AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm glad I didn't make you guys wait too long since the previous chapter! I'm working diligently to wrap up this fanfic once and for all so the ending will be here very soon. I've been rewatching episodes of Bleach, doing lots of research since I couldn't remember for the life of me how Aizen was canonically defeated. I've added my own twist to things, of course, so a lot of this chapter does not line up with the canon events at all of the final battle with Aizen. I'll hopefully have another update in the next week.
I know over the past few years I've been "I'll be ending this in just two chapters!" and here it is five or six chapters later. Big oof. That being said, once this fanfic is actually finished, I'll be going back and doing a major overhaul in editing. I've been working on this fanfic for about ten years now and my initial ideas and plans have drastically changed for it over time. I'm sure there's tons of plot holes, lots of conflicting plot twists, and so on, so one day I will take the time to fix everything up and make it flow better.
That being said, I hope you enjoy this chapter! Thank you for being on this journey with me and for being patient with me for all these years.
"You should just give up now. I have finally transcended the gods and I alone will come out of this victoriously!"
Even with the joint efforts of Ulquiorra, Ichigo Kurosaki, and Gin Ichimaru, Aizen Sosuke was just not going down. The Hogyoku had fused with his body, healing each of the injuries he sustained as soon as he got them. It was reacting to his anger, making him an unstoppable force, and the fight was starting to look more and more hopeless the longer it went on.
Ulquiorra had tapped into his second Resurreccion again, firing his Cero in an attempt to blow off his former master's limbs, but the injuries kept healing, rendering Aizen immune to all of their attacks.
"Don't you see? The Hogyoku will not allow me to fail here today. You could send the entire Gotei 13 to me right now and not a single one of them would be able to defeat me. Of course, I'm sure they're all dead by now, anyways. I'm certain the other Espada have dealt with them all already back in that fake Karakura Town replica you tried to trick them with." He proudly stated, huffing out his chest. He was in his final transformation, his long, brown hair whipping in the wind as several moth-like wigs protruded from his back. He looked more like a monster than a man, his skin thicker than steel, and he had never felt more powerful in his life.
Ulquiorra's amber eyes focused on Aizen as he tried to figure out a successful method of defeating him. Gin had already tried to separate the Hogyoku from Aizen's body in an attempt to steal his power away, but even that had been in vain. The Hogyoku had a will of its own and had already merged with Aizen's soul, giving him all the powers and abilities he could ever want.
Aizen had already revealed the true power of the Hogyoku. At first, everyone had believed that the small orb was mostly capable of breaking down the boundaries between Hollows and Shinigami, allowing them to fuse their powers together and create new types of beings. Once Aizen had fused himself with it, he learned that it was capable of far more than just that.
The Hogyoku was able to sense the hearts of those around it, being able to materialize one's deepest desires. Since it was now a part of Aizen's soul and body, it would be able to give him any power he desired. If he wanted to be invincible, it would give him immortality beyond his wildest dreams. He was so hungry for power, so desperate to become the ultimate god, and the Hogyoku was going to grant every last wish of his as long as it acknowledged him as a worthy master.
Ichigo was breathing heavily, staring down the heinous man before him. This entire time, he had wanted Aizen to believe he had been giving it his all and that he had nothing else up his sleeve, but it was far from the truth. There was still one attack he had been holding back from, one he had only planned to use in a final act of desperation. If it failed, he would then have nothing else to give, and the friends and family he had worked so hard to protect until now would be at Aizen's mercy. The time to use it was now.
The Final Getsuga Tenshou.
Ichigo knew what it meant to use that attack. He would become Getsuga itself, and in return, he would lose all of his Shinigami powers in the aftermath. This needed to work. He needed to destroy Aizen with this one final attack or else all would be lost, and the sacrifice Orihime had made would have all been in vain.
"Stand back," he told Ulquiorra and Gin as dark energy began to swirl around him. His own appearance began to change as his orange hair tripled in length and faded into a shade as black as the midnight sky. Gray bandages covered his face and upper torso as black Reiatsu enveloped his body.
