The weather was humid and the sky a white hot grey that made Mina squint as she trudged through the most desolate and run down village she'd com across yet. Everything was shabby and falling apart, the once prosperous town was now full with machiyas that sported numerous make-shift fixes to keep the cold out during the night and keep bare minimum privacy, none of the doorways were actually occupied by working doors, some had shōji doors leaning on the entranceway, others had tatami mats half-heartedly sewn together and nailed to the top of the doorway, some just had tattered old kimonos in place of a door.
There was scarcely a person out, anyone she did see out and about was some rugged looking man, tanned, wrinkled and scarred, staring at her doggedly. The closer she came to her father's house, the more rough looking men, not together as such, but spread about at their respective homes, either leaning casually against their little machiyas or sitting on the ground toiling with something useless. There was not one woman that she'd seen yet, just the gruff old men staring her down and she passed them.
She stared bleakly at the ground ahead of her, only looking away every so often to keep an eye on where she was headed. This was supposed to be the fun, dangerous part. That was back when she was in her own neighborhood, where none of the boys paid any attention to her so she just happily assumed she'd be safe where other girls weren't. Here, she became painfully aware of her body and the lack of any other woman in sight but herself.
She focussed intensely on the feeling in her abdomen where her fear lay, pushing it down softly and avoiding any sudden movements that would draw anymore attention to her. She walked smoothly without stopping, tried not to swing her hips too much or have any bounce in her step that would exaggerate any movement of her chest. Her jaw was clenched and her fists balled up.
Her dad's house was only a few yards away, and she sped her pace just the slightest bit. If she could just make it there she'd be fine. If she could just get away from the stares everything would be okay. She was almost holding her breath, and every time she breathed out too harshly in the slightest it sounded so loud it startled her.
A serious little white haired boy living in the outskirts of west Rukongai gave her a map and helped her draw a guide to where she was headed in the north after allowing her to stay with him and his grandmother after her horrible night of wandering aimlessly through the woods. She knew from conversations overheard by her about her father that his house was the only well kept machiya in the district. So she searched, getting a good aerial view of the neighborhood and was careful not to shunpo where there were people, aware that the shunpo was an ability only Shinigami were trained to have, and people around here were not very friendly toward Shinigami.
Unfortunately, she found that her grey kosode and hakama were too heavy for the weather, and she found that the Shihakūshō was so light and airy and she moved so easily in it. She decided to forego the black kosode, though, going in only a white kimono and black hakama, which felt good and breezy but still attracted some unwanted attention, especially as there was no kosode to hide her kaiken, some people thought she was a Shinigami anyway, and that that was her zanpakutō.
She approached her father's house and opened the one sliding shōji in the neighborhood and promptly shut it behind her. Inside there was an actual floor, tatami, and a kitchen, with some flat cushions for seats. The next room was an actual bedroom, with a futon mattress and everything. No hay jabbing into her sides! In the room across from that one was a private bathtub. She'd use that when her dad was done running errands or whatever, so he could keep away the creeps outside the house.
Her physical exhaustion overwhelmed her anxiety and she crashed on the futon mattress.
A coarse hand held the nape of her neck with the grip of the devil. Her legs were pinned down and she tried move her arms but those were seized and pinned to her back. She felt the man on her back pull her up by her neck and it was so, so painful. She turned her eyes to her right and saw an ugly man pull a jagged sword out of a sheath tucked into his obi. She whimpered involuntarily and closed her eyes.
"This is no place for women," he told her in his low, scratchy voice as he perched one knee on the futon and raised his sword to her throat. "I'll show you how we treat women here in good ol' district 66," he breathed into her ear and chuckled and she looked away with utter disgust. He started to untie her obi sash as a third man rummaged through her belongings.
"Sir!" the man said, she heard him pull something out.
"What is it?" asked the man holding the sword to her throat, irritated. She saw his bloodshot eyes widen with the purest rage before directing his hateful eyes toward her. The man held up her squad 13 badge and the rest of her Shihakūshō.
"A soul reaper." He was so full of rage, she could feel him shaking. One of his eyes twitched.
"Let me teach you a thing or two about reaping souls." He jerked her head back by the hair on the front of her head and pressed his dull sword to her throat, the guard of his katana pressed against her neck. He pressed harder and she sobbed. In one curt movement he pulled and she let out a blood-curdling scream, while he laughed maniacally and sawed at her neck.
The screaming stopped. Her head went limp. He stared in horror at the sight before him. As he held his sword, he stared at the blade with absolute terror, while his henchmen looked on in confusion. The blade of his sword was a small nub, the rest had melted like butter onto the bed and her lap. Her face donned look of a corpse but the entirety of both of her eyes glowed a supernatural green color. The gaping wound on her neck was disappearing like a boat sinking into the ocean.
Her head lifted up as if it were being pulled by a string and it wobbled a little bit, doing a balancing act on her neck. Then her head turned and she looked right through him. Her elbow lifted up, and then her forearm, and her hand upturned and pressed to his face. He let out a long screech until his voice gave out, his mouth agape in a silent scream.
Skin and blood oozed between her fingers and dripped onto the floor like melting wax. She watched the skin fall, blankly, pulled her hand from his face and and gazed at it, head tilted to the side, in passive fascination at the chunks of flesh and deep, thick maroon glazing her palm. A pure, jade tear fell from her eye and and clicked onto the floor.
