Chapter 8: Total War.
Soul Society is an unimaginably huge place. So large that defending it takes quite a bit of work. Merely getting the soldiers to the places were fighting has broken out takes no small amount of effort. Fortunately, this problem had been tackled by the science division quite a few years ago and they had come up with an effective solution: interdimensional portals. With a few minor adjustments they were able to use the same gates that transport Death Gods to the living world to teleport warriors to certain key points scattered throughout Soul Society.
By using this technology the Eleventh Squad was able to reach the sixty ninth southern district less than three hours after Ikkaku's death. But this was already much too late. The amount of destruction that greeted the first Death Gods through the portal was all but indescribable. Buildings were wrecked and crushed all about them. Several piles of ash and rubble still housed the dying flames that had ravaged them not to long ago. And there were bodies everywhere around them. Even the Eleventh Squad, whose members regularly got drunk on battle, violence and the thought of death, were shocked and appalled at the sight of what had happened there.
The call went back to Soul Society requesting a full contingent of the Fourth Squad's medical Core to come and help save the dying. They came quickly all under the leadership of the Fourth Squad's Seventh Seat Hanataro. Once a medical camp had been set up the leader of the Eleventh Squad arrived on scene.
Captain Zaraki Kenpachi was an imposing man to say the least. He stood almost seven feet tall dwarfing all of his own troops. His body was covered in old scares, most prominent of which was a long slash across his one good eye. His other eye was covered in a black eye patch and his hair was done up in several long spikes with bells attacked to the ends. But even those wild sights couldn't draw attention away from the demonic smile that almost always plastered his face.
The moment he arrived the bloodlust could be felt in the air. The man longed for war and violence, the sight of destruction around him only caused his blood to boil in anticipation of the coming fight. Far worse was the effect that his presence had on his men. Every one of them had now forgotten the destruction they had seen, and their minds were focused on the fight to come. All of them were ready to kill or to die, but either way, they were going to have fun doing it. After a few brief moments of men laughing quietly to themselves, and swords sliding in and out of their holster as they eagerly awaited a chance to cut and slice at something, anything; the captain spoke.
"Listen up." He said in a slow voice that grated across the ears like a rusty blade over an old rock. "I know you all are eager for a chance to fight, but whatever you do, don't kill that hollow. That thing has probably killed my third seat Ikkaku, I can't wait for a chance to fight something like that. So have all the fun you want, you can even die if you want to, but bring that hollow back to me, so we can all have a great time."
The men shouted and scattered. In truth, any speech at all could've sent them running like that. They didn't care about what was said, all they cared about was what they could do. And now they could have a good time. Far away from them all a pair of golden eyes watched the group scatter. One of those eyes longed for a chance to meet all those soldiers and kill them one by one. The other eye was too impatient, it wanted to get away from here already and be done with this nonsense. Both eyes did not like the look of that captain.
Skip
Hanataro set to work on the patient before him immediately. His hands moved furiously up and down the patient's body as he tried desperately to cheat death and preserve a life. The patient himself was a host of conundrums and inconsistencies. On the first hand, the wounds looked rather serious. There was a lot of blood and the patient was clearly in quite mind numbing pain. But on the other hand the wound itself wasn't that deep, and while there was a lot of blood loss there wasn't any serious damage. Yet on a third hand, and this worried Hanataro since he was running out of hands, no matter what he did the patient didn't seem to be recovering.
He concluded that there must something deeper going on here. He ran a full medical scan of the victim, which revealed nothing he couldn't already see. Then he ran an intensive scan of a blood sample, but it couldn't find any signs of parasites or viruses. He was stumped; there shouldn't be any reason why the patient wouldn't be healing right now. It was almost like something was destroying his body as quickly as Hanataro could repair it.
