"You alright?" Grimmjow's eyes travelled up from his arm and the splints being positioned over it to the boy standing over him at the bed. They were alone, Toshiro fixing the bandages that had come undone after so much moving around. Grimmjow must have passed out for a bit because he didn't remember Yuzu's tear-stained face disappearing and this calm, cold one, suddenly replacing it.
His throat was dry when he went to speak. Through the window he could see the sun was setting. He'd been out for a while. Maybe the girls—who'd turned hysterical at the revelation that they'd been so close to their brother—had calmed down by now.
"I'm fine. You should have told me who they were, and who you were," Grimmjow said.
If he'd known, he would have said something right away, told Toshiro to go back and search for Ichigo and Rukia. They could have all been safe in the pillar by now.
"You were obsessed with Ichigo before the war," Toshiro responded coolly. "You only allied with us because it ensured your survival. I always thought when the war was over, you'd return to your hunt for vengeance against Kurosaki. Hurting his sisters would have been the best revenge."
"You're a creepy kid, you know that?"
"I'm not a kid, and it turns out you're not the man I thought you were. So tell me what you know."
"Kurosaki showed up after one of my fights in Tokyo. He needed help and I gave it to him."
"Why?"
"Because another soul reaper helped me a while back. What she wanted in return, was for me to pass along the good will to Kurosaki if I ever found him."
"Who was that?"
"Rukia Kuchki."
Toshiro nodded. "Good, she's alive."
"She's not alone. Kurosaki and I left Tokyo with a destination in mind. The Soul Reaper survivors are stationed up here, less than a day away."
He didn't see surprise on the boy's features. No doubt his path had lead him here because he'd gotten clues but he must not have had enough to get him all the way.
"Where?"
"The pillars of Las Noches on the mountain."
He nodded again. "Good. Then we leave as soon as you can make the distance."
"You should go now."
"No. We can't separate. Things have gotten worse with the Market burning."
"Fine, then another day but no more."
Toshiro didn't seem completely convinced but despite his calm Grimmjow could see the urgency in his eyes. He and the three girls were just like Ichigo: roaming this world for four long years, searching for something they weren't sure even still existed.
The sun set. The girls came back in. Grimmjow could see from the lamplight that Yuzu's eyes were still puffed. She was absolutely exhausted after everything she'd been through. Her sister's arm was over her shoulder. They sat as one on the other cot in the room and Grimmjow expected them to go to sleep but teary eyes drifted over to him.
"Who are you?" Yuzu asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Who are you?" she repeated. "You knew my bother. You know Toshiro and Yachiru. Are you a soul reaper too?"
"No."
"But you were in the war?"
"Yuzu, he's an espada," Karin clarified. "He's a hollow." Toshiro must have told Karin after they'd rescued Yuzu and Grimmjow.
Yuzu watched Grimmjow a moment. He wasn't sure how she'd react, but he should have known. She was the same girl who hadn't judged him when he'd come back after killing that boy.
"He was a hollow. He saved me."
"I know." Karin sighed and rubbed her arm. "You should go to sleep, okay?"
"But are we going to find him, Ichigo?"
"Yes," Toshiro confirmed. "Grimmjow's going to take us there."
She smiled then, but tears broke out anew and Karin convinced her to lay down.
"You too," Toshiro ordered Grimmjow. "You need to rest as much as you can so you can make the walk."
"Whatever." He tried to sound annoyed, but he really was exhausted, and he fell asleep to Yuzu's muffled tears.
Ichigo shook against Rukia. It was so cold that more than shivering, his whole body was vibrating. Hers too. She pressed closer to him to keep her teeth from chattering as they watched the five men at their camp with a warm fire between them. They just had to wait for them to fall asleep. Then they could kill them.
It seemed cowardly and disgusting—the thought of attacking the enemy while they were unconscious, but at the same time the men had guns, Ichigo and Rukia were injured, and most importantly, they were after his sisters.
They'd only been able to heard tidbits of information as they'd followed them. He'd heard his family name and that was enough to convince him they really were after his sisters. He'd also heard them mention Hashwald. After all this time, he and his family were still the target of evil doers of another dimension. What could they possibly want from them, other than vengeance—and in this world, revenge would not be enough to convince able-bodied men to follow orders and chase teens for over four years.
