A/N: It's been a little while since I've posted, but I promise I'm still working on this story (slowly but surely)! Leave a review :)
7:25 p.m.
He could feel them—pinpoints of energy around the city. They appeared suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere. He couldn't guess at their purpose but knew it couldn't be good.
He even knew what they were called—arrancar. A special breed of hollows the traitor Aizen was developing, had been developing for decades. He remembered well. His family had been the first of many victims of Aizen's experiments with hollowfication, after all.
Only the pricklings of energy he felt suddenly materialize about the city could no longer be called hollows—not really. Just like his kind were soul reapers—but not really. They were that, but more. Soul reapers who'd had hollow masks violently forced upon them, with no choice but to accept them as part of their identity. Arrancar, on the other hand, were beasts that had torn off their masks and taken up swords to gain powers that had once been out of reach to them, powers that Aizen had been able to offer.
They were like him, but not like him. They were polar opposites, and at the same time, they were twins. They found commonality in their stubborn pride for what they were, while holding in contempt where they had come from. The arrancar sneered at hollows weaker than them—despite having been born from them. And how often did any of his family members express their disdain for soul reapers? He didn't have to look farther than the smallest member of their family to find the most vitriolic opinion.
Though their powers were more similar than the vizard liked to admit, there was more that set them apart. The most notable being that while the arrancar had clawed and grasped for their power, the vizard had theirs unwillingly thrust upon them. And it was that lack of choice that made all the difference to them.
The vizard didn't usually bother themselves with hollows. There were plenty of soul reapers in the city to take care of them. The hollow they had fought and destroyed so many years ago on the night of Orihime's disappearance had been the first one in decades. And it had been nearly a decade since that night, too.
Kensei's usual frown intensified at the memory of that night, and he lowered the weight that he gripped in his right hand. It was getting dark and Orihime wasn't home yet. The girl had only a few more minutes until she passed curfew.
He brought the weight back up to meet his shoulder as he tried to squash the uneasiness he felt curling his gut. He had a bad premonition, and he knew why.
It felt too much like that night.
7:28 p.m.
"You're not a soul reaper, are you?" The figure called out, a grin still plastered on his face. His voice was high-pitched and uncanny. It made shivers crawl up Orihime's spine.
"I don't know what that is," she said tentatively. She was not so sure she wanted to have a conversation with this man, but, nervously eyeing the sword tied to his waist, figured it was better than other alternatives.
They were about a stone's throw away from each other, close enough that she could hear him clearly but far enough away that she had to squint to make out his features from where he stood just out of the light of the street lamp.
As if he had just become aware of this himself, the figure began to stroll in her direction, hands thrust casually in his pockets, slowly but steadily decreasing the distance between them. Orihime resented every step he took.
"That's a shame," he said, feigning disappointment. "I don't really have time to educate you, you know."
Her eyes were immediately drawn to his face as he stepped further into the light of the street lamp. Pulled back into a sinister grin were rows of jagged teeth that immediately brought to Orihime's mind the image of a shark. With a sickening feeling in her gut and a familiar sensation of being cornered, she grew less certain that the figure in front of her was fully human.
"Educate me on what?" she blurted hastily, anything to get to him to stop moving, to get his mind off whatever track it was on—and judging by the way he looked at her with his shark-toothed smirk and the way he lightly but deliberately had his hand placed on his sword, she was sure it couldn't be good.
He halted, finally, about ten feet in front of her. Orihime felt a hesitant sense of relief.
"Oh, you know," he drawled. "The same old story. The eternal struggle between hollows and soul reapers. The hollow's appetite for human souls and the self-righteous soul reaper's need to protect the weakling humans."
Hollow. The word struck a chord in her memory and she felt herself going back years to a conversation she had once had with Kensei on a night she was afraid to go to sleep.
What was it that he had said? She could almost see his blurry face in front of her.
"That creature that you saw—it's called a hollow. They're monsters that prey on the souls of the dead," he had explained.
But there had been more. Surely he had said something that could help her make sense of this situation she was in now.
"They're sometimes drawn to humans with a lot of spiritual energy—people who can see ghosts or have special powers," he had continued.
"So the reason that hollow attacked me was because I have a lot of this 'spiritual energy' stuff?" she had asked.
That information didn't help her now. This man who stood in front of her, though eerily inhuman, was nothing like the monster her brother had become.
Or was he? He was close enough now for her to make out more of his features. She tore her eyes off his sadistic grin and glanced down at his chest. His jacket was open and she could make out a sizeable hole, carved cleanly just below his collarbone. It was large enough for her to put her fist through, and she could enough glimpse the other side of the street through it.
Her brother—her brother had had one just like it…
"You saw the hole in his chest didn't you? Every hollow has one. It shows that where its soul should be is only emptiness… and it was the desire to fill that emptiness that made him attack you."
"Hollow," she said as she reluctantly brought her gaze back to his face. His grin grew wider.
"Close," he said. "But not quite." Then he literally disappeared.
Orihime didn't even have time to be confused before he reappeared suddenly before her. She saw stars as she was slammed against a street light several feet away, and she blinked, blinded by the sudden light.
