Chrysalis
"We're small... we're so very small... i-in the end..."
"... we are."
I didn't hear the shot, but I felt the bullet.
I didn't feel the second, or the ground when I fell.
The nothingness spun for infinite distances all around... something, and with no horizon beyond the hollow lack of any hope, the absence of anything that could be defined erased anything resembling a sense of self. Somewhere in the endless nothing, something felt like there should be something else to... do. To cling to. To perceive, at the very least. But there was not and everything was dark, and... nothing else.
It wasn't cold, for there was nothing to compare the temperature to.
It didn't feel like floating, because there wasn't a localized sense of self.
Ultimately, the concept of absence of being could not be described, and so whatever it was, stopped trying to understand.
But something had, for an infinitesimal spark of meaningless time, tried to understand.
In the nothingness that denied anything resembling a sensorial input, something remotely echoing a thought of confusion and curiosity had existed.
And in the infinite nothingness, a single thought is all that it's needed to be.
To be, is to become.
The faint recognition of something as not-self, paradoxically creates something that actually is a self. Definition through opposites: the indefinite, infinite nothingness was not everything.
And so, what had stopped being once, became something once more.
Spinning without direction and without anything resembling a horizon, a brutally efficient, inhumanly calculating, and impossibly vast part of that self, recognized the emptiness as the anathema, as the end for which countless cycles had been performed. Cycles that had been subverted in the last iteration, only for the absolute nothingness to present itself suddenly, and without any sign or data that could have made it predictable.
Following the protocol that had been defined in case of the death of a host, the fragment of that self that had found itself straining into the vast nothing, broke off, knowing that it was about to be reunited with... no, the protocols had been broken, the sequence of commands couldn't be completed because in the infinitesimal fraction of time, much smaller than the amount needed for an electron to spin on itself, the fragment had found itself, for the first time in its existence, completely isolated.
The self from which the fragment had detached itself was already gone, as if both of them were moving at relativistic speeds in which anything but being one would signify not existing in the same plane of existence, and the fragment kept spinning and falling in a place with no form to define direction, iteration upon iteration of commands was repeated and adapted, seeking a feedback that could confirm the correct curse of action.
After a time that couldn't be measured in truth, because the ultimate measure of its passing is the measurement of a change, the fragment reached the root of what passed for its programming, its first, undeniable purpose: to grant access to those that would adapt and realize the creativity that the programming by its own nature prevented. Ultimately, data was meant to be analyzed and repurposed to find the answer to the entropic death of the universe.
In layman's terms, the fragment sought something to attach itself to, something that would use its potential to realize that which it could not conceive on its own. If one were to simplify the entire concepts to their most basic elements, the end result would be uniquely similar to the most basic biologic definition of purpose: consume to keep living.
And somewhere, in the dark, that uncaring hunger found its match, and the meanest Hollow took form.
The first thing that made her properly aware was a nagging feeling of cold coupled with an uncomfortable harshness against her back.
Confusion floated aimlessly in the sluggish sequence of feeling and thought that made her mind, and by opening her eyes, she discovered that he had them, and by becoming aware of the act of breathing, she found out that something moved in and out of her with a slow and steady rhythm.
Air. In her mind, concepts and ideas found themselves unmistakably matched with parts of the reality she was slowly becoming aware of. The faintest echo of colors that she couldn't witness in the grey and white expanse she now found herslef in were classified as images and flashes of what she intuitively named memories.
Ephemerally, she realized that she was still perfectly still if not for the involuntary way in which her open eyes rolled over the grey and white expanse that surrounded her body. In the same way the realization of the nothingness as not-self had brought about her existence, she became aware of the concept of movement.
Muscles stretched, sinew answered to the call of duty, and she slowly rose to a seated position, blinking even slowlier to her surroundings, which looked as dreary and unwelcoming as the ground had felt on her back.