Acting on a hunch and a bad feeling, Hanataro whispered to his sword and allowed it to change shapes from a full sword to a small scalpel. He then cut down towards the heart. He didn't know why; but he could almost feel a subtle kind of evil radiating from the heart. He cut all the way down to the heart and peeled back the skin around it to take a good long look at it. Then he saw something. It was white and embedded into the heart. It was shaped like a tear drop. He carefully removed it, almost immediately the patient quieted down and his wounds began to close up.
'So this was the source of all that trouble.' Hanataro thought to himself. He looked it over very carefully; it looked and felt very familiar to him for some reason. He pricked it with the edge of his scalpel drawing out a small bead of purple liquid from within it. For a few moments he looked at it, and then it dawned on him, a second or two too late. Then a nearby patient exploded.
Skip
In the world of the living, a human soul is at great risk. It is, after all, a spiritual being in a physical world. Lost and isolated the soul under goes intense suffering brought on by its alienation and compounded by any unfulfilled dreams or social woes it may have left behind. This suffering can be alleviated in one of two ways. First is that the soul might be rescued by a Death God. Then it will be sent to the Soul Society, where other spiritual beings will be able to comfort and assist the recently dead and help it through its sorrow. The other thing that might happen is that the Soul may be consumed by a hollow. Then its suffering will all be lost as its very will and mind is absorbed by its attacker. The hollow will take on that suffering and compound it with its own suffering and all the suffering that it has ever inflicted on another.
If a human soul is denied one of these two succors it will only continue to suffer till at long last, in hatred of the world around it and fear of all those who inhabit it, the human will destroy its soul and remake it into a weapon. The human will become a hollow. In Soul Society this can still possibly happen, it usually doesn't though. Humans are naturally empathetic creatures and are all willing to assist each other, by shouldering one another burdens. Unless of course, an invading hollow refuses to play fair.
Hollows have suffered through greater pain than any human ever has, for if a human ever suffered like they did they too would become a hollow. And hollows are the authors of great crimes against numerous other human beings. Worse still, they absorb the suffering of their victims when they consume them. Thus, in many ways, hollows are a kind of incubator for pain and torment. And if a hollow ever allowed a human spirit, no matter its location, to feel even an ounce or an iota of the pain that they carry, that human spirit would have little to choice but to undergo a similar transformation to shoulder that burden.
Or in short: Hollowfication can be rather infectious.
Skip.
It didn't take that long for the Eleventh Squad to find the hollow. It had, after all, left them a very nice trail of bodies to follow. However, those that did find the hollow weren't exactly the lucky ones. The hollow was acting under the assumption that all Death Gods were as strong as Ikkaku, so when it was attacked, it held nothing back. It was quite some time before any of the groups that found the hollow lived long enough to report their findings.
Thus it was almost two hours had passed before Captain Kenpachi was informed that his prey was waiting for him to the north. He smiled wickedly, he had been getting bored. He was so excited at the news that he barely noticed the curdling screams that cut the message off as the hollow caught up to the informant.
"All Right!" He cried in anticipation of the upcoming fight. "Wait a minute, which way is north again?"
"It's that way Ken-Chan." A small pink haired girl, who had been riding on Kenpachi's back said to him. She was pointing east.
"Are you sure?" He asked to double check.
"Yeah I can fell the hollow's energy coming from that direction!" She reassured him, her hand slipping slightly so that she was now pointing south-east.
"Great even better! If even you can feel him than he must be something else!" Kenpachi exclaimed as he took off in almost the opposite direction that he should've. A few minutes later he received another message.
"What is it?" He screamed by means of a hell butterfly to Hanataro on the other end.
"Captain, the victims…." Hanatarou managed gasping for breath "…They're turning into hollows! It's a trap!"
The message was then cut off by a loud roar and a crashing noise nearby. The captain looked at a bloodied body nearby him. It didn't look like it was about to become a hollow. He tried sending messages to other members of his squad. Not many of them answered. Those that did, all he could hear was hooping, hollering and cries of war and battle.
"Damn it Yachiru!" He cried to the girl on his back, "Everyone is having a good time except me!"
