AN- CANCELLATION NOTICE

Fuck me with a chainsaw- this message is the embodiment of my nature as a procrastinator. A good two and a half years since the last update- a good year since I properly decided to discontinue this. And only now have I got this message written. In my defence, I had difficulty summing up the plot properly. And wowzers is that a sign that a plots convoluted. So yeah. Not to mention the fact that as a writer I found this really difficult to put to paper, and was unsatisfied with all my previous message drafts.

It is with heaviest heart that I deliver this message. I am sorry to admit it, but I am shutting down UWB. It's been a wonderful ride- one where I have learned so much. The original version of this, A New Reaper, was basically my first fanfic AND SI story, so this reboot has a dear place in my heart. However, as much as I WANT to finish this, I don't believe I ever will. My interest in Bleach died a long time ago, due to bad storytelling and dwindling quality in the source material, and I really only continued writing this for three reasons: one, it was my first fic, and I wanted to see its story told; two, I grew to love my OC's and wanted their tale told; three, I enjoyed the worldbuilding.

Still, my interests have moved on, and I have no real desire to write this now- not even having looked at my plans in over a year. For one thing, I cannot complete it in any prompt time. The concept for this thing is LONG. We barely got past Arc 1. So no- there was no chance that this would see the end. So for those here and reading, I just want to say thanks for everything, and I'm sorry that this has ended this way. Keep reading on and I'll do my best to maybe clear up some questions on this fic and give some measure of closure to those interested.

OUTLINE

… Whoo boy. Where do I begin? Honestly, we barely even finished setting up the Myth Arc, so this is gonna come out as a stream-of-thought thing, and may be a bit expositiony… because we never even reached the relevant exposition points. So apologies if this comes out strangely.

Who Is Omega: Now, I am sure that this is one of the most pressing questions you have. Anyone with half an eye could see that I was setting him up to be a major antagonist- but who was he? I'll be blunt- it was Javan, wearing a Marcus-flesh-suit.

Yup. Javan. Literally the only other non-Shinigami OC character that features in the fic. In hindsight, it probably sounds both dumb and obvious. Prepare for… backstory!

The first thing that should be noted is that UWB actually takes place in the middle of an active timeloop scenario. Yup. You didn't misread that. I genuinely thought it would be a good idea to have a timeloop. But how? Why? Well, let's go to the 'first' timeline which would likely crop up in story someday. Marc makes friends, grows stronger, tries to save the day, and then at the end everyone dies. One of the simplest rules I've set up here- Fate is sentient and actively seeks to end those that change the timeline. So Fate ends up offing Marc's friends. So he does something dumb, and makes a wish on the Hogyoku to "go back". It then taps into tne fundamental part of all SI's, the ability for the soul to transition, and sends him back.

That comes back to a question I had when I first started writing SI fics- what is the one universal shared trait amongst SI's? Their ability to appear in a 'fictional' setting, so I set up the lore of UWB so that the most fundamental power of an SI is the ability to transport Mind, Body and Soul into alternate realities under the correct circumstances (Maybe they're in danger, suffered trauma, undergoing great emotional stress, etc).

So yes- Marc's initial ability to 'blink' reawakened, but played out across time as opposed to space. His Mind (Memories were sent back), but could not replace him younger selves due to Young!Javan already being in his mind occupying the space where his new memories could go- so most of it was lost. But then we get Marc's original body, and the OTHER inhabitant of the body- the Older!Javan who ends up possessing Marc's future body.

Thus while Older!Javan remembers what happens in the original timeline, Marcus doesn't. So, Older!Javan tries to use his newfound freedom to save them from their fate. He fails. And so the conditions for the 'Wish' are fulfilled, and the loop repeats again, sending them back. Older!Javan tries again and again- dozens of times. He does the typical SI antics of trying to change the timeline, doing everything he could to try and win. He has victories and losses and all that shindig. But alas, Fate would not change, and the outcome is always the same in the ways that matter- all OC's dead save Marcus and Older!Javan. See, it's a Madoka effect. You repeat the same action timeline after timeline, and eventually you begin to bind said actions into the world itself- it wouldn't change. Finally, after dozens of tries, Javan gives up.