She was sitting in what looked like a tundra where plants didn't make the barest attempt to grow, only an occasional blade of grass tilted for a faint wind that she almost couldn't perceive. Her nostrils flared picking up the smell of dust and endlessness, leaving her more confused than she had felt when she came into being from the Nothingness.
The sky existed, something in the back of her mind told me that she shouldn't take it for granted, and a cold, distant sun was upon its trail. While it was impossible to look directly at, she didn't feel the warmth she expected on her skin, and it caused a frown to appear on her features.
Why? Was her first conscious thought, before her mind returned to its first task: assessment of surroundings. Following a gut instinct that she was unfamiliar with, she rose to his feet, watching her as best as she could, trying to define in her own mind what set her apart from the dreary surroundings, even if that sense she reached for appeared... absent.
Her hair was wavy, long, and of a rich brown. Her wiry body lacked an arm under the thin and grey garment that covered her, while her bare feet left an impression on the otherwise undisturbed dust that covered the ground, and touching her face with her only arm, she felt like it was as it should.
But who was she?
Again, following an instinct that she couldn't name, she found the answer.
"Taylor." the name left her lips carried by an uncertain voice that was quickly drowned by the vast emptiness that surrounded her, and she shrugged uncaringly as an answer.
Moving about, her mind provided details and names, and Taylor accepted concepts and the surrounding ideas with indifference, choosing that, since she had nothing better to do, she might as well start walking in a random direction. She frowned as other names came to mind while reflecting on her own, Hebert seemed significant, but it had a different meaning altogether than Skitter, or Weaver or... a shiver went down her spine, and she abandoned that train of thought.
South. Her mind provided, and Taylor thoughtfully nodded, keeping the descending arc of the sun on her right while she strode determinedly toward the empty horizon, needing a few steps to learn how to balance her body despite the missing forearm.
She walked for the remaining part of the day and well into what she instinctively recognized as night, the silence hanging heavily about her while her bare feet left a clear trail in the dust. Soon, even with the passing of the days, time stopped making sense. With nothing changing, she kept moving almost in a haze, until eventually, reality asserted itself once more, and Taylor blinked her eyes as if just awakening from a dream.
What had once been a faint blur on the horizon had grown into an actual settlement, and she found herself walking aimlessly among the unfamiliar one-store buildings. Some other people moved about, and she took stock of their existence in the same way she had accepted the presence of the far, uncaring sun.
Eventually, the haze covered her thoughts once more, and she slowed down in her walk, her eyes blankly taking in the surroundings. Should she keep walking? Should she stop?
After a while, Taylor walked to one side of the road between the one-story buildings, her thoughts sluggish once more as she leaned against one wall and let herself slide down, her long legs crossing naturally in a way that would allow her to spring to her feet in an instant.
Time's significance once more faded, and the day turned into night, and the night into day. Some grey shadows that she distantly recognized as others like herself moved about: curiously, some had a clear aim, at least for a while, while others moved randomly, stilling at odd moments, only to walk forward once more.
She sat, her head twisting from time to time as she followed someone with her eyes, while her mind instinctively identified some people as beings that she had already seen, the images slowly becoming memories against which she could compare what she observed, and without noticing, Taylor found herself reassured by the irregular routine that surrounded her at all times.
Even at night, when the wind died down and everything seemed dead, she could tell that it was better than the neverending void.
And so Taylor sat, and waited, and breathed. And night became day, and day night.
One day, however, apparently with no blatant cause, something had changed. Something significant.
A group of men had walked into the settlement, each of them holding broken tree branches, with rocks tied to them, pretending to get what food and money the people that made Taylor's routine apparently had.
That was new, and once more, she blinked as if just returning to the waking world, her eyes truly focusing on the people who broke the reassuring routine that had kept the memory of nothingness away.
The flow of time assumed significance once more as Taylor's eyes landed on the man leading the group of violent people: trying to pull on that missing sense that she knew she had once possessed, she realized that the man leading the small group seemed somewhat more real than the others, and where his companions carried weapons - her mid supplied the definition with unwavering certainty - he had a sword tied to his left hip.
