Swept Away

Alice saw the painted clouds above, growing further out of reach. She saw Karin extending her hand, crying out her name. She heard the cries of the others down below, their voices becoming louder as she fell. She saw more of the dead falling down after her.

She could sense the ground below and her body tensed up. She wanted to close her eyes and shut everything away but her eyes remained glued open, fixated on that unrealistic sky. A sky too bright and blue and perfect to be of this world of cruelty, blood, pain and death.

It was beautiful...

She had not seen a sky so blue for what had felt like eternity. Ever since the outbreak there had been black clouds and rain. The sky grew pallid and grey. But now all she saw was that perfect blue. It reminded her of the ocean she had crossed to come here. That great expanse of blue she had believed could protect her from the troubles in America.

She had been wrong. So very wrong...

There is no escape from death. No matter how far you run, death will find you. Such was the harsh lesson of life she had learned from the disaster. She had made many friends and lost them all the same. Now she was leaving all the same. She had felt the bitter pain of loss and the thought of bringing it upon others only hurt her more.

But at the very least, she thought, her fall from grace would ultimately destroy her. Her head would shatter into a million pieces just like every other bone in her body. She would be dead, sure, but at least she would not turn. She could spare them the agony of having to kill her.

With that she could at least die a little happier...

Once again Alice could hear the voices grow louder. Incredibly loud. She felt weightless still, the feeling mesmerizing as much as it was terrifying. She could still see the perfect blue sky.

Then she felt it, like the warmth from a fire in the dead of winter, a welcoming embrace of heat. So comforting, so gentle...

Unreal...

The hands around her clenched softly and guided her down to the Earth below. She landed so softly it felt like a dream. Surely it had to be? She was falling to her death! She should have felt the cold hard embrace of rock against bone, not this soft landing!

"Am I...Dreaming?" Alice whispered, her voice creaking through it. She was about to move when she felt a light stinging on her cheek. She cried out and looked up to see Rukia had pinched her cheek.

The two shared a silent moment just sitting there in stunned awe.

"R-Rukia? How did you..."

"I jumped." Rukia explained quite simply. She offered a beaming smile and hugged her friend. The two remained like that for some time until the others had gathered around them. Karin instantly ran to Alice's side and leapt into her arms, sobbing like the child she truly was. It didn't matter how brave a face she put on or how hard she fought, Karin was still a young girl at heart. It was those times that her facade broke like this that Alice felt truly happy. It was her brief glimpse of the world before the disaster, before they became a gang of gun-toting zombie slaying warriors.

"Thank you..." Alice whispered, not just to Rukia, but to everyone. Everyone living and everyone now gone who had helped her, saved her, protected her from the darkness. She owed them all. For their sakes she had to live on!

Another ghoul collided with the ground, its body exploding against the blood-slick rocks.

Alice looked up and saw they were falling in greater numbers now, desperate to catch their prey. As they tumbled to their deaths, their bodies slowly built up a cushioning for the others. A bed of spilled viscera and fractured bodies made the fall less hard on those to follow.

Not far from the grim mess, Urahara was busy constructing his senkai gate. The portal of stone wrapped in bandages and charms stood amidst the barren wasteland around it. Not far from the portal lay the weapons their group had salvaged from the store. Those that Alice had brought with her were now crumpled scraps of steel and nothing more, falling to a grim fate only Alice had been spared from. Still what had been saved would do fine for now.

As some of the dead were now surviving the fall, Alice, Rukia, Karin and Ururu fell back to the portal and divided the weapons.

Karin still had her P90 and now had two machine pistols at a belt around her waist. The young girl looked unusual loaded up with fire-arms, but life or death was more important than mild embarrassment.

Rukia had lost her shotgun but had found another Carbine. She slung an Uzi over her back and kept her katana at her side.

Ururu wielded a heavy rifle with a grenade launcher attachment. The weapon was not as large as the launcher she had used earlier but still was entirely unbefitting of the frail looking young girl. Nonetheless she hefted the mighty weapon as if it were as light as a bag of feathers.

Alice held the other two machine pistols and kept a MP7 slung over her back.

The four warrior maidens took up positions at the small ridge between Urahara and the portal and the mass of zombies crawling over each other to feed upon the living. The girls opened fire, using controlled bursts to take out what began as only some stragglers but soon developed into a slowly shambling group.

The mountain of dead at the bottom of the ladder allowed the dead to escape their fall with only bruises and broken bones that did not hurt. They limped and staggered forward now, once again able to form their ranks albeit much thinner for now.

The girls held their fire as Ururu fired her first grenade into the few dozen ghouls approaching them. The shrapnel tore them to pieces. Some managed to keep going even after the blast but those close to the centre were decimated by it.

While Ururu fed another grenade into her rifle the others provided cover fire, their guns spitting flame and steel from heated barrels. The dead thinned out and dispersed, no longer moving in close mobs but now fanning out to make use of the vast area around them. Now that they were spread out the girls struggled to hold them at bay. They took vague positions defending sides or the centre but even so the dead were beginning to flank them.

"Kisuke! How much longer until the portal is open?" Rukia roared across the battlefield.

"Just twenty minutes! Hang in there!"

"I'm trying!" Rukia snapped, unleashing a wide spray to take down a group of seven which had come far too close for comfort. Their corpses fell barely a metre away from their group. Alice struggled to contain those attacking from the left flank and was forced to reload while they converged and seized her position. Karin leapt to the rescue and fed the closest of the group an overdose of lead.

Alice returned fire and the two pushed the dead back at the expense of weakening their defences in the centre. The horde manoeuvred around to the new weak spot and continued to wear down the defenders. Each time they rushed to fight off the main force a new break would occur nearby. Ururu let off two consecutive grenades, shot like a mortar into the air. The grenades fell back down to earth only to explode within the rear ranks of the horde.

