Sacrifice

There had been screams from down below, but suddenly they ceased. Rukia crawled inside the Research and Development facility and spotted the secret entrance to Mayuri's underground laboratory. She had managed to staunch the blood flow from her wounds, but the pain was ever present, crippling and blinding, it forced her to intermittently stop and curl up, clenching her fists and gritting her teeth as the agony intensified. Nonetheless she soldiered on, crawling onwards regardless of the pain surging through her body.

She reached the edge of the stairs and glanced down into the darkness beyond. She could see freshly spilled blood upon the stairs near the bottom, seeping through the cracks and soaking through into grisly stains.

Her heart stopped beating for a moment, fearing the worst in that unsettling silence.

She almost wished there were more screams coming from inside, at least to confirm her friends were alive. However not a sound emanated from inside that room. There was only one way to be sure.

With dreadful slowness she began her descent into Hell.

Alice awoke all alone outside. The deep gash in her stomach had somewhat been covered, though she wasn't sure how. A wound like that shouldn't heal that fast. Even with treatment she couldn't have possibly recovered so soon. On closer inspection it seemed the jagged skin around the wound had been cauterised, closing the worst of it and leaving only an ugly yet smaller cut to deal with. Unfortunately her internal injuries weren't getting any better.

Ichigo's sword had pierced pretty deep and caused much damage. At the very least she had been unconscious for the worst of the pain and of course the cauterisation. She wished to thank whoever had done it, but all that surrounded her was the blood splattered against the stone tiled path.

A trail of dark crimson led inside the large building just ahead, most likely the laboratories of that murderous Mayuri Kurotsuchi. She expected to hear noises inside, but it was ghostly quiet.

Curious, she stumbled over, falling many times. It was painful and incredibly difficult, but with all the effort she could muster she pushed forward inside the den of the damned.

Not long before Mayuri had lunged at Karin Kurosaki, a fiendish flicker in his lidless eyes. Red spittle flecked his hideous grin, a devilish laugh rattling out of his cold dead lungs. Karin herself barely saw him move, his movements so terribly fast they were almost untraceable. She only managed a scream when his shadow fell across her from behind and his feral breath seeped into her nostrils, reeking of rotting flesh.

It was the same stench as them. Those mindless shambling ghouls she had been fighting for so very long now.

But it seemed her battles would come to an end. Their greatest enemy had her in his grip, serpentine fingers coiling around her arms and holding her in place. His icy breath brushed against the nape of her neck, his jaws lingering bare centimetres from her face.

In a voice like the hiss of a thousand snakes he whispered, "You shall be the eve of my new world. But first I wish to taste a sample from such a wonderful subject!"

His tongue traced a line from her shoulder and up the side of her neck, rolling off and disappearing back inside his cavernous maw.

Ichigo rushed to his sister's aid, but his body refused to comply, sending him hurtling to the ground, unable to do anything but watch on hopelessly as his precious sister's life was robbed, much like everything else in his life.

Mayuri's fangs sank deep into Karin's throat, the young girl's eyes shooting wide open, pupils dilating to mere pin pricks at the nightmarish sensation. Her jaw dropped open in a silent scream, muffled by the blood bubbling up at the base of her throat. Her legs went limp but she did not fall, embraced by the detestable doctor.

"Karin!" Ichigo screamed, extending a hand out to her.

The frightened young girl did the same reaching out to her brother to save her and protect her as he always had done.

Their hands never touched.

With a defiant roar, the crippled captain commander charged up behind Mayuri and buried his sword into the demon's side. Biting his tongue to stave off the searing agony, Ukitake pushed harder, steel slicing through flesh and bone until it reached the beast's spine. With another push the blade hacked through the brittle spine and exploded out the other side in an eruption of blood.

Exhausting the very last of his efforts, Ukitake fell to his knees and then keeled over in almost perfect unison with Mayuri's lower half.