Using the technique known as Mugetsu, Ichigo sent a black veil hurdling towards Aizen, trapping him absolute darkness. The already dark skies of Hueco Mundo were blanketed by the Reiatsu, and not even the stars could be seen through it. The powerful burst of energy had forced Ulquiorra and Gin backwards as they stood on their guard behind Ichigo, eagerly waiting to see if their former leader had been finally taken down by such an incredible attack.
Time seemed to stop as Aizen was dragged to the ground by the obsidian wall of Reiatsu, crushing him with its overwhelming strength. All of Ichigo's strength was channeled into this one, final attack. When the darkness of the Mugetsu finally subsided, the group was surprised to see Aizen had not been destroyed and was, in fact, still breathing.
His injuries were once again healing up as he climbed to his feet, and Ichigo's pulse quickened as he felt his Shinigami powers slowly slipping away from him. His long, dark hair had reverted back to its usual orange shade as the teenage boy collapsed to his knees, completely spent and out of all other options.
"You have lost, Ichigo Kurosaki," Aizen spoke calmly. The Zanpakuto at his side was crumbling away, and the man smirked confidently, believing that it meant that he had become so powerful that he no longer needed his sword. "My Zanpakuto is fading away. Like you, I have become one with the Zanpakuto and its powers. Oh, but I do believe you no longer have that power, do you?"
"Hey may not be able to fight anymore, but I still can," Ulquiorra grunted as he held out his hand, summoning his Lanza del Relampago, the javelin made of his raw energy. He hurled the powerful weapon towards Aizen who had attempted to dodge it by simply stepping to the side. The glowing javelin had just barely graced past his cheek, forming a small cut from his cheek bone down to his jaw.
"Did you really think that could work? You only stood a chance against me when you were drowning in the pain of your human memories, but your feelings for the girl brought you back. You sacrificed power for love, but it got you nowhere." Aizen scoffed, slightly amused by Ulquiorra's pathetic attempt at trying to kill him. "You all have nothing left. You have already lost. Give into your fate."
Ulquiorra stared long and hard at the man before noticing that the cut on his cheek wasn't healing. Each one of his other injuries had immediately sealed up upon impact, but the small cut Ulquiorra had just inflicted was still there. A thin stream of blood trickled down his face, and suddenly it was made known that things were changing. The battle could still be turned in their favor.
"The Hogyoku is rejecting him!" Gin said, a wide grin spreading across his face. "Now's our chance!"
Ulquiorra wasn't convinced that was the case. The shards of the orb were still glowing inside of his chest, still acknowledging that Aizen was its master, but the man's monstruous appearance was slowly changing again. He was turning back to his original self, his hair even shortening, as he began to look just like he did back when he was a regular Shinigami. He no longer had wings jutting out from his back and his clothes were torn of shreds.
"What…the hell is happening?!" Aizen grumbled to himself, staring down at his body. "There's no way that boy could have done this to me with his final attack! Its impossible!"
"Of course," Ulquiorra breathed. It was all making sense now. "The Hogyoku brings out your deepest desires. Aizen…What you truly wish for isn't to be a god, is it?"
Aizen, trembling with anger, glared at his subordinate with his a fiery hatred swirling in his eyes. "YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT ME! NO MATTER WHAT!"
"What you truly want…is just to be a regular Shinigami, isn't it? For things to go back to normal," Gin stepped in. "You secretly long for the days you spent with your squad, with Momo Hinamori, and you wish you could return to that point. You tried to stifle your own emotions, forcing yourself to detach yourself from sentimental memories, but your heart is weaker than you ever anticipated." The silver haired man took the opportunity to charge at Aizen, his own Zanpakuto unsheathed and ready to pierce through Aizen's skin while his strength was lowered.
