The Living World, Hueco Mundo, and Soul Society. These three worlds are reigned over by Heaven above and watched tirelessly by Hell below. Of the three, only one, Hueco Mundo, has a singular ruler. Heaven and Hell, too, each have one, each an undisputed king. In recent times, Heaven—sometimes called the World of the Soul King or Soul King Palace—has had the title of its king pass from a father to his son. Hell has experienced no such change. The King of Hell has not left his throne, and he still remembers when the being who became known as the Soul King was once a man.
There are many far-fetched stories, fabricated rumours, and outright lies surrounding the Soul King. Ignorance is, of course, a factor, as is the way the passing of millennia has of eroding the collective memory. Deliberate misinformation campaigns can't be completely disregarded either, as there are multiple parties with interests to protect who would use the control of information to do so. A story is told of a singularly special individual who was all at once the first Shinigami, Quincy, and Fullbringer, and who used these multitudinous abilities to become humanity's protector in a single all-encompassing world of living and dead. This individual, it is said, eventually became the late Soul King.
The King of Hell knows the deceitful nature of this tale. Of all those in all five worlds put together, he is one of only two that are aware of the true nature of the Soul King besides the newly enthroned Soul King himself, and that man, Yhwach, can hardly be said to "know" anything at all, despite seeing everything that will ever happen. Such is the unending torment of the Soul King with his almighty gaze. But such a compellingly messianic narrative is a good tool for rallying people to a cause, or simply making sure the group one hates is hated in turn by as many people as you can convince.
And kids will always want to believe the best of their fathers, thinks the Hell King to himself with a wry grin. Everyone would rather think the best of those they come from. "My dad was a hero, mutilated and enslaved by the Shinigami"...what a joke.
Shifting in his throne to put his weight on his other elbow, driving it deeper into the black cushioned armrest, the King of Hell turns the object held between his thumb and first finger, admiring its unmarred white surface that is so featureless that it seems to stay completely still as his finger and thumb slide around it: the original Hogyoku, the first of its kind. And he thinks, Well, at least it's true that he was a special person unlike anyone else. He made this, after all.
The strangest of sights was the first to greet Ichigo Kurosaki upon his mind's surfacing from its thrashing swim through feverish blackness: his newly opened eyes first glimpsed the image of Rukia Kuchiki, her eyes wet with tears, but upon blinking, found her replaced with the smirking image of his father, making it seem eerily like the former had suddenly transformed into the latter. More likely, though, was that the Rukia he'd thought he'd seen had been conjured up by his imagination as it fitfully threw off the last vestiges of his fever.
His dad was grinning, almost conspiratorially, at him from a chair that he was sat upon the wrong way around, so that he rested his crossed forearms on the top of the chair's backrest as he hunched upon it. The man looked like he was just barely holding back a lame joke, and that he'd been impatiently awaiting his son's revival just to spring it on him, rather than checking to see if he was alright.
As if he wasn't already injured enough.
It was clear to Ichigo that, in the instant after he'd dealt the final, decisive blow to the god-king of the Quincies, someone had taken their revenge in true Quincy fashion, meaning that the beam of light that had lanced down into him from the heavens could only have been Auswählen, perhaps enacted by Yhwach as a final act of defiance—Uryu had said, after all, that having his heart pierced with that silver arrowhead would only stop his powers for a moment. However it'd happened, Ichigo guessed that the only reason he hadn't been disintegrated by the burning light was because of his Inner Hollow. But that would mean...
Sitting up so suddenly made Ichigo feel like someone kicked him in the head, but in between wincing he admirably managed to croak out, "Uryu..." Unseen by Ichigo, the expression on Isshin's face morphed from eagerness to surprise before settling into relief.
"Uryu's doing alright," Isshin told his son reassuringly, the smile finding its way back to his face. "That chesty friend of yours really pulled through for him," he added.
Ichigo surmounted the pain pounding his temples to fire a withering glare at his father. "Don't say weird things like that, you old creep."
Isshin shrugged and held up his hands in apologetic surrender, then stood and arced one leg over the chair to end up standing to one side of it. "You have some people to thank, too," he said as he crossed over to the bed Ichigo was lying on. "Your buddies with the freaky masks"—here he pulled the skin of his face with his hands while turning up his lips forcibly with his thumbs to reveal his teeth and gums in a momentarily grotesque way. "Plus," he added, "Rukia, you gotta thank her for visiting you. She even mopped your forehead with a cool cloth, you know." Isshin winked, and Ichigo had the throat-closing feeling that waiting to reveal this piece of gossip to his recovered son was what had elicited his father's earlier sheepishness.
