Oh goodness, I know it's been a long time since I updated this. Years, even. I'm sure a lot of you gave up on me a long time ago but I'm still here. Part of my problem is that I kept changing my mind on how I wanted this fanfic to go and I kind of forgotten a lot about Bleach and like, I don't know, how all the characters work in terms of abilities and stuff? That being said THIS IS NOT THE FINAL CHAPTER! I'm going to keep it going for a bit but no spoilers! And hopefully it won't take me three years to update again...Oops.
I mostly do writing as a side job now where I basically write fanfiction commissions and do ghost writing products. I haven't had a lot of free time to work on my own writing for fun (I've been scared that if I were to update fanfics on this account, clients on my other account would be like "HEY IF YOU HAVE TIME TO WORK ON YOUR OWN STUFF, YOU SHOULD HAVE TIME TO WORK ON MINE!" since that's happened before, but I've missed writing for my own pleasure. Writing for other people all the time is mentally taxing (especially considering the crazy fetishes people want me to write) so I've been Role-playing a lot with my best friend and getting back into writing for myself and not for paid gigs. You'll notice I've been working on a Walking Dead fanfic (since that's my latest obsession) but that doesn't mean I'm going to neglect this fanfic. My other fanfic, My Sweet Sacrifice, is a commission for a client but I post it on this profile instead of my other profiles since it's not just pure smut like my other works. I'm only able to update My Sweet Sacrifice when the client approves what I've written and gives me permission so the fact I haven't updated is strictly based on that.
But anyways, no more babbling. To those of you that still care about this fanfic that I started back in 2010, thank you for your patience. I love you. Please don't hate me for taking forever to update. Please forgive me for inconsistencies. Please forgive me for straying so far from the canon universe that I might as well have started a new franchise.
This was the most intense battle that Ichigo Kurosaki had ever been a part of.
Fighting two opponents at the same time felt more like a suicide mission than anything and he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold out. No matter how many times he swung his Zanpakuto at Aizen, the godlike man deflected every attack and countered with his own powerful blow. Each and every one of Aizen's moves were perfectly calculated as if he could predict what attack Ichigo would spring up on him next and had already discovered a way to either evade it or block it. The vast difference in their skill levels made it obvious as to who clearly had the upper hand, but with Ulquiorra in the mix, it was impossible to tell who was going to fall first.
While Ichigo himself wasn't landing any direct blows on Aizen, Ulquiorra was giving it his all. Cero was being blasted across the midnight sky left and right, and while Aizen was more focused on dodging Ichigo's attacks, he left himself vulnerable to the powerful blasts of energy being sent in his direction by his own subordinate. Aizen was a very proud man and with the abilities to back up that arrogant façade of his. Even while blood seeped through his white clothing as his own energy level began to drop , he continued to fight as if he had barely been scratched.
"Do you really think you can defeat me?! The Hogyoku burning inside of me guarantees my victory!" Aizen cried out as he continued to mercilessly attack Ichigo who tried his best to defend himself.
Orihime knew that getting in the middle of the battle would be more than just a death wish for her, but she had to do whatever she could to stop Ulquiorra. She kept running and running towards the action, Gini Ichimaru following not too far behind her. There was only so much Kurosaki-kun could do on his own and facing off against two of the universe's deadliest opponents was too much for the vizard to handle by himself. He was down to his last spurt of energy and if he took any more direct hits, there was no way he would survive.
"SANTEN KESSHUN, I REJECT!" When the healer was close enough to the battlefield, she summoned her Shun Shun Rikka to form a golden barrier around Ichigo, protecting him from one of Ulquiorra's lightning based javelins. The ominous lance collided with Orihime's shield as it guarded her friend, and the impact of both of their energies combining into one dangerous clash caused a massive explosion to go off around them.
The force of the explosion was enough to throw Orihime backwards, but Gin Ichimaru was there to catch her, shielding her with his body as he protected her from any damage. The surrounding area was covered in thick smoke and it was hard for Gin to see if her shield had even protected Ichigo or if Ulquiorra's Lanza Del Relampago was stronger than even Orihime's unbreakable shields.
When the smoke subsided, everyone could see that the golden barrier was still standing and the glowing green javelin had disappeared. Ulquiorra, having missed his target, slowly slid his gaze over to where Orihime stood. For a moment, he ceased all animalistic behavior and simply focused his cold gaze on her as he stood perfectly still, his expression as unwavering as the face on a marionette doll.