The undead became rattled by the attack from behind and their attention shifted in time for the girls to reaffirm their positions and mow down the first few lines of zombies. The undead, fooled into believing they were attacked on both sides fell into disarray. The shambling masses bumped into each other and ran into the opposing flanks as each tried to move back or to the front.

The girls fought on with renewed vigour and pushed the undead further back towards the mountain of corpses.

"Urahara?" Rukia screamed.

"Yes, its ready now, hurry girls, hurry!" Urahara waved them over and hastily chanted a spell under his breath. The space between the pillars suddenly became aglow with blue light and the senkai gate opened at last. Ururu fired the last of her ammunition into the oncoming swarm and held them at bay while the rest fled into the light. When she was finally out of ammo she hurled the gun with enough force to cave in one of the front-runner's foreheads. She then darted into the portal before the dead could reach her.

The portal closed just as the front line reached the pillars.

Alice and Karin stared wide-eyed at the strange new world they had entered. A long corridor stretching on towards a pale light, walls lined with melting flesh and bones like a ghostly ocean churning the remains of those lost at sea.

"W-What the Hell is this?" Alice whimpered.

"This is the Dangai," Urahara explained, "A space between the two worlds, your World of the Living and Soul Society. Beyond that light at the end of the tunnel lies Soul Society."

"And...What exactly happened to these people?" Alice pointed a trembling finger at the dead figures trapped in the walls.

Urahara raised his fan up to cover his mouth as he whispered, "It is better if you don't know."

Alice shut up after that.

The small group ran towards the light, lugging the last of their weapons. Urahara led the way but by the half-way point he froze in place and signalled for the others to stop.

"What is it?" Rukia asked, tensely.

Urahara did not answer, his eyes fixed upon the wall nearby. "Rukia...Give me your gun."

Without question Rukia handed over her Uzi and Urahara, still fixated on the wall pointed and fired. The muzzle flash was blinding in the near complete darkness of the strange world. A white haze filtered through the darkness but soon faded. As the girls blinked they all saw what Urahara had been focusing on.

Only a few metres away, the wall had suddenly crumbled and eroded, peeling away to reveal a demon none had wished to find here. A thin fountain of blood spurted from the bullet hole right between Mayuri Kurotsuchi's eyes.

He made no sound as he tore away from the wall and strolled casually into the middle of the path to block the passage for the survivors. The bleeding slowed to a pulsating oozing which washed down between his eyes and down his painted face. Such a wound should have killed him, or at least had him screaming in pain, but Mayuri simply smiled, his teeth unnaturally white against the gloom.

"Mayuri!" Rukia snarled, "What are you doing here?"

The doctor tilted his head in puzzlement, "Me? More probing is the matter of why you are here, Miss Kuchiki. If I wanted you to come back to Sereitei I would have dumped you in Rukongai, I left you in those festering sewers in the World of the Living for a reason!"

"Mayuri, enough of this! I know you caused all of this!" Urahara stepped in front once again. "This virus, the destruction, the chaos, the pain...You brought it upon us!"

"Ah, I wouldn't have put it past you Kisuke, to recognise my genius."

"Genius? You call this genius? You have brought forth the apocalypse and dare to call it genius? You are a damned fool! I never should have let you out of the Maggot's den! You should have been left to rot!"

"Such harsh words. It almost sounds as if you are mad at me. But I guess it is too late to save your precious world now. Your heroic charge is a tad late don't you think?"

"No," Urahara scowled, "It's not too late to make things right! All I have to do is kill you!" In the blink of an eye Urahara had vanished. When he reappeared he was floating above Mayuri, sword drawn and poised to cleave his head from his shoulders.

Mayuri did not even move, didn't even give any sort of recognition that he saw Urahara move. He just stood there, blood still seeping out of his forehead. He closed his eyes and his grin spread further just as Urahara was knocked out of the air and sent barrelling into the wall.

"I'm dreadfully sorry Kisuke, but it is indeed far too late to stop me now. The last of human kind has fallen and the Adam of the new world has finally come to rise! The cleansing is almost complete and already, the next step in man's evolution has taken its course!"

All eyes fell on the second figure standing beside Mayuri now. A boy with a body built strong by many past battles, eyes of burning amber and a deceptive scowl upon his face. A boy with fiery orange locks stepped forward and a thin smile crossed his features.

"Hi guys, long time on see huh?"

Before anyone could mover, before they could even blink, Ichigo vanished into a blurred smudge in their field of vision. Ururu was thrown into the wall with a jarring 'crack' and slowly slid down to crumple up in a heap. Karin was struck so hard she was sent spinning through the air until she fell hard on her back. Alice spun around to try and find him but just as she thought her gaze had fallen upon his blurred form she felt something sharp dig up through her back. She let out a strangled yelp and fell forward.

Rukia drew her sword and braced herself. She blinked involuntarily, but as soon as her eyes were open again, Ichigo's face was right there in front of her, so close she could feel his breath upon her cheeks, could see right through his deep brown eyes. So close she could tell it wasn't an illusion, that it really was the very same Ichigo she had known and loved...

So why?

Why had his sword run through her? Why was he still smiling as she dropped to her knees, as she let go of her sword and tried to stop the blood from gushing forth?

Why was he still smiling as Rukia cried?

Lucky you huh? So many updates recently. Well I'm trying to make it up to all of you who have so kindly waited for so long for updates in the past. Plus I'm kind of on a role here and the end is in sight so I've got more motivation that ever to really try and get some writing done even when I'm so damn busy with school. So thank you for being so patient and reading this far.

Please review and give me the extra edge I need to get through the next few chapters!