Ichigo tensed involuntarily then, so strongly that he hurt his neck. Isshin burst out into big barks of laughter. "You should...see your face right now," the man wheezed in between fits of guffaws, pointing at his son as if in accusation. Furrowing his brow, Ichigo couldn't tell at that moment if his face felt hot due to anger, or something that had flashed across his mind before the anger had displaced it.
Isshin finally stopped laughing and straightened up, but it had more to do with having a bowl of cool water whipped at his head from Ichigo's bedside table than any sort of politeness. To his credit, aside from ceasing to laugh, the man barely acknowledged the blow, which had been hard enough to shatter the porcelain bowl on his forehead. That said, it was still comical how coolly he regained his composure as if he didn't have a sopping washcloth playing epaulette on his shoulder in the wake of the strike. When he cleared his throat, it was as if he'd just called for silence to make a speech at a formal event by gently clinking a spoon on a glass, as opposed to the silence in the room resulting from him nearly getting concussed by weaponized dishware.
"Anyway, I'm glad you're out of the woods," he said sternly with closed eyes. "You've been out for a couple of weeks and there's some things we have to catch up on." The second part he'd said with his aquiline gaze trained sharply on Ichigo, who felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand proud. It was always a weird thing to see his usually goofy old man be so serious. "Let me know when you feel well enough to summon that funky zanpakuto of yours," he continued just as hardly. He put an end to his son's sudden scanning of the room by moving right along. "Urahara said you probably reabsorbed it as a defensive reaction to the Auswählen, so as soon as you can get it back, get ready to stab me with it."
As he had been since breaking a thrown bowl on his forehead, Isshin was entirely, worryingly serious.
Uryu Ishida had decided for the third day in a row not to feel guilty about failing to visit Ichigo since his awakening. If there was meant to be some deeper familial sympathy between them to be found since learning of their relation to one another, Uryu was sure that Ichigo didn't have a map to it either. Despite what they'd been through, they just weren't those kinds of people, and Ichigo understood that as well as Uryu. He'd told Inoue, truthfully, that he was relieved to hear that Kurosaki wasn't going to die, and she had said without him making any request of her that she would pass on the sentiment. So that was enough.
Ryuken, Uryu's father, had informed him that Ichigo had apparently regained the full use of his spiritual powers, though he was unsure of how that fact tied into him also being told, in the same breath, to prepare for higher volumes at the hospital since the Kurosaki clinic would apparently be closing temporarily. He hadn't pressed his father, and the only other thing the man had found it pertinent to say before leaving had been, "It's not my job to report things to you. Go see them if you need to know anything else." It was strange that he had even gone, though Uryu certainly wasn't going to go along with him as part of a pair. He was aware that his and Ichigo's dads knew each other, but Ryuken wasn't the type of man to go over to the clinic for a visit.
Uryu refocused his mind by once again counting the small capsules that held shimmering silvery liquefied reiryoku grouped into a neat square on his desk. He didn't have too many ginto left, and he had even less Seele Schneider in the metallic suitcase under his bed. He'd put himself in mortal danger each time he'd tried to make...unorthodox use of them since Inoue had brought him back from the brink of death, literally growing his own skin back over his sunlit bones. She'd saved his life but hadn't restored his Quincy powers. Either because they were something she didn't fully understand, or because Haschwalth had somehow torn them so completely from his body that there wasn't even a quantum to restore them from, Uryu didn't know. All he knew was that he hated the powerless feeling, more than he feared the risk of dying each time he broke a disc of Hollow bait up with his teeth and chased it with a couple of slugs from the ginto. If his research was accurate, his soul was likely becoming untethered whilst still inside his body, and the last time he'd gone out Hollow hunting, he'd nearly passed out.