Proving that he wasn't down for the count yet, Aizen fired a blast of Reiatsu that was strong enough to hit Gin directly in the chest, forcing him to fly back. "You should know better than to corner an injured wild animal, Gin!" he spat. "They have a tendency to show their teeth in an act of desperation."
Gin, having already expended so much energy himself, had been thrown off guard by Aizen's ability to deal a heavy blow. "I-Impossible! You're just a mere Shinigami now!"
"Yes, but you're forgetting that even as just a Shinigami, I was always stronger than you," he gloated before firing more blasts of Reiatsu at his ex-partner. The beams hit him like fist-sized bullets, tearing through him and burning the flesh off his bones.
Exhausted and injured, Gin was temporarily knocked out of commission, his breathing coming in short gasps for air as blurt spurted out from gaping holes all across his body.
Without his powers, Ichigo was useless, and Gin would take a bit to recover from the nearly fatal injuries Aizen had so graciously left him with. The only one that stood in his way was Ulquiorra.
The Fourth Espada had already exerted a lot of his own energy earlier, and while he could still maintain his second Resurreccion, it was clear that his own power levels were steadily decreasing. Both he and Aizen were tired, weary from their constant battling, and the fate of Soul Society and even Karakura Town was entirely up to Ulquiorra.
Aizen was back to being a Shinigami but the Hogyoku was still embedded into his body. If Ulquiorra played his cards right, he could still beat his former master.
Aizen took a step forward, but before he even lifted a finger, a wound on his shoulder slowly reopened. A gash on his chest had formed, and his body ached with sheer pain. "W-What is happening?!" His body was soon covered in cuts and bruises of all sizes as the shards of the Hogyoku began to burn inside of his chest, making his insides feel like they were on fire.
"Hm, it seems Gin was right. The Hogyoku is no longer recognizing you as its master. It seems to want nothing to do with a pathetic Shinigami," Ulquiorra commented.
"This…This can't be," Aizen growled as he struggled to remain on his feet. He could feel his strength slowly leaving him, a feeling Ichigo Kurosaki had been able to relate to when he had felt his Shinigami powers exiting his body. The once powerful ruler of Las Noches was now on borrowed time. The Final Getsuga Tenshou had actually inflicted a lot of damage on his body, and now that he was losing his god-like strength, the healing effects of the Hogyoku were wearing off.
The winds of victory were no longer blowing in his direction, and Aizen knew it. He tried with all his might to regain his lost power, but the more he tried to channel his energy, the more he realized just how weak he was growing with every passing second.
"Let's finish this," Ulquiorra said calmly before making the first move.
Ulquiorra used his long, demon-like tail as a whip. He curled it around Aizen's waist, lifting the man off the ground with ease, before slamming him back down roughly. A cloud of sand exploded into the air as Aizen's weakened body crashed down on it hard. The brunette struggled to sit up on his knees before his eyes fell where Orihime's lifeless body that lay about fifty feet from him. Her spirit was still standing by her body, connected by the Chain of Fate attached to her chest, as she watched the battle from a safe spot.
The girl. Of course. He still had the shards of the Hogyoku wedged into his body. If he could offer pieces of it to her, it should be enough to bring her back to life and put her spirit back in her body. With the powers of the Shun Shun Rikka, she could heal his injuries and restore his strength. She could probably even use her powers to make the Hogyoku recognize his power once more.
Ulquiorra could see where his gaze was falling, and he stepped forward to block Aizen's path, not allowing him to take even one step towards his lover.
Staggering to his feet, Aizen turned his attention from the girl back to the Fourth Espada. "There was once a time when you were my favorite henchman," the young man chuckled under his breath, shaking his head. "There is still a chance you can save the girl, but if you kill me now, there will be no bringing her back. I'll make sure the Hogyoku dies along with me."
With his entire body tensing up, Ulquiorra continued to stare down at Aizen with a burning intensity in his golden eyes. Aizen had never known the Espada was capable of shooting anyone such a cold, deadly look, but his memories, along with his emotions, had been released from their internal imprisonment, allowing him to freely express the feelings that flared up within in his soul.
