Chapter 5: Flee the peace
Setsuzo opened his eyes, only to be blinded by an obnoxiously bright light.
Damn, what happened? , he thought to himself, while sitting up. Then it all came back.
The underground he had previously never known about. The absurdely large hollows (they were called Menos Grande if he remembered correctly) that were just standing around and-
Him.
Bainne.
The most terrifying being he had ever met as far as he could think back. The longer he thought the more it came back to him. The Diagonally slitted eyes. The sadistic smile and the spiritual pressure that was oozing with bloodlust. And last but not least, his promise that he would hunt him.
After that, there was not much else. All that Setsuzo remembered was the soothing sight of the sky in it`s warm, deep blue and the many many stars it was covered with.
Shit, I must`ve fallen asleep, he thought while letting his eyes adjust to the new level of brightness he was not used to.
Where am I anyway?
He started to look around and his question answered itself almost immediately. Human souls were walking around everywhere, except they were not souls, for the chain of fate was missing. They were actual humans.
He was in the human world.
However, none of the humans seemed to have the usual reaction when they saw him. They just walked by the building he was sitting on. Maybe they didn`t actually see him. He jumped into the middle of the ground that they were walking on.
Still nothing. He was baffled at that phenomenon.
It`s almost like they don`t even notice i`m here.
Then it hit him. Maybe they didn`t see him because they couldn`t. Human souls were able to see him because they were spiritual beings, same as him, but humans were physical beings, so he figured they could only see or feel him when they actually had a connection to the spiritual. But that was absurd.
It would imply that humans were in possession of a Reiryoku and Reiatsu in their physical body and that was just impossible.
He started to walk around a little, ignoring the humans that were around him, just like they were ignoring him. Then he started thinking.
They can`t see me, but does that mean they can`t interact with me at all?
He wanted to test that theory, so he looked around to choose his test subject. He ultimately decided on a woman that was standing around and leaning on a wall, staring in a strange, flat, little box, which had a rectangular form.
He stood right in front of her and bowed down so that his face was right across from hers. No reaction, but that was to be expected. Next, he poked her a little with his left hand in the shoulder to which he got a reaction. She looked up from the rectangular box, and started looking around asking: "Who was that? Who`s there?"
While panning her head around she never noticed him, so that confirmed his theory. They could not see him, but they could still interact with him and he could interact with them.
He spent the rest of the day strolling around and testing out all sort of different things like that. He walked into a few humans, slightly amused at their reactions. He jumped on buildings and enjoyed the environement.
It was so refreshingly different here. While in Hueco Mundo everything was mostly the same (one large and vast desert), here, everything was varied. Green trees, humans everywhere and several different buildings. One was even made of something that mirriored whatever was walking by it. That way he finally got a chance to properly look at his own image.
He was not at all as frightening or strange as he imagined. Compared to other hollows he was actually quite average in appearance. Finally seeing instead of just feeling the hole in his chest was a little unsettling, but he had never felt any kind of discomfort with it being there, so it was nothing all too special.
He looked almost human, save a few differences. He was 3 meters tall, of medium build, his body was of a dark color and his feet were almost humane but ended in claws and of course his normal looking-but-scalescovered left arm and his clawlike right arm. It wasn`t how he had looked when he first woke up as a hollow 3 months ago, there had been a few minor changes occurring.
His right arm now not just ended in claws, but started to grow blades on the sides. His left arm was not only covered in scales anymore, but Setsuzo could also whiden it out a bit to use it kind of like a shield. His body had also not been as muscular as it was now. At first he had had a slender, almost thin body, but through constant fighting it became trained and strong.
His body color had lightened up a little, first having been pitch black and now more of a very dark greyish color.
He kept walking forward, completely disregarding the humans in front of him. Then he thought of something. The day before he had achieved something that cast a shadow on all of his other abilities. He had changed worlds. From one second to the next he had traveled from one world into another.
He needed to master this ability as fast as possible, so he could escape when his life depended on it. Then for some reason stronger hollows were afraid of this place, or else Bainne would not have made such a swift retreat like he did yesterday.
What was he afraid of anyway? Setsuzo was not able to feel a single thing since he entered this world. An occasional low spiritual pressure, but those were only lost human souls. Right?
He never bothered to check, the only prey he was living on were other hollows and none of the Reiatsu he had felt since he got to the human world resembled that of a hollow.
Now he was getting worried. No other hollow around. Humans did not see him. It was the perfect place for hollows to feast and yet, Bainne, a hollow far stronger than him or anything he had ever seen, almost shit his Pants the moment he got here.
Something was off. Setsuzo started to pick up something in the air, something that practically forebode disaster. And it was getting sronger every minute.