Each hunt was a race against the clock now that Uryu was without his own font of power to draw from. His body remembered how to direct and shape reishi, but he could no longer draw it to or hold it within himself. He was a cracked vase. A flower could still be propped up inside, but would only wither in something incapable of holding water. Inoue had frantically managed to put all of his pieces back together, but hairline fractures bloomed across the entire surface of his being. That being the case, just going out hunting required extra preparatory steps now, and even then, resulted in less payoff. He'd start by splashing some of the ginto liquid on his father's cross to temporarily activate the inert reishi that had suffused into its silvery structure from years of previous use, as his own cross was unusable—having been on him when the Auswählen struck—and Ryuken wasn't sentimental enough to keep it anywhere but inside the third desk drawer of his office. From there, he would hold as many similarly wetted Seele Schneider as he could in turn over the faint blue radiance as if he were heating up a stainless steel kitchen knife over the blue flame of a gas range stove top. When, along the entire length of the straight, razor-like blades, the silver wetness shimmered an eerie blue, he had less than thirty minutes to grab the wooden longbow he'd acquired thanks to joining his school's archery club and head out to crush yet more Hollow bait, this time in his hands to send scattering on the crisp night air.
Confronting the Hollows themselves was more challenging now, too, as Uryu couldn't move with hirenkyaku-assisted swiftness and only had limited ammunition. That, and he had to make sure to dispatch his prey in a manner timely enough to not attract the attention of Kurosaki or any of his other friends. But, despite having tried to strip him of all power and leave him with nothing, Yhwach had, luckily and rather ironically, left him as the only free Quincy remaining with Sternritter training, which meant that every one of his few calculated shots counted for more than any of the small-fry Hollow were prepared to pay.
On these occasions, he always kept a single blade at his side which was never touched by any of the ginto's stored reiryokyu—a small ceremonial dagger he'd been presented with by Yhwach on becoming one of his elite Schutzstaffel. He'd always kept it sheathed at the back of his belt, hidden by the hem of his coat, and its blade had never felt open air when the Quincy king had been alive. But it now proved useful due to its unique alchemical composition, which allowed it to cut hollows without triggering complete disintegration of the removed tissue, so long as the blade was unmarred by Quincy reiryoku. Uryu would always make his first shot a crippling one, so that he could run up and use the dagger to hack off a chunk of the thing's mask before delivering the killing blow. The fragment of Hollow mask could then be refined into more liquid to fill the night's emptied ginto, though the process was arduous and not terribly efficient, as the yield was almost negligible.
Uryu was pulled out of his reverie by the buzzing made by the panes of glass in his windows vibrating in their frames, followed by a distinctly electric whooshing from outside which followed the vibration the way thunder follows lightning. As he rose from his chair and crossed the room, his suspicions as to the cause of the atmospheric disturbance were confirmed as he looked skyward out the window: Tier Harribel had arrived.
Orihime Inoue's shoulders jumped as she heard the electric thrum tear across the peaceful night outside her bedroom window. So startled had she been that she'd reflexively snapped closed her cell phone's clamshell halves in the middle of sending a message to Chad. Goosebumps broke out on the back of her neck and across her shoulders and she felt the two coldly familiar presences approach her window. When she blinked, she saw that her black-clad sprite, Tsubaki, was glowering back at her from just past the tip of her nose.
"Go ahead and let them in," he said almost excitedly. "I'll rip them apart!"
"Mm-mm," Orihime denied, unconsciously pulling the little imp back into his place inside of her hair pin as she turned her head to see two Arrancar floating in midair outside. One of them she was very familiar with, that was Grimmjow; but the other she'd only seen in passing, her canary yellow hair and cocoa-coloured skin contrasting starkly next to her companion's pale complexion and electric blue mane. Looking at him made a lump rise in Orihime's throat, but she did her best to swallow it back down when she realized that, had they wanted to hurt or kidnap her, they probably wouldn't just be standing there, watching her watching them, as the time since their noisy arrival crept closer to a whole uninterrupted minute.
As she slowly crawled across her bed to crack open the window just slightly, in the back of her mind she felt the tense tingle telling her that her shielding sprites were ready to spring forth and guard her with a wall of yellow light at her slightest nervous twitch. That was good, she thought as she laid her hand apprehensively on the window latch. After a couple of deep breaths to try to calm herself, she mustered the courage to pop the seal on the window, letting in only as much chilly night air as could creep in through a scant 3 millimetres of space.
"Y-yes?" she said timidly, speaking to the stoic stranger rather than the sour and put-upon-looking Grimmjow.