When the beast-like Espada didn't respond, Aizen continued, knowing he had Ulquiorra's full attention. "Join my side again, Ulquiorra. I will heal your precious princess using the Hogyoku, and I will even forgive your treachery against me. We can still take over Soul Society, you and I."
He thought on Aizen's words for a moment before casting his gaze back to where his lover's ghost was standing. He wasn't sure how much longer her spirit would linger in Hueco Mundo before she needed to pass onto Soul Society. If she stayed in this place for too long, surrounded by the energy of Hollows and Arrancar alike, she risked turning into something she would have never wanted to become. He couldn't let her become Hollow no matter what.
Aizen, however, was right. He could use the Hogyoku to save her. If it had the power to bring Hollows back to life and turn them into Arrancar, it could certainly bring a human back from the dead. But if Orihime came back to life, he would make her use her powers to heal his injuries and possibly even make him stronger than before. She might even have the power to turn him back into the monster the Hogyoku had once made him, negating all the hard work Ichigo Kurosaki's Mugetsu had done.
"She would never agree to heal you," Ulquiorra said in a low, firm voice. As much as he wanted to bring her back to life, he wouldn't let Aizen abuse her abilities. She was no longer his pawn, and Ulquiorra would stop at nothing to keep him from getting his hands on her.
Aizen's grin broadened. "That's where you're wrong. She would do anything to save you, even betray her own kind."
Ulquiorra wasn't sure what Aizen was getting at, but by the time he heard the voice of Gin Ichimaru shouting at him to 'look out', it was too late.
Using the last bit of his energy, Aizen used a high-level Kido to seal Ulquiorra in a black coffin. Hado #90, Kurohitsugi.
Before Ulquiorra had any time to react, he was encased in Aizen's spiritual energy, trapped in total darkness before several spear-like protrusions pieced through the box, stabbing into Ulquiorra from all corners. The sharp ends jabbed straight through his insides, impaling his arms, legs, and torso on the blades. He tried to cry out in pain, but the laceration through his throat prevented from being able to utter a single sound. Intense pain filled his senses, and he was completely immobilized by Aizen's attack.
Aizen kept the Espada locked inside the black coffin of death before he set his sights on Orihime once again. He had used all his energy in that final Kido, and he was just as weak and powerless as Ichigo Kurosaki who was now lying unconscious in the soft sand.
The only difference between he and the boy was that Aizen wouldn't stay this way for long with the help of Orihime Inoue.
The girl had been watching everything from her spot on the sidelines. With the chain holding her hostage to her body, she couldn't run or try to escape, but after everything she just witnessed, she wasn't about to try and leave even if she could.
"Let him go, Aizen!" She demanded, angry tears streaming down her cheeks. His movements were slow, almost sluggish, as he slowly approached her with a limp to his step. He was bleeding profusely from his own injuries, finding it impossibly difficult just to walk, and Orihime's gut told her that she was his last hope of accomplishing his goals.
"I can't heal you," the spirit pointed out to him, nodding to her bloody corpse. "I'm dead and I can't use my powers. So don't come any closer to me!"
He didn't say anything until he was finally standing in front of her, outstretching a hand towards her. Terrified eyes stared at his palm before looking past his shoulder to where a large, black box floated in the air in the middle of the battlefield. She couldn't see inside but she had seen Aizen lock Ulquiorra within it She knew an iron maiden when she saw one, and her heart sank picturing the amount of pain he was in. Even as a Plus, Orihime could sense that her lover was still alive, albeit barely, thanks to his regenerative abilities.
But how long would he last in such a state?
"You want to save him, don't you?" Aizen asked in a deep, gravelly voice, making her flinch. "You still can. I can bring you back to life."
With his thumb and index finger, the man dug through the skin on his chest with sharp fingers, slowly pulling pieces of the Hogyoku out of his body along with his torn flesh. They looked like tiny crystals in his bloody hand, gleaming a soft shade of neon purple underneath the moonlight, and he held it out to her so she could take a closer look.