Detached from the waist down, Mayuri's upper half remained attached to the Kurosaki girl, but with so much weight against the smaller girl they both collapsed into the rubble. His teeth emerged from the raw, torn flesh on her throat, dripping wet with her precious, pure blood. As salt in the wound he turned to Ichigo and flashed his sinister grin, now painted in his sister's blood.

Unable to contain his rage Ichigo rose to his feet, even as scarlet-flecked bile seeped through his clenched teeth. Even as his body urged him to back down, Ichigo staggered over on trembling limbs, collecting his sword and clenching it so hard his bones were grinding against the hilt. A rumbling snarl grew within his lungs and at last in an unholy surge of blazing fury the young warrior passed over the precipice.

He roared as loud as the rolling thunder of the heavens, hacking apart what remained of Mayuri Kurotsuchi, first severing his limbs and them carving up his midsection, all the while the defenceless demon smiled and laughed, cackling insanely.

Spurred on by his taunts, Ichigo pulverised the despicable ghoul, leaving the head unscathed. He grabbed it by its blue hair and lifted it up to his face, glaring deep into those lidless eyes, meeting his piercing stare with one of equally intimidating presence.

"So..." it rasped, even as the suppurating strands of muscle and tissue around his throat gushed forth their toxic elixir. "Adam...once fallen from grace...has risen to challenge his God...But can you pass the final test?"

Ichigo withheld the raging desire to crush the head in his hands to hear out his final words.

Mayuri's left eye rolled to one side, falling off-centre while the other probed that of his foe. His facial muscles were beginning to slacken, wiping the smile from his face, but the joy in his voice sought to account for it.

"Though my body may be destroyed...My blood, once yours, now runs through her veins...And so...If you truly wish to slay your God...Then you must sacrifice your only sister! Only then shall I grant thee mercy!"

Mayuri died laughing, his viciously smiling face cleaved in two.

At long last Ichigo collapsed beside his sister and held her close. Though he wanted to scream once again his voice failed him and so in silence he cradled the last treasure from his home, now claimed by the darkness.

From the Western rampart, Kiyone froze mid-sentence. She had been delivering orders to her troops ever since the undead had been eradicated and sealed off outside the wall. She had received reports that her sister Isane was injured but in a stable condition. She was on her way to see her, sending off the last of her men.

That's when she felt it.

The captain commander, Jushiro Ukitake...

His reiatsu vanished.

The words died in her throat as her eyes went wide in shock. Trembling, she turned in the direction of the laboratory and focused as hard as she could, praying that it had simply dwindled, not disappeared entirely.

Alas her efforts were in vain. There was no trace.

The captain commander was dead.

"No...No it can't be..."

She ignored her troops, ignored her sister and her duty, and ran to the laboratory as fast as she possibly could.

Meanwhile, all over Soul Society heads were bowed in grief at the tragic news. The songs of victory that had previously echoed across the entire court instantly died down as the cost of their success became apparent.

Though the undead had been repelled and Mayuri defeated, they had lost many brave warriors, no less than their commander. A heavy burden would forever weigh down upon those that had survived...But at the very least, the sun would rise for mankind once again...

Ichigo sobbed as his sister drained of warmth. Turning as cold as the dead, her last breath of life, her final whisper blew against his cheek.

"I'm scared..."

Her hands coiled around his body but barely held, settling like fallen leaves. Her blood seeped through his clothes and skin, running down the length of his arms and covering him head to toe. Bathed in her blood the young man cried as the last of his family were taken away.

The hollow victory left him with a greater trial to overcome.

After a few minutes of quiet mourning, he felt her tiny body stirring once again. He glanced down through clouded eyes at her hands now a marbled grey, the network of black veins slithering about beneath the surface. He knew the signs well enough, having lived through the very same nightmare ever since that plane first crashed by the riverbank back home. And ever since that fateful day the poison had seeped through ever crack in Ichigo's life.

Friends, family, neighbours. His town, his country, his entire world, all tainted by the pestilence Mayuri spread.