And so Omega is born. He has an idea. He can't save them as he is. Fate always sends threats he can't tackle. But he's tired of this- he wants Marcus, his friend and partner, to remember. But he won't. He never has the MOTIVATION. He shows hints of deja-vu sometimes and even ends up parroting some things said in prior timelines, but never does he go beyond that. Has not gone through the continued experiences Omega has. So he hatches a plan to implement his own Madoka effect. He dons a mask, and then he kills Marcs friends before Fate can, one after the other, trying to force him to grow stronger. And then they fight at the end of the timeline, Omega wins, and time resets. Everytime, Omega hopes Marcus will remember. That his Friendship Boner causes something to survive the trip back in time. He drops hints, leaves clues that only can be solved with information from previous timelines, stuff like that. He is training Marc.

And eventually, results start to appear. In the PRESENT timeline onwards. This fic was planned to go through multiple iterations of the timeline, speeding up the pace significantly after the Academy, doing a detailed first run, then diverging from said timeline in the subsequent loops. I'd explore different worlds, and have Marcus change his actions based on how much and what he is starting to remember. So in one world he may focus on his Kido to try and put down Omega, in another he tries to master a Bankai, elsewhere he seeks other types of powerboosts, and there was also a memorable timeline planned for when he joins Aizen and ends up in a buddy-cop relationship with Ulquiorra. It seemed to be a fun chance to show off different Bleach AU's- where Marcus develops slightly different each time (and with a radically different Bankai in all worlds where he develops it, representing changes his Soul has been going through- though all were Star themed).

The endgame of this fic was clear though. Marcus slowly but surely remembers- and then actively teaches himself to control when/how he jumps. He masters that inherent ability of all SI's to displace themselves. Cue the real reason why Omega is doing this- he wants to save Marcus and all his friends, but he cannot do it by changing the timeline. Only by LEAVING it. In the canon Bleach verse all Marc's friends would survive due to never interacting with the fate-breaking SI, so consequently the only way he saw to end the cycle was to break it- to escape from the circle. Return Marcus to his homeworld, before he even so much as started causing butterflies.

Thus things go into a bit of a downer ending- with Marcus having done exactly that, and having managed to Blink back to his homeworld at the expense of Present!Javan and Future!Javan sacrificing themselves to give Marcus the final powerboost necessary (Since as Javan is also technically a SI, he shares the same ability). Marcus is a changed man, remembering dozens of timelines. He's forgotten his family, while his new one lurks in another world. However, something interesting happens. He sees Kasumi in the real world. This was another plot twist planned from the get go.

If this kind of shit can happen to one person… WHO THE HELL SAYS THAT IT HASN'T ALREADY HAPPENED TO OTHERS AND WILL HAPPEN AGAIN?

Kasumi was another SI from the very beginning. In Omega's cryptic prophecy, Kasumi was the one with the dark secret. A SI without knowledge of the Bleach manga, but she was from the Real World nevertheless. It was hinted at in A New Reaper, and in UWB Unohana even began setting the foundations for the existence of another 'Living Shinigami'. To cut a sad backstory short, she was the first 'human Shinigami' but kinda drew the short stick and was given to the Twelfth Squad first- until Unohana literally rescued her. Thus explaining where her stutter, attitude and disposition comes from- trauma.

Anyhow, Kasumi appears in the real world, and Marc is all "What the fuck?". Cue her revealing something- since she'd been dumped in the timeline before him, Marc leaving was basically meaningless, as there were already divergences. Likewise, the timeline changed just by virtue of him ONCE being there. It's like tossing a stone in a pond. Even if you remove the stone afterwards, the initial ripples still happened. Likewise, the act of reaching into the pond and lifting the stone causes just as many ripples- and things in the pond might even end up displaced permanently if the ripples were large enough.

So yeah. This Kasumi comes from further along in the timeline repeating bullshit (Fucking time travel plot threads). She reveals that she and the other True Companions still vaguely remembered him even when they'd never met him (As due to the timeloop bullshit, his Error status had already corrupted them), and they slowly but surely started to begin remembering former timelines too.

But they still keep fucking dying.