"Orihime Inoue," replied the yellow-haired Hollow woman in a deep, almost sultry voice as she lowered her position in the air from a vantage point above Orihime to one which allowed them to be eye-to-eye, "I have a request, involving one of my fallen comrades. May I enter?"
The polite question was as shockingly unexpected as it was alarming to Orihime. "Um..." she said with a nervous glance at Grimmjow, who had not joined his partner on Orihime's level and continued, defiantly, it seemed, looking down at her. "Why is he with you?" she asked, trying her best not to sound rude. The woman didn't acknowledge Grimmjow.
"He will stay outside of you prefer," she assured Orihime with a bold confidence that gave her a second shock. Grimmjow looked about angry enough to bite through his lower lip but said nothing. A bead of sweat ran down Orihime's back, and using the shuddering tension it elicited, she finally yanked the window the rest of the way open after a full thirty seconds of scattered contemplation, as if swiftly ripping off a bandage just to get it over with.
"Y-yes please, thank you!" she said bashfully, caught off guard by her own abruptness of motion. She felt exposed now. Then she bowed, fully conking her forehead on the window sill. Graciously, the Hollow woman said nothing as Orihime removed her throbbing head from the window and stiffly backed away from the window to allow her entry. "P-please come in," she said, she thought, like a robot.
"I am Tier Harribel," the Hollow woman said as she alighted on Orihime's bedroom floor with a catlike softness. Then Orihime let out a screech and nearly jumped out of her skin when Harribel whipped the window closed again with such speed that it looked like she'd frightened it into shutting up tight of its own accord just by turning her eyes to it, and such force that Orihime had thought a gun went off. "My apologies," she said without reacting at all to the girl's conniption.
"It's...okay," said Orihime, hand on her chest which rose and fell rapidly as she caught her breath. "So...what was that before about a friend of yours?" she asked nervously.
For the first time, Tier Harribel's expression changed as she closed her eyes and took in a steady breath that seemed to draw everything, even the very walls of the bedroom, closer to her. Orihime found herself leaning in with anticipation before she could notice. Harribel finally broke the tightly ratcheted tension when she said, "There's something I want you to understand first, about us Arrancar."
"Oh, okay," said Orihime as she subtly pulled back from her craned position towards Harribel, feeling a little light-headed.
Harribel spread out her arms as if inviting Orihime in for history's most uncomfortable hug. "Do you see the Hollow hole where my heart should be?" she asked, and Orihime realized that the open gesture was to draw attention to her chest. Judging by her own reflection which she saw every day, and thinking back to the last soul to be in her room—her Shinigami friend, Rangiku—Orihime judged that Harribel's bust was about average. But aside from that, she noticed nothing but the obvious bony white Hollow plates which curved about her chest. In fact, it seemed like a trick question to Orihime.
"I don't think so," said Orihime, squinting just in case the referenced part of Hollow anatomy was unusually tiny.
"That's because it's not there. Arrancar don't have holes in place of their hearts like other Hollows do. Do you know why?"
"...No, why?"
"Because of the hearts that take up that space instead," said Harribel simply. She went on when she saw the expression Orihime's face took on as her brain nearly overheated. "The process by which Aizen"—here she paused just for half a moment as if biting back a reflexively appended honourific that was no longer required—"created Arrancar was to grow a heart inside of them." Orihime nodded but continued to look bewildered, so Harribel pushed on. "Not an organ, but something metaphysical," Harribel elaborated, immediately regretting her use of the word. "A single personality from within the collective consciousness
of the Hollow is attracted to the...core," she tried, using easier terminology to understand, "like how a planet pulls a moon in orbit around it." That analogy seemingly went over great, because Orihime's expression changed to one of excited determination as she slapped a fist down onto the palm of her other hand in a "eureka" gesture. Her confident nod in the wake of this part of the explanation emboldened Harribel to continue. "That personality is Tier Harribel, who you see now. I look this way because of the memory of someone I once devoured as a Hollow, or someone a Hollow I devoured devoured. It's like an echo."
Orihime looked intensely contemplative for a long moment before blurting out, "Neat!" to Harribel's chagrin. She didn't let it show.
"Just like with humans and Shinigami, the heart is an emotional core for Arrancar," she went on. "This is because Aizen thought it was simpler to sway hearts to his cause than it was to change the minds of Vasto Lorde-class Hollows."