No sooner did the words leave his mouth then a pair of broken bodies nearby him exploded in a cloud of dust. The dust swirled around in the air and eventually gathered in one place. From within the dust red eyes looked out at him in pure rage and fear. The captain smiled back at those eyes, this might just be a bit of fun after all.
Skip
The hollow made a mental note to stop listening to the first voice, as he slid his arm out of a Death God's chest. To err on the side of caution shouldn't be his style. Besides making all of these hollows and demi-hollows seemed to have been a giant waste of time. These Death Gods were pathetically easy to kill. Not that he was missing much; while their blood was sweet there was no strength in them worth taking. Compared to the sublime meal that Ikkaku had been, all of these warriors were trash. And furthermore, since none of these new born hollows could seriously fight, much less kill any of the Death Gods, the hollow might have to fight all these fools anyway.
He would admit though, that this plan made it unlikely that that one Death God would attack him. That one had death and madness in his eyes. Even at the distance the hollow was looking from, he could feel the killing intent radiating from this potential foe. It would be wrong to say that the instincts was afraid of the captain, but it would also be wrong to say that he was eager to fight him. The instincts knew its limits and that enemy was well beyond them, for now at least.
He didn't have to worry about that for now. The hollows around him were creating plenty of chaos, it should be quite unlikely that any other Death Gods would find him, he should be able to make his way north slowly but safely. Which he did, making a few more demi-hollows along the way, to slow down anyone who might be following him. Eventually the sound of battle grew dimmer and dimmer and he stopped wasting his blood on the humans cowering in their houses. Then he saw something that greatly perplexed him. It was getting darker. This was new.
The sun never rose in Hueco Mundo it was always dark there. He had assumed that it would always be bright here in Soul Society, Hueco Mundo's opposite. Now it was getting darker, that great ball of light in the distance was sinking down, how strange. His memories told him that the sun was setting and that soon all the humans around here would be going to sleep. His instincts laughed at the idea, why would anything ever need to sleep? How week could these strange creatures be? Then the thought dawned on him that if the Death Gods went to sleep as well it would become much safer to travel. He could travel much faster. So he took off with a sonido burst followed by a fast, but steady sprint.
Skip
By morning the ten available captains of the Thirteen Court Guard gathered at the First Squad's barracks for a meeting and an update on the battle around them. They were a curious group to be certain their looks ranged from giants to drunkards and Noh players. There were only two women amongst them, one of them looked very motherly, the other like a soulless serial killer, cold and uninterested in the world around her. One of them was quite handsome to be certain, he had long black hair with silver decorations set in it. His face was beautiful and in addition to his captain's cloak he wore a long white scarf.
Once they had all gathered and settled down, a strange other worldly looking purple device, with a screen in its middle was set up before them. A few moments later the screen sparked to life and the face of a young boy with silver hair appeared before them.
"Tenth Squad Captain Toshiro." The Captain Commander said to the boy on the screen, "Report."
"We've found the body of the East Gate Guard Jidombo. He's alive, and it appears that many of the wounds Captain Gin inflicted on him have been healed. I suspect that one of the intruders may have been responsible."
"What makes you think that?"
"If they did heal Jidumbo that would explain why the locals seem to have taken a liking to the intruders. They are unwilling to divulge any information on them and we have reason to believe that one of the community leaders gave them shelter last night. The leader is unwilling to tell us where the intruders were headed and I believe that extracting that information would take too long for it to be of any use. At any rate, the intruders seem to lack any hostile intent to the wandering souls here. I'm going to place a full guard around the east gate and return."
"Very good. Contact Captain Kenpachi." The Commander concluded, the screen flickered for a moment or two and then a man who most certainly wasn't captain Kenpachi appeared on it.
"Hantaro, what are you doing on the screen?" The motherly woman, Unohana Retsu who was captain of the Fourth Squad and head of the medical core, asked.