Ichigo was outraged that the girl was putting herself in harm's way like that even after he told her to leave it to him. "INOUE! What the hell are you doing?! I told you to stay back!"
She knew Ichigo wouldn't understand. If she was being honest with herself, she wasn't even sure if she fully understood why she was standing there either. Explaining that one of her reincarnated selves told her that she was the only one who could break Ulquiorra out of his madness would only make her sound insane and she just didn't have the time or the energy to try and make anyone else understand. Orihime wasn't even sure what exactly it was that she needed to do but she was willing to try whatever she could to get Ulquiorra to listen to her, even if that meant throwing herself in the line of fire.
"Ulquiorra! You have to snap out of it! Please!" The young woman shouted, standing her ground. She blocked out the presence of both Ichigo and Aizen as she focused her gaze on the monstrous form of her beloved. "This isn't you! You're so much more than what you've become! Please, just hear my voice and wake up!"
The Espada didn't seemed affected by her words in the least as he vanished into thin air, only to appear right in front of her using his impeccable agility. Orihime froze as she gazed into his cold, vacant eyes. His amber hues stared back at her for a moment before he reached out one of his long arms to seize hold of her tender throat. He squeezed her wind pipes tightly, immediately cutting off the air flow from her lungs as Orihime grabbed at his wrist, desperate to get him to let go. She opened her mouth to speak but no words managed to spill out. His grip on her was too tight, too constricting, and Orihime's shaky hands stood no chance against his strength as she tried to pry his hand off of her.
Coming to her rescue, Ichigo charged Ulquiorra, sword raised high above his head, as he attempted to clash his blade down onto his arm. Aizen, however, intercepted his strike by launching a powerful blast of energy in the vizard's direction that sent him flying across the sands of Hueco Mundo.
"Your fight is with me!" Aizen announced as he took a threatening step towards Ichigo, his long hair whipping in the heavy wind around them. "If you want to save her then you'll have to kill me first, but I doubt Ulquiorra's impatience will grant you enough time."
Orihime's life was fading with every second that ticked by. Her cheeks were turning purple as her eyes were practically bulging out of her head. She tried to inhale but his hold on her was just too tight. She would lose consciousness first before suffocating to death unless she acted quickly. In her current position, all the healer could manage to do was breathlessly mouth out the words "Koten Zanshun" before one of her fairies emerged from her hair clip. Tsubaki, the strongest member of the Shun Shun Rikka, could feel Orihime's need for breath as energy surged through him. With his body as sharp as a blade, Tsubaki sliced right through Ulquiorra's arm, severing it from the elbow down in one clean cut.
Orihime's body slumped to the ground as the fingers that had coiled around her neck were finally loosened as his arm was amputated. She let out a dry, strained cough as she fell to her knees, gasping for breath, while Ulquiorra gazed down at his arm. He didn't even look mildly inconvenienced by having his arm chopped off, and soon it was regenerating and restoring itself like a lizard growing back a tail.
Tsubaki fluttered by Orihime's head, tugging as a few strands of hair on her head. "Come on, girlie! You're no match for him! Just leave him before he kills you!"
The redhead was wheezing as she slowly shook her head, only to weakly look up at the beastly form of her lover. "No…I'm not leaving him. I know he's in there somewhere." She staggered to her feet, fingers lightly brushing up against her neck that was tender from the talons that had been curled around it only moments before. Her voice was now nothing but a squeaky, raspy version of her usual tone as she spoke to him again.
"Ulquiorra…Please! If you're in there, please just listen to me. You have to snap out of it…Ulquiorra, it's me! Orih—"
She didn't get to finish her sentence as Ulquiorra casually knocked her out of his path by backhanding her roughly. She landed a few feet away, the blunt impact of him hand nearly knocking her out cold before she crashed into the scratchy sand. From where she lay, limp and exhausted, Orihime could have sworn she heard Ichigo crying out her name while he continued to fight off Aizen.
The infuriated fairy glared at the Espada over his cloth mask, his wings twitching in annoyance. "You'll pay for that!" With his tiny body acting like a blade, he flew towards Ulquiorra like a bullet, this time with a fiery rage that not even Orihime could hold back.
But to Ulquiorra, Tsubaki was nothing more than a fly buzzing around his head. He reached out snatched the little guy out of the air, trapping him in his grasp, only to pull his arms and stretch him out. Tsubaki let out a cry of agony as Ulquiorra effortlessly tore the fairy apart, splitting him down the middle. It was as easy as picking off the wings of a butterfly but more bloody. Tsubaki was forcibly transformed back into the shape of her hair pin, but was now nothing more than a shattered piece of glass.