"If I insert this into your body, you will be brought back to life," he calmly explained, watching as her eyes flickered from disbelief to fear. She was hesitant to trust him as she took a step away from him, the chain tugging painfully from the hole in her chest, keeping her place like a dog on a leash.
"If you bring me back," she stammered out, hands trembling at her side. "Then you'll release Ulquiorra from that thing?"
"I'll do even better than that," Aizen said, a pleasant smile on his handsome face. "If I bring you back and you restore all my strength using the power of the Shun Shun Rikka, I'll even let him live. You can heal him and the two of you can live happily ever after in Las Noches. You two can rule over Hueco Mundo unopposed, as king and queen, and you have my word that I will not harm either of you once Soul Society is mine."
She bit her lower lip, taking in the heaviness of his offer. Her eyes kept shifting from the hanging coffin in the sky back to Aizen's face, searching for any signs of a lie.
"I can heal your wounds, but I can't change you who are," she said, shaking her head. "You still won't have the power to take on all of Soul Society."
His wicked smile never wavered, the hand with the Hogyoku remnants still held out. "Your powers have the ability to reject time and space, so I believe you can undo the negative effects the Hogyoku had on me. For some reason, this treacherous object actually thought I wanted to become a Shinigami again, so you will undo this side-effect so that I can be the god that I'm meant to be."
"How…How do you know that will work?"
"You, my dear, have always been capable of much more than you ever believed," he calmly explained. "The Hogyoku is what gave you your powers from the start. The Hogyoku can sense the thoughts and wishes of those around it, bringing life to their desires, and it felt the strong desire burning within you to protect your friends, thus granting you powers. It had been sleeping within Rukia Kuchiki's body before I took it from her, and you just happened to be one of the lucky ones it affected while it was still inside of Rukia."
Despite the fact she knew time was running out for Ulquiorra, there were still other questions that needed to be asked before she could make a decision. "How do I know you won't just kill Ulquiorra once I help you?"
He thought for a moment before offering an honest answer. "Ulquiorra will pose no threat to me even if he is at full strength. If he chooses to continue to attack me, I will retaliate, but I trust that you will keep him at bay. Allowing him to continue to challenge me would only be a death wish for him, I'm afraid, but I'm sure he will be compliant seeing as how I'm so graciously bringing his girlfriend back from the grave."
She debated his offer, unsure of what to do. If she refused to heal him, Ulquiorra would die…but if she healed him, so many other lives would be lost.
"What about Kurosaki-kun?" She asked in a soft voice.
"You have my word that the boy will be spared as well. He no longer possesses Shinigami powers and can't even stand. Killing him would be of no value to me."
So both Ulquiorra and Ichigo would survive if she restored Aizen's powers? She couldn't bring herself to ask about what would happen to all the other humans of the world; there was no way he would have changed his plans for world domination just because she asked. He planned to kill the Gotei 13 and all Shinigami in Soul Society, and if the humans were lucky, they would be spared only to become his slaves in the new world he hoped to build.
Many lives would be lost, but she would still have Ulquiorra, the most important person to her. Even if she didn't heal Aizen, she hadn't the faintest clue how the others were fairing off in the battle in the fake Karakura Town. They could already all be dead, for all she knew. Chad, Rukia, Renji, Rangiku…Even Tatsuki could have already fallen to the Espada army, and knowing Aizen, he would find a way to get what he wanted with or without her help.
At least this way there was a chance to save Ulquiorra and the two of them could live happily ever after, away from Aizen and his diabolical plans.
"It's your choice, Orihime," he told her. "But time is running out. Ulquiorra won't last more than a few minutes inside the Kurohitsugi. You have the power to save him, to put an end to all of this. You two can be free."
She had to make a decision. Deep down, she knew what she had to do, even if it meant that a sacrifice must be made.