Shit. This can`t be good, this place is too quiet to be true.
Slowly but surely he started to panick.
He needed to get back. Back to Hueco Mundo.
And he needed to do that fast or-
He couldn`t end that train of thought because in that exact moment, someone strange turned around the next buildingcorner. Someone who shouldn`t exist and yet stood before Setsuzo.
A human with spiritual pressure.
For a human he was pretty big and very muscular. He was wearing normal clothes, a green shirt and Jeans, had a darker Skin color than the others and apart from his height and build, he didn`t differentiate himself much from other humans.
Except he had spiritual pressure. It had been pretty low at first but upon coming in Setsuzo`s view, it suddenly spiked, increasing exponentially.
The man also suddenly stood still and looked Setsuzo dead in the eyes.
He can see me.
For a moment time stood still, as the two individuals gazed into anothers eyes. Setsuzo was the first to make his move. He turned around on the spot and started running as fast as he could. He was taking turns left and right, taking advantage of his surroundings and trying to lose the human, if he was in pursuit.
He kept running and running until he left the buildings behind him. A large section of trees came into his view so he charged towards it, hoping to hide somewhere in there. Then he would figure out his world-traveling powers and get the hell out of here.
He passed the trees and finally slowed down a little, but kept running. He did so until he reached another strange place in this world. Inmidst of the trees he arrived at an area where they had been cut down and replaced by something else.
Crosses made of stone were put into the ground and flowers covered the ground in front of those crosses.
He had never seen this place, so why did it feel so… familiar?
He couldn`t explain how but he knew what this was. He had been here before. Flashes, obscurred pictures shot through his mind, giving him a headache. This was… a graveyard.
How did he know that? Fractured memories shot through his head again, of this very place. He was certain now; he definitely had been here before. He had been standing in this place, in front of a specific tombstone.
Tombstone? Another word that just came to his mind. He tried to concentrate, gather his thoughts and accurately picture some of the images that were racing through his mind.
He started to look around, looking for that tombstone. He didn`t know what it looked like exactly, but he hoped if it even so much as scraped his gaze, it would come back to him.
He was so invested in his thoughts that he almost didn`t notice the dangerous person he was running from approach from behind. Almost.
(Bleach OST 2 Track 3: On the Verge of Insanity)
"You`re very fast", the person uttered dangerously close to Setsuzo.
He broke his train of thought and turned around in a flash.
The man that he had lost not minutes ago was standing in front of him, with strange green lights flickering from his feet.
"How did you…?" Setsuzo was shocked at how fast the man had caught up with him and worse he wasn`t even close to being out of breath as he was.
"Let`s just say I have abilities most humans don`t have", the man answered his unfinished question.
Yeah, no kidding.
"What do you want here? I don`t sense any hostility coming from you, at least not towards humans."
This was not good. The individual was questioning him, surely to make him lower his guard. He would not engage in this game of cat and mousetype questioning. He slowly moved towards a point where he could turn around and run in a straight line away from his pursuer towards open area.
He had no time to test his new power; he just had to hope that it would work.
He still didn`t answer the question. He just kept moving slowly.
His opposite sighed heavily.
"If you wanna play it that way, that`s your choice, but don`t say I didn`t give you a chance first." He took fighting stance and clenched his right hand into a fist.
From one moment to the other his Reiatsu spiked as he uttered the words: "Braza Derecha de Gigante." His entire right arm was starting to cover itself in a black liquid, forming a shield on his lower arm and covering the entire arm in a black color with red stripes.
Setsuzo didn`t even think, he just turned around and ran. He tried to remember what he felt like when he opened that strange gateway the first time, but he couldn`t think of much. He just knew that he had been terrified. That he had wanted to get away from where he was. Pretty much like he felt right now.
So, he tried to focus and picture this gateway in his mind. When he opened them up, he was shocked. Because it was actually there. He didn`t waste a second thought and ran straight through it.
Only to wish that he hadn`t the moment he did. Then at the other end of that gate someone far worse then his current opponent already was waiting.
Author's notes:
Another one done. Yeah, yeah, i know, still rather short. It will get longer though. Eventually. (Shit, i hope)
Also i am terribly sorry to you (currently) 50 something People who actually read what i write (Thank you very much for that by the way), but i've made a slight miscalculation. The Story doesn't pick up 4 months after Yhwachs defeat, it picks up 4 years after it. I realized that it just wouldn't add up, so yeah. The Overall Story doesn't Change one bit, the only Thing that does is the Point in history where the Story starts.
If you`ve got your own opinion, PM me, or, better yet, review the Story. I`ll always welcome consturctive criticism.