Orihime could feel her spirit being torn in two as Tsubaki's death hit her heart like a tidal wave. She tried to move, tried to stand, but she was just too weak to lift herself.
Things weren't looking good for either of them. Orihime lost a member of her Shun Shun Rikka, her only means of using offensive techniques. Ulquiorra was still not responsive. Aizen clearly had the upper hand in the fight. Gin Ichimaru wasn't helping at all. And Ichigo was running out of stamina. At this rate, they would be lucky if Ulquiorra gave them all a swift death instead of slowly and painfully ripping their body apart, limb from limb, but as he done to the tiny fairy.
Sand crunched underneath his feet as Ulquiorra took a few steps towards Orihime's limp body until he was standing right in front of her. She weakly looked up at him, wondering if he was about to say anything as he stared down at her with his empty eyes. Instead, he reached out and snatched up a handful of her fiery hair, yanking her to her feet.
She could see the hunger for blood reflected in his steely gaze. She knew what he wanted to do and Orihime feared there would be no stopping him. While one hand remained tangled in her apricot locks, the other hand picked her hair clips from both sides of her head.
He didn't speak and simply looked at them as they glistened in the moonlight from above. A chip was missing off one of them—the petal on the flower that was the physical manifestation of Tsubaki—and it was as if Ulquiorra understood the connection between her fairies and her hair clips. Orihime's face contorted to an expression of horror as she could do nothing but helplessly watch as he crushed them in his grasp with ease. Her hair pins were nothing but dusty particles that blew in the wind as the sheer force of Ulquiorra's grip crushed them down into tiny, microscopic pieces.
She couldn't speak. Watching her Shun Shun Rikka perish right in front of her eyes had caused a piece of her to crumble along with them. She could feel the emptiness their presence left in her soul as her mind drowned in anguish. Her lower lip quivered as tears spilled out of her eyes, but even though her tear ducts were working properly, her mouth just refused to produce any words.
The Espada had already grown bored of dealing with her. Destroying the hair clips had not produced nearly enough blood to satisfy his need to kill. Turning his attention back towards the girl's face, he continued to hold her hair tightly in one hand while his other elbow was bent as he reared his arm back, sharp claws outstretched. The last thing Orihime could hear was Ichigo's distant shouting her name as UIquiorra plunged his hand right through her chest.
His jagged nails pierced through her skin, shattering the bones of her chest cavity until his arm had been fully pushed through and jutted out of her back. His arm had stabbed right through her like a spear before he pulled it back out, his hand soaked in her crimson blood. At that moment, Orihime was in too much shock for her body to even register the pain from now having a gaping hole through her chest, and blood flowed down her white, torn gown like a waterfall.
At first, Ulquiorra's gaze remained frozen and unfazed, as if her life had mattered so little to him and he felt neither regret nor excitement from his murderous actions. She was nothing more than a bug in his path that he had intended to squash from the start, his memories as Ulquiorra Cifer the Cuarto Espada completely disappeared into oblivion, leaving nothing but the desire to crush the world down and everything inside of it. Despite the fact this girl had been the very reason for his existence only hours ago, she was nothing more than a worthless piece of trash to him now. He had been acting on pure instinct without a hint of rationality to urge him to stop, and he soon released his grip on the girl's hair as he dropped her back down to the sands to leave her to bleed out.
"I…I'm….I'm sorry…"
He had started to walk away from the trembling female to finish off the other two opponents in the area before the female's shaky voice brought his attention back to her.
She was still breathing but she wouldn't be for long. Her injury was fatal and her life had reached the end of its term.
"I…I couldn't save you…I'm sorry, R-Raikuro…"
Ulquiorra stopped dead in his tracks as he stared down at her. The name of his former self, the name that should have triggered something within him, did not so much as even make his pulse quicken.
He watched as the girl breathed her last breath before her eyes vacantly stared back up at the dark, velvety sky of Hueco Mundo. Blood continued to ooze out of the massive hole in her chest but she was no longer in pain or struggling to talk. Whatever intentions she had of bringing his sanity back to him had been an utter failure as the white sands became soaked in a puddle of crimson.
Author's Note: Sorry for it being kind of dark. Don't worry-THIS IS NOT THE FINAL CHAPTER! I wouldn't do that to you guys, I swear.