As she said that, Orihime noticed that, despite her surface composure, Harribel took on an ever so slightly bitter expression, but she didn't interrupt to ask about it.
"That's the reason the Hollow hole of an Arrancar moves, Orihime Inoue. Because Arrancar can think and feel the same way as humans and Shinigami."
Orihime wasn't sure if she was surprised by this news or not. Some Arrancar that she'd met, like Ulquiorra, had been devoid of emotions, while others showed a wide range, like Grimmjow...or Loly and Menoly, she thought with a cold shiver.
"You can see that my zanpakuto is released," came Harribel's voice to break Orihime out of her reverie. She nodded. "The release of our sealed Hollow form lets us reclaim our former abilities, but it also robs us of our new emotional state. In other words, releasing our full power can drain us of our Arrancar emotions to allow us to fight more like predatory Hollows. But, if we spend a lot of time acclimating to our released states, we're able to take back our full ability to reason."
This Orihime was definitely not surprised by. It made absolute sense. Every Arrancar she'd ever seen release its strange zanpakuto became more driven in combat—Grimmjow certainly became more animalistic in his attacks against Ichigo when they'd fought. She nodded as she wondered where this lecture was leading to. She didn't have to wonder for very long.
"You've seen an Arrancar with more than one released state before," stated Harribel, instantly conjuring images of the monstrously altered Ulqiorra in Orihime's mind. The girl's throat closed up as her breathing became shallow, her stiff neck losing the ability to nod her through the conversation.
Harribel was uncharacteristically surprised when the yellow wall sprang up to partially obscure Orihime from view at the reference she'd made to Ulquiorra. She'd not moved a muscle, and yet the girl's shield had appeared as if in response to a thrown punch. Along with Orihime's suddenly rapid breathing on the other side of the barrier, Harribel thought she could hear other voices, small voices, saying things like "It's okay" and "be calm, now" to the girl. The small words overlapped with the breathing in a way that convinced Harribel that it couldn't be Orihime talking to herself. Harribel was at a loss for what to do.
A moment of patient waiting later, the barrier suddenly dropped, and Harribel saw two sparkles dissipating rapidly around Orihime's head. The girl looked positively ragged, sweat beading her forehead, but she bravely painted a smile over it all.
"Sorry about that, please go on," came the girl's shaken voice in something like a tense laugh. It took a pregnant moment for Harribel to oblige.
"That Arrancar was one of my close comrades," continued Harribel, consciously avoiding the use of a name that seemed like it could be a landmine on the path to the conclusion she was attempting to walk the girl to. "He had been a follower of mine when I was a Hollow, and I was the one who brought him to the attention of Aizen."
Again, Orihime was surprised, as she'd only known Arrancar to think about themselves. But, she supposed that, if they did indeed have hearts, it would make sense that maybe they could care about each other the way she cared about Kurosaki, Ishida, and Chad.
"I regret doing that now," Harribel said in a tone that Orihime could've reasonably taken for sadness, as her gaze shifted away for the first time. "I'll tell you, my Hollow hole is where you can't see. It's where my womb would be if I were a living human."
"O-oh..."
"I don't know if Arrancar can have children as humans and souls can, but even though I definitely can't, I knew the feeling of having a child because of that Arrancar." The way Harribel made that statement could only be described as defiant, Orihime thought. Then her gaze returned to meet Orihime's with such intense seriousness that all of Orihime's muscles tightened at once. "Do you know that the reason that Arrancar had two release states, is because Aizen altered him with the Hogyoku to push out even more emotion with Hollow instinct?"
For a long moment, Orihime wasn't sure if Harribel truly expected an answer to the question or not, but eventually, she managed to shake her head, almost as though she was quivering—and maybe she was—so that it could be taken as an answer or ignored as being involuntary.
"Aizen didn't like for any of the Espada to get along the way Números do with their leader," Harribel all but spat. "And we all have an aspect of death to us, he said. Aizen's alteration, that's why his was emptiness—because he had his feelings dug out for the good of Aizen's army." The tone of Harribel's voice was such that Orihime wouldn't have been shocked to see the Arrancar shed tears, though, unsurprisingly, she didn't and went on. "And it's also why mine is sacrifice, because I allowed it to happen when I was still under Aizen's orders." She looked sidelong away from Orihime once more. "That man liked cruel jokes," she asserted acidly. "The Arrancar you saw, the way he behaved, was not the one that I remember."