Karin was his lifeline. Where everything else had vanished she remained. When Mayuri had performed his experiments on him, Ichigo had long since given up hope. He bought every single word of his lies, simply because he had no will to refute it. Why bother when everyone you ever loved was dead? But he let Mayuri deceive him far too much. So much so that even when the last of his company faced him once again, he was unable to do anything but attack. He grappled with the decision and struggled to conquer his manipulated mind. It was Karin that brought him back, once again.

It was her presence and her unshaken belief in him that brought Ichigo to see the error of his ways and stand against Mayuri.

But now it had cost him dearly. His very own infected blood; the source of Mayuri's strength, now flowed through those blackened veins crawling under his sister's skin. Those blank white eyes were his fault. The discoloured, rotting flesh around her throat was all his fault. The ghostly chill emanating from her corpse was his fault.

All of this was his fault.

His second chance at life was simply to bear the burden of the apocalypse alone.

"I'm sorry..." he whispered as gently as the sigh of the wind, unable to raise his voice. He embraced her; let her dig her teeth into his shoulder, knowing it would not turn him. He grit his teeth and repeated his apology over and over as a mantra as if it would absolve himself of the pain and heartache.

Karin drew back with strips of tattered flesh flailing about between her teeth, tainted blood flowing down her cracked lips.

"I'm sorry..."

"Ichigo!"

"Karin!"

Rukia's voice came from the stairway, soon joined by Alice. Together they assembled at the bottom of the stairs, staring in terrified awe at the scene before them. A grim bloodbath, corpses buried under rubble, scattered flesh and bone. The aftermath of a terrible battle.

And amidst it all, the frightened Kurosaki siblings embracing.

But then Karin turned to them and snarled.

"Oh my god! Ichigo what are you doing?!"

"Stop her!"

"Don't touch her!" Ichigo roared, glaring at them both with eyes ablaze.

Karin growled and set her gaze upon her brother once more.

"Ichigo you have to..." Rukia caught herself before finishing. Averting her gaze she came up with an alternative. "You have to stop her before it's too late!"

"It's already too late." Ichigo said coldly.

"Dammit Ichigo! If you don't kill her then I will!" Alice stepped forward and picked up the pistol Karin had dropped earlier. She aimed straight for Karin's sinister smile.

"If you shoot her I will fucking kill you!" Ichigo snapped, shielding her from Alice's sights.

"How can you protect her like this Ichigo? You know damn well that she never wanted to turn into one of those things! We all agreed that the minute we turn we would spare them the disgrace of becoming a monster!"

"Don't call my sister a monster!"

"Look at her! That thing isn't your little sister anymore! It's just another one of those ghouls and all it wants is a taste of your flesh!"

"You're wrong-"

"Ichigo! Your sister never wanted to hurt you! Even when you were set upon killing us she refused to be afraid and pull the trigger. She loved you. Do you honestly think your little sister would chew on your face and kill you? I know her well enough to say that's a load of bullshit! You're her brother aren't you? If I know better, then you should be well aware of all this!"

"But I can't..."

"Ichigo, why did you kill Yuzu and your father?" this time Rukia spoke, her words like daggers. He was left speechless. "You did it to protect them...To protect them from something worse than death...And that is the fear of losing yourself. No matter how much is taken from you, as long as you have that which makes you who you are, there is always hope...But if you lose even the essence that makes you who you are...That makes you human...then there is truly nothing..."

Ichigo bowed his head, holding Karin at an arms distance while she feebly struggled to get closer and sink her fangs into him once again.

"Ichigo...If you love your sister like I know you do...You will do the right thing and give her the mercy she deserves."

Rukia's expression hardened into a mask of stone. Alice did the same, offering the gun to him.

Ichigo's shoulder sank and with a heaving sigh he glanced back up at them and nodded gravely. Taking the pistol, Ichigo pointed it squarely between her blank eyes. Karin stared inquisitively at the weapon, cocking her head in awe.

"I'm sorry..." he repeated one last time, before closing his eyes and pulling the trigger.