been as "good" as you at using "The Almighty"…But he saw everything, including his own demise...and his Fate."

"Did you enjoy it?" Bazz-B placed his hand on the scar on his chest. "The Still Silver Arrow forged from the Silver in my heart, and in Jugo's? That Shinigami, Urahara, was the only one to find me and Elsbeth, yet kept quiet about our whereabouts in exchange for the Still Silver."

"Jugo's actions while you slept, and Urahara's silence made sure we survived…" Bazz-B glared at Hanataro and Yuki. "…While the Shinigami's Squad Zero eradicated every last man, woman and child in the Vandenreich."

Fear jolted through Hanataro's soul, as those burning eyes glared at him, and shame filled his heart. Hanataro was there in the Wahrwelt, after Yhwach was defeated. It was after Ichigo's Nakama, Ichigo's father and Ishida's father had gone back down to the Soul Society via one of the Fullbringers' abilities. All the Quincy in the Vandenreich had been gathered together, to stand trial for crimes against the Shinigami and the Seireitei.

Not the Soul Society, Living World or Hueco Mundo, Hanataro noted to himself, just the Shinigami and Seireitei.

It was hardly a trial. The verdict was immediately given: Guilty. The penalty: the extinction of the Quincy race.

His heart ached as he saw Rukia's reaction to the verdict. She had tried to plead with Squad Zero, tried to reason with them that there had to be another way – a way for the Quincy to be redeemed and live in peace with the Shinigami. Captain-Commander Kyoraku had supported Rukia's assertions, but Ichibei Hyosube turned down the notion: the Quincy's crimes had extended to the hallowed Soul King Palace itself, and the murder of the Soul King, so it was within Squad Zero's authority to pass judgement.

To rub salt into the wound, he asked all the Shinigami Vice-Captains and Captains present in the Wahrwelt who agreed with the verdict.

Hanataro could still remember the ones who openly agreed to the verdict to this very day: Vice-Captain Shuuhei, Captain Hirako, Captain Soi Fong, Shihoin Yoruichi, Captain Kurotsuchi, who had turned the opinions of the Visoreds in favor, after he informed them of what a Quincy had done to Captains Muguruma and Otoribashi. He heard that Captain Tetsuzaemon also approved the decision, when they returned down to Seireitei.

Then again, Hanataro again reminded himself, many of the Visoreds were Shinigami in the ranks when the Quincy Massacre of 225 years ago was carried out.

The final verdict came from the Central 46 shortly after: the Quincy had brought ruin to Seireitei, murdered thousands of Shinigami, intruded upon the Soul King Palace, killed the Soul King, and tried to destroy the balance of souls. The only verdict for such crimes was the extermination of the Quincy race.

Hanataro remembered Rukia's devastated expression when the final verdict came down, so much so that she ran as far away from the site as possible, not able to bear seeing the execution carried out. Hanataro followed her, and was with her when they heard the sounds of death even from the other side of the Wahrwelt, soon to be demolished and remade into the Soul King Palace. The Quincy who was Yhwach's second, a Quincy named Jugram Haschwalth, had his body made into the new Soul King. No one knew why a Quincy was chosen specifically. No one but Rukia seemed to care, so long as a new Soul King existed to keep the worlds together.

Rukia had told Hanataro that only Renji and her other friends in the Gotei 13 were the only reason why she stayed in the Gotei 13 at all. Even so, she couldn't bear to face Ichigo after being witness to the event since, although she did not approve and did not participate, she was complicit as a member of the Gotei 13.

Her reason for working to become a Captain was in the hopes she'd have enough authority to change the Gotei 13 from the inside out, so that she'd never have to witness something like that ever again, and never out of loyalty to the Gotei 13.

With support from Captain Kyoraku, Captain Zaraki, the other Captain Kuchiki, Captain Kotetsu, and Captain Hitsugaya, she did begin to make those changes. Enough that, thirteen years after her promotion, Ichigo and his friends were invited back to Soul Society for a formal ceremony – one that would establish a group in the Living World connected to the Gotei 13 as first-responders to Hollows in the Living World, one including Ichigo and his Nakama, and those Fullbringers once part of Xcution, and any Shinigami who chose to join them.

Ichigo brought his son, Kazui, to the Soul Society. Kazui was to be made an official Shinigami Representative before the formal announcement of the creation of the new Squad.

That was the day their happiness turned to despair.

Bazz-B turned back to the crater.

"But you got your wish, didn't you? You made Life and Death one, as it once was before the war a thousand years ago…"

It is the only reason why I was ever loyal to you for so long, Bazz-B recalled to himself. It was only when Auswahlen was used on him that Bazz-B's desire for revenge had been rekindled, even if he never forgave Jugo's 'betrayal'.