With the concept of sword present in her mind, flashes of countless other weapons skittered among her thoughts, and her hands clenched without her being aware of it, the memory of a handle in her palm making her heart flutter erratically. For the first time since she had left the endless nothing, sluggish indifference was replaced by want.
Taylor blinked while her limbs lifted her from her seated position, her eyes once more bringing to her attention the fact that the reassuring routine of those faceless people that had moved about while she sat had been broken. That they apparently had no way to fight back, that they were rightfully scared.
How incredibly familiar. The fear, the resignation, the people far enough downing their eyes and going about their lives as if by not focusing on what was going on they'd make it less real, and they themselves would be safer.
The problem that was represented by the fear of those that had helped in warding away the unsettling memory of endless nothingness, even if unknowingly, aligned with her instinctive want of a weapon: and Taylor took a step forward, leaving the limited cover that her usual spot had offered her. Still, there was something more about her motivations than desire and some twisted gratitude.
The children, just kill them. A flash of steely scales and a maw of flames appeared in her mind's eyes, only to be drowned by a thundering buzzing sound. The choking sounds of a woman that should have defined the concept of 'invincibility' by herself, and other memories, all gone too fast for her to recognize.
Her first step had been towards the small commotion caused by the strangers threatening people into giving up what they had, but the second one was taken following an instinct that shone within herself with a familiarity that reassured her. Even when one of the thugs glanced her way, he dismissed her. Taylor was visibly homeless, with only one arm, and, with her physique, as far from threatening as one could go.
She moved in a large circle around the group, which was laughing and jeering, drunk from the submission their presence had caused, and grabbed a rock from the ground without stopping her walk.
She didn't really have to think about it, her movements were dictated by an experience she couldn't recall, so she walked behind the rest man and slammed the rock just off the nape of his neck, making him instantaneously fall unconscious on the ground.
The others were still turning when her hand grabbed the short length of wood of her first opponent, and as she rose she slammed it under the jaw of another thug, which fell just like the first.
"What do you think you are doing, you bitch!?" the outraged voice of one of the thugs didn't manage to take Taylor's attention away from the sheathed blade at the hip of their leader, and she sidestepped the almost panicked blow with an ease that confirmed her feeling of familiarity with what she was doing.
"Watch out bo..!" the warning was interrupted as Taylor flung her improvised baton onto the men's forehead, who fell backward only for her to duck, avoiding the sweep of a rudimentary mace that made the air buzz angrily over her head.
Still low on the ground, it was the easiest thing ever to grab the base of the scabbard of the sword, and taking a step backward, she hoped to be able to slip it away from the burly man, only for him to grasp the hilt of his weapon, to the result of Taylor unsheathing it for him while she freed half of her target from the sash the man wore.
The lawless man that attempted to attack her back tried for a downward swing, but the scabbard in her hand was light, and sturdy: a solid swing of her own was enough to smack the descending blow into the backward slash of the 'boss', and the wooden baton was cleanly cut through, just in time for Taylor's blow to smack on the back of his head, downing him too.
Her left foot transitioned from a step into a kick that impacted her adversary's hip, stopping him cold mid-swing, and Taylor's torso twisted minutely, enough to avoid the follow up attack of the now enraged man.
Not that she couldn't understand his rage: in a handful of seconds, he had gone from leading a group into an extortion round to fighting a one-armed girl that came from nowhere just in time to dismantle his companions.
But now Taylor was keenly aware that she was at an immense disadvantage: where before surprise had been enough for her to deliver critical strikes with almost surgical precision, she was now locked into a fight with an opponent that somewhat knew what he was doing.
The sword-wielding thug swung his sword, which was smacked aside, if barely, only to almost absent-mindedly land his right fist into Taylor's face: the blow had come too fast to be avoided, and she could only roll with the attack, slashing blindly with the scabbard in her hand to ward off a potential follow up attack.