This seemed to be the final word on the matter. But there was still the matter of the request Harribel had mentioned at the beginning, of course. And now Orihime was panicking inside, because she was frighteningly aware of just what that request was going to be.
"You..." began Orihime before having to take in more breath just to get the words out, "you want me to try to bring him back, right?" She was looking at the floor as she asked. Tears pattered on it.
"You would be the only one with that power," said Harribel, neither confirming nor denying.
"You're not trying to build another army," Orihime said. Said. It hadn't been a question. She was sure of Harribel's intentions because of her story, but also, the sureness of the statement served to hang in the air between them almost like a threat. An unspoken way to get across that Orihime would do nothing for Harribel for the sake of war, and might even unmake her for having the gall to ask.
And, though Orihime caught on not at all to the subsurface work her words were doing, Harribel absolutely did.
"I'm trying to rebuild Hueco Mundo, but I will not attack the other worlds," Harribel stated, all conviction.
Orihime's heart ached for Harribel. "I can't," she said almost in a whisper. It was so quiet that the continuous pattering of her falling tears on the hardwood floor could've drowned it out.
So, Ulquiorra Cifer had been something more before they'd ever met. He'd been like an animal thrust into the body and brain of a human, learning to be like one little by little. And then, the human heart had been ripped out so that nothing remained but cold loyalty. It was horrific, it was disgusting and unforgivable. But...
But the man who'd done it was locked up, wallowing in the loneliness he deserved. And Orihime's kidnapper was gone. He would only ever take her away again in her nightmares, and she could always wake up. Except on nights like tonight, at least now her fears lasted only as long as it took her to open her eyes every morning.
"I'm so sorry, Harribel," Orihime croaked through tears, and meant it. She meant it with every aching beat of her pounding heart. "I can't do that for you," she said to the wet floorboards. Then she heard Harribel stand.
"You listened to what I had to say, Orihime Inoue. That is all I could have asked of you."
Orihime heard the window open much more gently than it had closed when the conversation had begun. Then, with an electric buzz, the Arrancar were gone, and Orihime Inoue could finally rest her head on the floor and sob.
"No way, they're back?!" I truly hope so.
Hello, I know it's been a long time and I've had a couple of false starts along the way. Those false starts should be pretty good evidence that I've always wanted to write more Bleach stuff. The ideas are always coming, evolving, changing, but always there. I'm just the kind of person who spends so much time refining them in my head because I want them to be perfect, that I tend to talk myself out of writing them. But I hope by publishing this first chapter, with at least a few more solid chapter ideas DEFINITELY in the tank, that'll motivate me to write again. Because I miss it, and honestly, I miss the feedback too. Every so often someone new follows me off of a story I wrote almost 10 years ago and I'm like, "Aww, that's nice. I should write more stuff for that person." So, I feel really motivated and I really want to be back, so please try to be as optimistic as I am now. I have a lot of cool ideas I want to get out.
Anyone who's read my stuff before knows I'm a lover of dialogue, and I know that for fans of Bleach that might be boring. Sorry :P There may be fights to come, but that's not where my love lies, so be prepared for more talky talky and less punchy slashy. Also, I kept trying to start story after story from a romantic jumping off point like my first story, but eventually I realized that one of the things holding me back was trying to thread that in along with all of the world and lore ideas I just wanted to share. And a big reason this chapter finally got written is because, as much as I adore romance, I finally shifted focus to world stuff, and I hope it's still interesting. But I still love romance and I don't think I could get through a story with none, I'm just letting you all know that it might not be so prominent, at least not right away. If anyone has pairing ideas they'd like to see based on how I wrote my previous stuff, let me know! No promises, but I'd like to see if you'd like to share :D Unfortunately, as I'm het myself, I only really have confidence writing het romances, as I've been in love myself. I love well-written fics of any orientation, and I fully believe Chad is into dudes, but I just don't think I could do it justice, because you're supposed to write what you know, and it isn't what I know. But hey, you can always tell me your favourite pairing of any kind anyway!
NEXT TIME: The 13th Division has a NEW Captain, and it's not Rukia (just yet) ;)