She squinted, straining to see him jaunting towards her. Panic blossomed in her chest as she fully came to terms with the manner of creature in front of her. Though he didn't appear the beast her brother had been, his human-like appearance didn't seem to lesson any of his monstrous characteristics.
"Let's get this over with," he said, eyes glinting with excitement, and drew back his hand, holding it level, his palm facing downwards. His presence was cloying, choking, it was hard to breathe—why had she even been worried about his sword?
Through the panic she could feel swelling to a bursting point in her chest, she could feel something more—a determination to live. And a resentment at being accosted by a creature like this. She hadn't been born, hadn't survived everything she had for it all to end in this moment. Tatsuki's face appeared in front of her, followed by Kensei's, and the rest of her family members'. Rukia's. And Ichigo's.
Something else began to build up, something she was suddenly aware had been buried inside of her since her birth, waiting for the right moment to surface. She could feel it take shape, could feel it stirring—a sudden warmth where her barrettes pressed against her skin, the shape of words beginning to form on her lips—
The pressure which had been so overwhelming just a moment before disappeared instantly as the creature—man—hollow was slammed back by a hurricanic force that passed over her head.
"Get what over with?" came a curt voice from just behind her, and Orihime would have sunk to the ground in relief if she were not already sitting on it.
Orihime remembered the fight with vivid clarity. It wasn't as if it lasted long. But what she remembered the most clearly was how familiar his cries of frustration sounded as he was torn in two, and the hatred she could see clearly in his eyes as he turned to face her moments before he evaporated into nothingness and was swallowed by the night.
Shinji hadn't tried to keep her from watching the fight. And Kensei didn't offer any explanations when it was over. Instead, they walked home together, in a familiar, frustrating silence.
Her mind was racing, and she was too distracted by the frantic tempo of her thoughts to notice a figure in glasses slipping away down a side street.
On the walk home, she tried to sort through the onslaught of emotions. The loudest of them was relief, of course. She had almost died, again, and been rescued, again. But buried underneath that was a sense of disappointment. She had been on the verge of discovering a part of herself, a power she didn't know she had. And now it was gone, and it resisted any attempt to pull it back to the surface.
"We're different. Just like you are," Kensei had told her once. Frustration turned to resentment. She resented being deliberately left in the dark. She had almost lost her life twice now, both in bizarre and terrifying events. She was old enough now that she deserved to know more about it.
Her resentment was short lived.
Everyone was already gathered when they stepped through the front door. All eyes turned to Kensei.
"It's time," he said.
Wednesday
She had been allowed to skip school, but she went anyway. Orihime was a star student, and being almost murdered the night before wasn't a good enough excuse to miss a math test. Besides, after their late night "family meeting," she was getting too many concerned glances and she needed space.
So after a light breakfast (which Orihime wolfed down hastily to escape the meaningful looks Rose was giving her over his bowl of cereal) and little bit of first aid administered by Hachi, she was on her way out with a hasty "Off to school!" called out over her shoulder.
Orihime was more surprised than she should have been at how ordinary everything was. The normalcy of it all was overwhelming—it took all her brainpower to focus on having a simple conversation with Michiru over her bento (that she had purchased at a convenience store on her way to school rather than pester Kensei or Love to make her lunch). She vaguely registered that Shinji had not followed her to school that morning, though she did not have the energy to wonder (or even care) why.
Tatsuki's absence was a constant reminder that everything was not, in fact, as it should be. She could not get the image of her alone in that hospital room out of her mind.
Nor had she forgotten her promise to herself to visit Chad, who was not in school that day. Neither, for that matter, was Ichigo, whose home she had assumed Chad was staying at, but she didn't think much of it. Ichigo could sometimes be a bit of a "delinquent student," every so often getting into fights and missing classes for some excuse or another. Back before Rukia had mysteriously vanished, Orihime had occasionally spotted the pair darting out of the school building together, running at a full sprint, as if the world was coming to an end and they alone could stop it.
Despite her urgency to talk to Chad, she took more time than usual at her handicrafts club, meticulously choosing the exact shade of thread that matched the fabric of her current project, (a pink bear she had received for her birthday one year, whose limb was starting to detach from its body) painstakingly undoing and redoing the stitches until they were perfect. The sun was beginning its slow descent by the time she started to make her way to the Kurosaki residence.
She knocked on the door more confidently than she felt, cursing her heart that was beating much too fast. As if she didn't have enough on her mind as it was, her thoughts were occupied with the memory of that meeting in the hospital. Though it had only happened the day before, it felt like a lifetime, and this would be the first time to see him since then.
Her breath caught as the handle turned, and Orihime hastily readied her apology for showing up on his doorstep so late. The words died on her lips.
It was not a tall, lanky, orange-haired boy of 15 who was standing in the entryway when the door swung open. Neither was it either of his adorable little sisters or his too-excited-about-life energetic father.
It was a girl she had thought to have disappeared completely from the world—and stolen everyone's memories along with her.
"Rukia?"