She whipped her head around to stare at the men frozen with fear who'd witnessed the hideous scene before them. The whites of her eyes now shown, almost too much as her eyes were wide with the wildness of a cat about to pounce. She had no pupils, just irises glowing a fiery green.
One man bolted out the door and her head twitched in his direction before shunpo-ing after him, right foot hitting the ground just once, covering about 12 feet in one leap, before jumping on his back and knocking him into the dirt. She punched his head into the ground, and then pressed her four fingers, thumb tucked into her palm, with incredible pressure into head, starting at the hairline and then dragging backwards leaving streaks of third degree burns on his scalp. She held his head down by pushing on the nape of his neck with her other hand and the dirt muffled his screams before he passed out.
The other man had run almost a block before she was finished with the first and she got up, stomping on and digging her heal into the man below her, forcing one last grunt out of him before running after the other with twice his speed, catching up to him faster than he could run. She jumped high and kicked him in the back with both legs, making trip and forcing the air out of his lungs. She fell onto the ground and got back up immediately, dropped her weight, knees first, into his back. She took him by the wrists and jerked both of his arms back, popping one of his shoulders out of its socket, untied her obi and bound his hands together with it. Then she punched the back of his head into the ground until she saw small rivers of blood start to wander from his face.
A short ways away, a bald man in a short white kimono with a black obi and black trim stared at her with focussed fascination. There wasn't a trace of fear in him, just complete and utter engrossment mixed with a twisted excitement. He got up from the place where he'd been lounging before and during all the commotion and started in her direction. She was straddling the back of the man on the ground, tying her obi back around her waist.
"Hey you beast! Come here and fight me!" he hollered at her. Her head flicked up to see him as she jerked the knot of her obi together and lifted herself up.
She shunpo-ed to the polished house and went inside and he followed her in a full sprint. There was complete silence, eerily so. As he reached the door he heard a gut-wrenching, fearful scream that made him flinch. There was the same girl, but completely different from how he'd seen her a moment ago. She burst out of the house, sobbing and whimpering in terror. She saw him, flinched, saw the bodies in the street and made her way to the other side of the house. She fell against it, hitting the wall with her back and slid down it pitifully. Inside he saw the body of a man with a severely mutilated face, blood all over the place.
Her chest hurt, she couldn't breath. She looked at her hand and held it as far away from her as she could. She wish she could just cut it off. She put her head in the direction opposite of her hand and nestled her forehead into the crook of her elbow, hiding her eyes. She sobbed so hard she couldn't breath properly. Her mouth was wide open, letting out a few wheezes here and there.
She heard footsteps crunching in the dirt in her direction and looked up in fearful anticipation, breathing rapidly and lightly. A shiny, bald head poked out curiously around the corner and she pushed her body back with her legs.
"No. no. no, no no no no, please," she begged him. She was completely vulnerable, and she dreaded whatever was about to happen next. He was standing over her now. He took his sword, pointed it at her and her face contorted into dread. Then he tossed it in her direction. She took the sword, unsheathed it and pointed it in his direction, pushing herself back away from him further. He kneeled down so he wasn't looming over her.
"You want me to get that guy outta there for ya?" She nodded, cautiously, waiting for the 'Well, what do I get out of it?' It never came. He got back up and walked into the house. Moments later she heard the sound of him dragging the heavy body out into the woods and heaving it into the foliage. The thump of the body hitting the ground was loud, like the man had picked up the entire weight of the body. She felt intimidated and clutched the sword closer to her.
She heard him walk back into the house. She got up and creeped toward the door, holding the sword firmly in front of her chest, and heard the water from the private bath start to run. She heard some rummaging and some footsteps and water slapping on the tatami floor. Walking into the house and peaking around the bedroom door, she saw him sitting on his knees pushing a cloth back and forth on the floor and wringing out soapy water and blood into a large bowl, sometimes picking up little pieces of flesh and flicking them in with the bloody water.
He was cleaning up the remnants of the body. In a strange, horrible way it was almost endearing that he'd taken up the worst task imaginable for her, but the fact was that this man was casually cleaning up pieces that made up a person and didn't seem to be unsettled by any of it, at all, like she was. She couldn't understand why he was doing any of this for her, if he was doing it for her (maybe he got off on this kind of thing?). She watched him in horrified fascination, eventually making her way into the bathroom, once he dumped his blood bowl in the woods and the smell died down a little bit, where she ran water.
She followed his suit, filling a large bowl up with water and washing her blood encrusted hand in it. She laughed a little bit to herself. She had her own little blood bowl going. Her and this strange man, just cooking up a couple batches of blood soup together. With death mingling in every breath she took, she thought the best she could do in this moment was find the humor in it all.
Satisfied with the cleanliness of her hand, she took out her blood bowl and dumped it on the street outside the house, glanced at the man laying on the street and sauntered back inside. She'd already compartmentalized most of it and was numb to the situation. She knew this man could probably kill her if he wanted to, but she'd already accepted that her chances of survival were low here so she didn't worry about it. At all.
She fell onto the bed, got comfy, and watched him as she started to fall asleep. He'd cleaned up most of the mess, and was now squishing a lemon he'd found in the kitchen over the blood stains to help cover up the smell. He'd even scrubbed the edge of the bed.
He found his sword on the floor of the bathroom, picked it up and sat outside, guarding the place. Unbeknownst to her, this girl had just beaten some of the toughest gangsters in Rukongai, and more would come looking for vengeance. He was going to take full advantage of this opportunity to have some fun. If he was lucky, he'd get to fight whatever the hell killed these three men today.