"Captain Kenpachi left late last night heading northward, he told a member of the Eleventh Squad to take this call, and they made me do it." Hantaro explained in a slightly whiny, slightly cheerful tone that suggested he was both displeased and used to this situation.
"Very well then, report please."
"The hollow that attacked hear has infected numerous human souls here with its blood; and transformed them into hollows. Fortunately the Eleventh Squad managed to contain the situation and save us from the people we had been helping. No one has reported seeing or killing the hollow that killed Ikkaku. Captain Kenpachi thinks that it most likely still alive so he took several elite members of his squad and headed north after it."
"Very good, take care of anyone who has been injured and return immediately."
"Yes Mam." And with that the screen went blank and it was taken away.
"Very well, this brings us to the real matter at hand." The Captain Commander declared, "To deal with and punish the failure of the Third Squad Captain Gin."
"Oh come on Captain is this all really necessary?" Ichimaru Gin quipped back.
"It is. Because of your incompetence we now have to deal with two threats instead of one. What do you have to say for yourself?"
"Nothing really, I went to fight them and they just slipped away. Sorry I guess."
"That's not good enough," The Twelfth Squad Captain: Mayuri informed Gin, "You're a captain squashing insects like that shouldn't have been difficult, I think you let them go."
"That ain't true captain, they just got away that's all."
"I don't think such outlandish accusations are necessary, everyone makes mistakes after all." Eighth Squad Captain: Shunshei commented from under his straw hat.
"Only drunken womanizers like you make mistakes, real captains should never miss their targets." Second Squad Captain: Soifong, the colder of the two women, explained.
"We shouldn't be discussing this now though; we have enemies at the gate after all." Seventh Squad Captain, Komamura offered trying to make peace amongst the captain, from within his heavy helmet and visor.
"Justice must be executed my friend no matter the time or circumstance," The Sixth Squad's handsome captain, Byakuya Kuchki, declared in his monotonous voice.
"This bickering is not the path to peace my friends, let us allow justice to be done quickly and be done with it." Ninth Squad Captain Tosen said trying to calm the others down.
"Fellers this really isn't necessary, I made a mistake and I am willing to take any punishment this may have earned me." Gin said to end the arguing.
"True enough Gin," The Captain Commander agreed. "However I must agree with Komamura this is probably not the time to pass judgment. For now we will suspend it, but when this crisis has been dealt with you will be on probation. Now if there are no other topics of note I will dismiss you all to your respective duties."
"Hold on Captain," Fifth Squad Captain Aizen interrupted, "I still have some questions for the captain-" But before he could continue an alarm sounded. Two men immediately burst through the door.
"Commander!" The first declared, "A strange object has been detected hurtling through the air towards the Court has been detected. There's less than a few minutes till impact!"
"Commander!" The other shouted all but ignoring the man who had come before him, "Someone is forcing the southern gate open! We can't contact the Southern Guardian!"
"Impossible!" Mayuri declared, "No one is strong enough to force one of the gates open other than their guardians!"
"No human is strong enough." Byakuya countered, "It would appear that the hollow has avoided Kenpachi's squadron of meatheads. How surprising."
"We may soon be under attack." The Commander concluded. "All you should go immediately and prepare your squads for battle. We will soon be under attack on two fronts."
"Well perhaps not two," The Twelfth Squad Captain lectured, "The group coming from the sky should be smashed out of existence by the energy shield that the Seki Seki (Destruction.) Stone projects."
"There are ways to bypass that field." Byakuya countered once again.
"Oh, have been considering how to destroy destruction stone Byakuya? Maybe thinking of how to get into a certain prison perhaps?" Byakuya made no retort but simply vanished with a flash step. Mayuri smiled to himself as he made his way out of the barracks. Soon he would have access to such wondrous samples and subjects to work on. It's almost too bad that Kenpachi would slaughter that hollow, a chance to dissect anything that could life up the Court's gate would be a useful subject indeed. Perhaps instead he could get access to the corpse of the old gate guardian instead. Either way this would probably be a good day.
End.