So Kasumi returned to recruit him. They'll die with him there or without him there, so they want him there nevertheless. Marcus agrees because he just really can't adapt to the real world now, and they return to Bleach. With one change however. Think back to the first chapter or two of UWB- namely where Marcus gets his powers. More accurately, where he breaks them. Because Javan operated as his training wheels to force his powers to activate, they broke. He reforged them into the shape and powerset of a Zanpakuto, but in doing so he lost the initial powerset he was meant to have (Being more akin to a Fullbringer before he limited himself to a Bleach style Zanpakuto). This time, he doesn't need to make that contract with Javan for a quick powerup, but instead remembers the sensation of using his powers from all those timelines, and so can consequently access his full power from the get-go. They drop in at the end of the timeline, when it was destined for everyone to die.

Then they said fuck that shit to Fate. Because friendship and Deus Ex Machina and Row Row Fight The Powah.

Together with Marcus, Team Marcus fight off the threat designed to wipe out the OC's, because Fate hadn't planned the threat to be able to deal with Marcus too (As Marcus hasn't actually even showed up there yet). Marcus promptly calls Fate out for all its bullshit and refuses to jump backwards in time anymore. He's sticking with this one timeline, and they WILL live.

To cut a long story short and a fics worth of buildup and Fate Interludes to a small summary… Fate finally bends. Fate… gives up. Just this once, Fate turns a blind eye to an error in the system, and in turn Marcus agrees to do no more meddling in the affairs of canon. "This isn't the story of Bleach. This isn't about Ichigo and his band of merry men facing the forces of evil. No. This is my story damnit. This is Marcus D Solus, living through hundreds of timelines, facing troubles with his friends by his side, and telling you to fuck off."

Cue the ending/epilogue. Marcus and his friends survive their encounter with Fate, with their crimes largely paid for. They find a nice house together in the human world, and then they just live. They don't save the world. They aren't going out of their way to change things. They don't give two shits for the affairs of Ichigo or his ilk. Because their own adventure is over, and they have each other. And that's enough for them.

…

So yeah. That was pretty much the planned fic. Obviously there were bits and bobs here and there that I couldn't touch upon, so I'll just quickly note them now.

Fate's Agents: they were other SI's that choose to work within the system instead of against it in order to escape erasure. Not gonna go into it but I had a mini pantheon of SI's set up for Fate to use, and across different timelines different SI's were planned to show up as encounters and sometimes even as the final boss on the final day of the timeline- so each timeline would feel distinctly different due to which SI was actively pursuing Marcus.

M: this is for A New Reaper fans (If any stuck around or even remember this dumb story). Back in A New Reaper, a new 'masked enemy' was introduced to work alongside Z/Omega. I'm just gonna go out and say that it was Mika. It would have been ridiculously obvious in hindsight, but M/Alpha was always going to be a Mika recruited by Javan/Omega to serve as a cross-timeline mystery of sorts. For Omega's plan to work, Marcus needed to start remembering shit and trying to act on it- and M's presence in any given timeline was going to be based on whether Marcus directly saw the death and if he remembered the previous timelines enough for Kyoka Suigetsu to be applicable (Because due to the time travel bullshit it would be totally possible to make a closed timelime Steins Gate style if either Marcus or Omega had a chat with Aizen and his bullshit illusion powers). Again, badly explained, but M and maybe over later dead OC's would have showed up as antagonists.

Marcus and the Canon crew: Interaction would have differed timeline to timeline, but there were a few cool ones planned. One time Marcus would have tried to befriend the canon cast to make their Protagonist powers his own and get them to kill Omega for him (Omega counters by causing a massacre of canon characters in the Arrancar arc). Another set of cool actions would be antagonistically back in the timeline where he joins Aizen (with Ulquiorra/Marcus replacing Ulquiorra/Yammy, and Marcus being the bitter counterpart to Ichigo who is just sick of Ichigo being so bullshit all the time)- this timeline also included Aizen winning and the timeloop temporarily breaking due to the looping condition not occurring, leading to a mini underground-rebellion arc where Marcus joins team Ichigo and the remnants of the defiant Lieutenants to battle God!Aizen, and with Omega being a disliked ally who was really in it just to steal the Hogyoku and personally rekick the timeloop.

Its dumb. But a fun dumb, I'd hoped.

…

DAMN. That was a long explanation. Apologies for all that- I've just written 2K's of a plot synopsis for a timeloop fic that hadn't even hit the second timeline. Pretty shitty, huh? I can't say it was necessarily a good fanfic to tell. It was unconventional. Hell, by this point in time when I constructed this plot I'd basically settled for writing an original story that merely uses the backdrop of SI stories and Bleach to tell it.