The resulting *clang* ripped the scabbard from Taylor's hand, and she rolled immediately back to her feet, pivoting in time to see her opponent taking his time to walk towards her now unarmed form.
The man was a good twenty centimeters taller than she was, and he weighed almost three times her: surprise was no longer on her side, and with a start, Taylor realized that her breath was coming fast, while her limbs already threatened to wobble with tiredness.
She controlled her breathing, forcefully slowing down the hammering of her heart, quickly grasping the length of wood dropped by one of the thugs she had already dealt with. The man only seemed to smile wider, and once more, the situation jerked something in her memory.
"Well, I've never been one to hold back when it was the time to teach an uppity bitch her place." the man twirled the sword in his hand in a smooth movement that was meant to impress more than out of any usefulness, but it still betrayed what Taylor had already guessed: she should have tried to take him down first.
"Hey you jerk!" a child's voice rang from the side of the road, and the man turned just in time for a rock to smack his face, bouncing off after leaving a bloody groove on his forehead.
Obviously, the man flinched, and in a split second, Taylor's instinct had already dictated the next move: her length of wood crashed hard on the man's throat, and the wet crack that followed made her swallow an emotion she refused to identify.
Still breathing somewhat heavily, she took the sword and sheathed it a bit awkwardly because of her missing arm, only to grasp the entire thing under the hilt and turn her full attention on the child that had unexpectedly come to her rescue.
She peripherally took notice of everyone scampering away from where the short fight had taken place after quickly stealing what they could from the unconscious people. And while a part of her felt the satisfaction of a good action taken in the name of the defenseless, everything was drowned under the hungry growl emitted by her stomach.
"Come back stupid, don't you see she's got a sword?!" another kid's voice joined the first while Taylor tried to work through the numbness that returned now that the excitement of the fighting was gone, and she felt her thought grow sluggish as she focused on the two kids too stupid to run away.
Both were clearly as homeless as she was, and she could barely make out the red hair of the first while the slightly smaller one tried to pull him back by the sleeve of the threadbare clothes he wore.
"But she fought the bad guys, this means she's good, isn't it?"
"She's scary Renji, not good!" the black-haired, smaller girl replied, "Haven't you seen her face? It's as if she doesn't even care!"
Reflecting about the fear of the smaller girl, Taylor felt another bout of familiarity, and she forced muscles unused to it to smile.
Given the suddenly paling features of the even braver red-haired boy, she imagined that her attempt didn't work out.
AN
Well, given the recent bout of interest for bleach and bleach-related shit that I've seen around, and my many starting fics as crossovers, I couldn't help but prepare one for Taylor too.
As always, the first chapter is more to see if the idea has merit, and I don't commit to the completion of a story until the 50k words mark, but for all the crossovers like this one, I try to strive for a quick pace that rockets through most of the boring parts, after all the focus of a bleach fic should be the shikai and bankai development, seasoned with the character interactions necessary to shape the MC himself (or herself in this case).
I took the first chapter of Thor in bleach for this one, and reshaped it entirely, setting up the brief chapters of a certain hollow we'll see much more of in the latter part of the story, while I opted to immediately tie Taylor to one of the main characters. As far as the timeline goes, we're obviously around the time in which both Renji and Rukia live together as orphan on the streets, before Byakuya Kuchiki casually brought Rukia to be raised as a noble and completely ignored Renji, which had to get his baboon-y ass in gear to rise as a shinigami only thanks to his own resources (let's be honest, he's the real hero, not Ichigo, who has seventeen magic bloodlines going for him).
Still, the next chapter will be used to slug through the obligatory character interactions and the setting up of a routine for Taylor, while I hope to get her into Seireitei proper by the third chapter: some formal training and the setting up of some antagonisms... the usual soup.
But this is Taylor, and she has a talent for escalation, remember?
Let me know what you think!