He and Rukia had not been able to discuss anything they'd heard, since they had remained silent the entire day. Now they waited together, both exhausted and hurting. He could tell from the lines around her eyes she was suffering. His leg ached where it had been cut up in the explosion, but his injuries were not as deep as her gunshot wound.
One of the men rolled over. The others quickly did the same. They seemed to have finally decided to go to sleep. It was agony waiting to see if they left someone on watch.
They did. The only consolation was that his back was to Ichigo. So long as he could remain silent, he'd be able to kill him first. He wished Rukia was in better shape. She was much more cut out for stealth than him, but he wouldn't ask her to do it in her condition.
They continued to wait a long time, to ensure the others were asleep. The fire began to burn low. The watcher didn't make a move to throw more wood on and his shoulders were slumped—Ichigo prayed he had also fallen asleep when he withdrew from Rukia and finally decided to make his move.
He didn't use his sword, but a dagger Rukia had given him. He held it out before him between white knuckles and eased his way through branches and tall grass. There were a lot of things in a forest to create noise when you didn't want any.
What would Grimmjow think of him now, if he could see him, about to commit murder? The espada had always mocked him for his mercy. Now though, with everything at stake, he couldn't afford to be merciful. He would live with this weight on his soul, if he could lift another and see the faces of his sisters again.
He got just behind the man with the dagger positioned when the lightning struck.
He should have sensed it, but he'd thought the hairs on his arms and neck were raised due to his anticipation of what he was about to do, not because of the collection of electrons gathering in the clouds above.
And in this new world, getting caught in a lightning storm almost always spelled death.
A tree close by shattered into black glass. The spray of fragments pelleted the camp. Fire erupted in thick leaves. Everyone scrambled awake, shocked and confused, and among them, Ichigo still stood, dagger in hand.
"Kill him!"
A gun was pulled. Another blast of lightning struck close enough to make them stagger. Ichigo plunged the dagger in and out of the man before him, drawing a thick, hot syrup from his body, and then he ran. He ran because Rukia couldn't run as fast and he needed to save her. And he ran because somewhere in these woods his sisters were hiding and the same storm might kill them before he ever reached them.
"Stay behind me."
Grimmjow did not argue. There was no way for the little captain to predict the next lightning strike, but he watched the sky as if could—and if he had any inkling that might save them, Grimmjow would listen. He stood with the two teens next to him, offering their support, but at the moment, adrenaline pumped through him too fast for him to notice the ached of his wounds.
A stone well shattered about ten meters at their backs. Yuzu screeched and even Grimmjow jumped in start. He couldn't tell where the next strike was coming. It was chaos and they had a snowball's chance of getting out of this alive.
"The trees are on fire!" Yachiru pointed past Grimmjow's shoulder. He saw the orange glow, and within seconds it turned into a blaze.
"We need to get out of here now!" Grimmjow shouted over the panic. Other civilians were doing the same as them, fleeing into the night.
"Then we're going now," Toshiro decided. "Straight through the city, to the Pillar. No stopping."
"No stopping," Grimmjwo agreed. It would be him who slowed them down.
"Alright. Let's go."
They made it about four feet before lightning struck right before them.
Grimmjow's back hit dirt. He heard nothing. The world had gone silent. All he saw was more light cutting through the clouds—clouds that hid a danger no one could survive. The earth shook again, rumbling through his back and into his chest where his heart beat pounded uneven and slow.
His head rolled to one side. He saw the boy captain, completely still in the dirt.
He wasn't breathing.
"Shit."
The world came back to him all at once. There were screams and explosions. The heat of flames. The charge in the air ran through him. His heart beat was suddenly a mile a minute. He couldn't calm it down but it had pumped enough blood back into his brain that he knew he shouldn't be laying here in the dirt waiting to get struck.
"Get up!" Karin was pulling on his good arm. Yuzu was past him, kneeling over Toshiro.
"His heart's not beating!"
"Fuck." The hand on his arm disappeared. Grimmjow turned away from Yuzu and found Karin on her knees. Blood slicked her right leg.
She gritted her teeth and pulled out a jagged pieced of stone. It must have blasted up in the lightning strike and caught her.