When I began this fic back in my wee days as an author, there were certain things I wanted to explore. I wanted to show that in a story, a massive world exists beyond that of the Protagonist Ichigo, and that even without him the world continues to turn. Marcus sure didn't need to be close to him to get into trouble- he had his own messes to deal with. I wanted to show the realistic consequences of slapping a fairly normal teenager into a high power setting like Bleach- namely the fact that not everyone has Ichigo's growth rate, and that it takes ridiculous amounts of effort to reach anywhere close to his level.

More than that- I wanted to explore SI's as a genre. I wanted to explore the world of SI's- with a universal system for how/why SI's happen (Which I didn't fully explain here), and account for why there aren't hundreds of SI's bumming about the multiverse with their ridiculous powers. And I wanted to explore a very specific type of conflict- the unwinnable.

This fic was never about Ichigo or saving the world. Its Marcus' story from beginning to end. It all comes down to Marcus VS Fate…

I wanted to tell a story focused on OC's, and see if I could make an audience fall in love with them. I wanted to explore SI VS SI combat. I wanted to see my one SI develop in many ways. Hell, I planned for him to develop a different Bankai each time based upon his experiences. And I wanted to see the OC's change too- to see them develop over time.

In other words, to say this was a Bleach fanfic by the end is really untrue. It was more of an OC/SI Fanfic, with that Bleach backdrop. It was about Marcus finally finding that happy ending.

This was likely a dumb fanfic. Just rereading the last 2K words makes me cringe a little at my first planned fanfic. But… I can't bring myself to hate it. There were a lot of problems. OC heavy, too much original lore and content, a probably unnecessarily convoluted timeloop plot thread, and an overall idea that was just too ambitious for me to realistically pull off. Despite this though… I enjoyed writing this, and for a long time it was a joy to tackle and develop the OC's. I like to think that given enough time and development it could have worked- but never would have been very successful with readers due to there being just too many dumb things to deal with as an entry barrier.

With some hindsight, if I were to ever restart this fic again, I'd probably scrap the timeloop bullshit. I'd keep some of the common themes, but settle for telling the expanded story of only a single very off the rails timeline. If I were to include the timeline stuff, I'd likely restructure the whole thing and remove the murder mystery vibes so I can settle it all in a single loop- as if it were simply the final one.

If anybody wants any extra details, feel free to PM me and I'll share them- but I think this pretty much sums up what the overall intent of it all was.

END OUTLINE

Fuck me over.

So yes. This was my first proper fanfic. It has a special place in my heart. Its time is over, but I'll remember it. But you too, reader, have a special place too, those that cared enough to read the last 2K words of trash and get to the end. Those of you that cared to sit through that dumb plot synopsis even two and a half years after the last update, because you cared enough to see what happened. I want to thank you for all the support- whether you followed, reviewed or just read. Whether you were there from A New Reaper, whether you joined with UWB, or whether you jumped in at the end. I want to thank you for being my audience, for reading my words, and giving this fic a try. Every review was a delight, every PM a delight, and every follow/fave a smile upon my face.

I'm bringing this to a close, and with it, I feel a part of my life. I began this in Secondary School, when I first began properly writing, and it has stayed with me right through to the beginning of university (Wow, I should have dropped this earlier). I learned a lot from this, and I can't bring myself to hate this. No. I will always remember UWB.

This is goodbye. See you later Marcus- you shonen asshat. It's been fun, Omega, you cliché prick. I liked working with you, Mika, Kasumi, Daichi and Hayato. And while it lasted, Bleach was my first and favourite fandom, and it was a pleasure to write for it. For you.

I still write. I have many a fanfic still on the go (Albeit with slower updates due to the busy lifestyle of adulthood). SI Seeking Straw Hat may whet any SI appetite you have, while Into Fire and Into Ice is a Persona style Multcross SI story that should be a fun romp. I've also been crossposting Fate Finality from Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity, and people seem to like that, so you might enjoy that too.

So if I see you again reading another of my fics, it will be a pleasure to see you there. If not, then thanks for the fun ride. Goodbye, everybody, so long and thanks for all the fish (or butterflies, in this instance). RIP: Upon The Wingbeat of Butterflies: 5/7/2014 – 23/02/2019

… Undying Soul out.