"…And the Quincy race began to be reborn among Human families in the Living World, no longer constrained to the bloodlines that bore a piece of your power and your blood, with you as the ruler of everything. And all the Quincy people who died as a result of your schemes were just expendable pawns towards that end.

"Well," he concluded, "now you are dead. Now, I have awakened the Eyes of the Quincy. I learnt the secret to these Eyes that you kept to yourself for a thousand years. And at last…I am the strongest Quincy."

He 'closed' the Eyes of the Quincy, the flames dying out to reveal his regular eyes. I finally did it, Jugo. "And you…Are now dust, as you should have been a thousand years ago…As I should have made your body before you regained your heart." No that would not have worked, Bazz-B reminded himself, since regaining his Heart and Intellect were all timed triggers made by "The Almighty" altering the future when he 'sealed' himself. He'd just reanimate, even if I burned his body to ash.

"…Still…Thank you for bringing back the Quincy race…Although I would have preferred it to be done by someone else's hands, rather than yours, and to be done another way."

Bazz-B turned away from the crater, and began to walk away. "Where are we going now, Master Bazz-B?" Elsbeth asked.

Bazz-B looked up to the sky. "Shinigami, you two are coming with me. I'm going to claim the crown of the Quincy."

Yuki Ryuunosuke replied with uncertainty. "But, why would you want to do that?"

"Yhwach still has followers," Bazz-B replied. "And any man like him who has followers will have those same followers fight to replace him once he dies. Now that he is dead, I can beat those followers down and become the new King of the Quincy." He turned back to Hanataro and Yuki. "And when I do, I'll have the Quincy make peace with you Shinigami. All the old guards are dead, and their grudges should die with them. That'd be much more preferable than to have another Quincy who shares Yhwach's views come about, right?"

Hope began to rise in Hanataro's heart. "Y-yes!"

"And you don't look like the kind of Shinigami who'd do what the Squad Zero did, so I don't doubt that you'd be fine with the Quincy and Shinigami living alongside each other, right?"

"Of course!" Hanataro said happily.

Bazz-B declared. "Then let's get going. We still have one last battle to fight."


Thus ends Yhwach's Vergeltung Lied. Bazzard Black, with the power of the Eyes of the Quincy, claims the title of King of the Quincy, and the Quincy make peace with the remaining Shinigami. Now, he leads them to a future where Quincy and Shinigami fight alongside each other as allies.

Yamada Hanataro, now the Shinigami Captain-Commander and Shinigami Representative of the Four World Guard Divisions, rebuilds the Shinigami, and takes great care to make sure none repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.

Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, the last of the Espada after Yhwach's Vergeltung Lied, is King of Hueco Mundo, and builds a new society in the world of Hollows. Hollows, like the Quincy, are once more commonly born into Hueco Mundo itself, as Ulquiorra Cifer once was, rather than only from Human souls who lose their hearts, as it was under the Soul King.

Moe Shishigawara, the last Fullbringer who permanently parted ways with his former allies after Tsukishima Shukuro's death, creates New Xcution, training people with Fullbring potential to fight alongside the Quincy to protect Human souls, and is the formal ambassador for the governments of the world between Humans and the other spiritual races.

Kirin Komamura is now the Leader of the Komamura Clan, the Elder having died by Yhwach's hand after leaking Urahara Kisuke's location. He has gathered together the various Beast Clans from the furthest corners of the Soul Society, uniting them and leading them to rejoin the greater Soul Society, working with the Shinigami to better the lives of the Rukongai citizen. They are yet to find the means to break their collective curse.

The silent Gods of Soul Society, which once began to stir and gather their essence after the influence of the Soul King was gone, returned to slumber, content with the path of the world.

The Gates of Hell remain closed by the Wardens, sated with the souls of the Damned they collected. Behind those Gates, Yhwach's soul now slumbers in Chrysalis, condemned to a black Hell deprived of his senses.

Unlike other sinners, who break the Chrysalis and rampage in Hell in an attempt to break free, his soul is at peace and remains in the chrysalis, formed from his own heart, and will dissolve in two hundred years, and his past life will be left behind for a new life, free and redeemed from the sins of its past.

The King of Hell waited over two thousand years for the soul of Ichibei Hyosube to come to Hell. Now, stripped of Name and power, Ichibei Hyosube's soul is cast into the black nothingness in the heart of Hell. To forever remain alongside the greatest of sinners, eventually to forget who and what he is in the cold, black abyss, barred from reincarnation.

Such are the fates of souls that pass into Hell.


The epilogue to one Path is over. Now the pendulum swings to the past, to follow the Path of those who seek to change the course of Fate. The pendulum swings to a time, where a new Path is to be made. The Path that one man intended to be, but the Rain of Despair swung off-course.

Let the Path lead to the world as it should be.