"Can you stand?" he asked her, hearing Yuzu frantically pumping her hands on Toshiro's chest behind them.
"I have to." She pushed her palms into the dirt and tried again. Grimmjow stood too and caught her shoulder. She stayed close and turned her gaze to Yuzu and Toshiro.
"If he's dead…"
"I know."
"Jaggerjaques, if it comes down to it—if I'm slowing you down, you take Yuzu and run."
He didn't answer. He didn't know what he'd do, if it came down to it.
Yuzu forced another breath into the inert captain. Not far from them another bolt blasted a shack apart. Several people screamed.
"Yuzu—" He started but the little captain's back arched off the earth. He gasped and coughed and miraculously his eyes blinked open—but only for a second. He went limp again, but he was still breathing.
Shit. If he'd died, they could have just left him behind.
"Give him here," Grimmjow ordered when he saw Yuzu attempt to lift him. She outsized him, but his weight would drag her down in no time and as smoke settled in around them, he knew they had very little time to outrun the fire. "NOW!"
She obeyed, helping flop Toshiro over his stronger shoulder. The boy was light, but Grimmjow was not in condition to take any extra weight. He knew taking the boy was probably a death sentence, but he also knew Yuzu would never leave him behind.
"Help your sister," he told her then looked to Yachiru. "Get us back to the fucking city."
She took the lead, a miniature soldier cutting their path over scorched earth. Yuzu let out a cry at seeing her sister's injury but Karin quickly told her there was no time, they had to move.
And move they did.
Grimmjow quickly felt the heat building, as they entered the trees. The fire was burning at their backs and it was spreading fast—too fast. They were likely going to be over taken or choked out by smoke, but they had no choice. The thunder in the clouds was deafening, but the strikes seemed to be farther from them now. They might survive the strikes but not the fire. Above them the roar of the blaze rumbled low and hungry, and bits of ash fluttered down on them. Soon the flames would burn down and catch up to them.
"Faster!" Grimmjow barked even though he knew it was useless. Yuzu had used up too much energy giving Toshiro CPR and now her sister was weighing her down. He himself was doing no better. Only the pink haired girl before them stood a chance of escaping.
The smoke grew worse. He ordered Yuzu to stay close so they didn't lose one another.
"Over here." He could barely see Yachiru anymore. His eyes were streaming and his throat burning. He chased her up a hill and then the ground gave way to a steep bank and he had no choice but to run or face plant he heard her exclaim ahead of him then his feet were in water and he understood.
"Keep going," Karin prompted. "It's our only chance."
Grimmjow wasn't so sure. He looked back over his shoulder. The flames were mostly in the canopy, spread wildly, but some were working back down the trunks toward ground level. If too many trees burned downwards, he worried they would be boiled in the shallow body of water Yachiru had found.
"Get in!" Karin screamed at him.
He gave in. There was no other choice. The water was part of a former lake. The area surrounding them was bare and stony and must have been once covered in deeper water. It must have merged from one world into the other, and now lay here, out of place in a forest. It came to his shoulders. He couldn't even feel the chill of it in the growing heat around him.
A flaming branch dropped into the edge of the water. More burning timber fell from the sky to the ground. Grimmjwo watched grass sizzle and fry. As of yet, it didn't spread over the ground as the grass was thin in these parts. They could only watch and hope, and pray it passed by, above their heads.
"Grimmjow."
Yuzu trembled in the water, barely keeping her chin above the surface. She held Karin close but she must also have known their chances were slim. He dropped Toshiro from his shoulder. Between the three of them they kept him afloat and Yachiru took hold of Grimmjow's shoulder to keep above water.
More debris from above. The roar of flame was now nearly as loud as the thunder from before. The water rippled red and orange. The children's faces were black smudged and streaked with sweat and tears.
It would be his last sight, Grimmjow thought, when Karin yelled at them to plunge beneath the water. They doused themselves in silence and darkness and held their breaths, waiting to break the surface of a fiery death.
Couldn't help but be inspired by a Heritage Commercial I remember from my youth (about a family surviving a fire by floating in a lake) but I'm sure my forest-fire science is a bit off, I tried to do some research but it was more complicated than I expected lol, so I took some artistic liberties. Hope you don't mind. Another action packed chapter next week! Thanks for all the support you've given me so far!
Riza