Torn

Chapter 30: Red Dawn

Soi Fon snapped out of a dead sleep with a jolt, looking around sharply for the disturbance that had woken her up and finding nothing. Willing her panic down and letting her training supersede her emotions, the Shinigami glanced carefully around the small room and found no one else in it other than Grimmjow, who was lying next to her and snoring quite obnoxiously. She wanted to brush off her waking as nothing more than a jerk reflex honed by several years of living like prey, but something that coiled deep in Soi Fon's gut and refused to leave her in peace made her think that something was very, very wrong.

And shortly after doing a quick check of all the reiatsu signatures in the house, her onyx eyes widened as the mother's worst fear was realized: her son was missing.

Shooting to her feet and not even waiting to see if Grimmjow had stirred as well, the Shinigami darted out of the room and raced down the hall, turning sharply as she approached the doorway of Héctor's room. The person Soi Fon found sitting on the bed, though, eyes red and slightly swollen with weeping, was definitely not her child.

"Rangiku?" She asked, trying not to sound snappy as her anxiety began to be compounded by anger and irritation. "What the hell are you doing here? Where's Héctor?"

"It was Gin," Matsumoto replied horsely, her expression detached to the point where Soi Fon wasn't sure the Lieutenant knew who she was even talking to. "He was here. I saw him talking to Héctor, but by the time I got outside, the kid was gone, through a senkaimon. Gin, he… he told me…"

Soi Fon didn't stick around long enough to hear the rest of Rangiku's tale; she didn't have time to listen to what was undoubtedly going to be a sob story full of guilt and repressed self-loathing. Not when her son was off doing God-knew-what in the Human World, and at Gin Ichimaru's urging no less. As the burnt orange light of the morning sun began to filter through the dingy windows, Soi Fon hurried back to her room and began shaking Grimmjow fiercely.

"Grimmjow! Grimmjow, wake the hell up!"

Jaegerjaques opened his eyes lethargically at first, but as soon as he saw the depth of the urgency in Soi Fon's own gaze and knew that something was up, the Arrancar was fully alert.

"Héctor's gone, Grimmjow," Soi Fon said before Grimmjow could utter a word, and the sharp look in Jaegerjaques' blue eyes hardened at the news.

"What?" he asked seriously, putting his hands on Soi Fon's shoulders to steady her tightly-coiled frame. "Tell me what happened."

The dark-eyed Shinigami related the details she'd been given by Matsumoto, and by the end of them Grimmjow's look had bled from grave into flat-out murderous.

"Let's go," he said darkly, rising from the bed and throwing on his jacket while Soi Fon tossed him his zanpakuto. "If Ichimaru's still anywhere near us, I'm gonna tear him to shreds."

Soi Fon nodded in agreement and the pair moved swiftly out of the room, hurrying out of the house and into the open before vanishing. Locking on to the nearest unfamiliar reiatsu signature, they sped towards it as quickly as they could.

Who they found a few moments later, however, was not the enemy that the furious parents had been hoping to run into at all.

"Hello, Soi Fon," Momo said with acidic smoothness as she stalled the duo's progress with a wall of sheer reiatsu. "Looking for someone?"

Soi Fon's look of urgency became one of fury as she spied the drawn sword in Hinamori's hand; she had better things to do than take out the trash, but it didn't look like the worthless traitor blocking her path was just going to stand aside, either.

"Grimmjow," she said in a tone that brooked no arguing, even from him, "get going, and find Ichimaru. I'll handle her."

The blue-eyed Arrancar nodded shortly and vanished with a buzz, leaving the two women standing alone in the dusty street.

"You sound so confident, Soi Fon," Momo jibed, readying Tobiume for the impending duel as her opponent drew Suzumebachi from its sheath with a low hiss. "Don't disappoint me."

"Likewise," the former Captain said sharply as she lunged forward, expecting to bisect the traitorous Shinigami in a single swing. Soi Fon's eyes widened, however, when she found that she'd made contact with nothing but air.

"Strange," Momo's unnervingly calm voice mused from behind her as Soi Fon began to correct her momentum in mid-air, "I seem to remember you being faster than that. Burst, Tobiume."

A fireball blasted outwards from the tip of Hinamori's zanpakuto, slamming into Soi Fon with enough force to level the surrounding buildings as it exploded.

Grimmjow felt the reverberation from the powerful attack behind him and slowed down for a few moments, before stoically squashing his concern and pressing onwards. Soi Fon had stayed behind specifically to buy him time, and he wasn't about to waste it.

Just as he had begun to hurry again, though, the former Espada was forced to juke quickly to the side to avoid a bala that had come within inches of tearing his head off. Stopping cold and looking around to see who his attacker had been, Jaegerjaques had to bite back a growl of mingled anger and frustration as he realized who had tried to kill him.

"First Zommari, and now you?" he grunted disdainfully as Wonderwice Margera looked at him blankly, before shifting his eyes to stare at the red energy surrounding his hand.

"This is fucking ridiculous," Grimmjow said as he powered up a cero of his own, almost feeling bad that he was going to snuff out the life of a defenseless Arrancar. Still, it was the kid's fault for getting in his way. Letting the beam of red energy go, Jaegerjaques didn't even look back at what he was sure was a smoking pile of bones as he began to walk away.

"Where do you think you're going, Jaegerjaques?"

Grimmjow froze at the unexpected sound, his eyes widening slightly at first in surprise and then even further in pain as a bala slammed into his back and he fell forward into the dirt, Wonderwice standing behind him with a hard look in his violet eyes as red energy crackled around his hand.

Hisagi knew that he had every right to storm into Héctor's room and give Matsumoto hell for the stunt she'd pulled last night, but in all honesty, he'd seen it coming. Shuuhei had known from the beginning of their supposedly no-strings-attached fling that Rangiku had more emotional scars than Zaraki Kenpachi had physical ones.

Still, that hadn't stopped him from becoming genuinely interested in the ever-optimistic Matsumoto, and it certainly hadn't lessened the sting when he'd woken up late the last night to find her disheveled, glassy-eyed, tear-streaked and smelling faintly of Gin Ichimaru. She'd uttered a rushed, broken apology when she had seen he was awake and dashed from the room, and it didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened. Gin had strolled back into her life just like he always had when they'd been younger, and he had preyed on every single one of the insecurities Hisagi had listened to Rangiku confess to him in the past in their quieter moments together. He could easily walk into the room she'd holed herself up in and say that none of it mattered, and that he couldn't care less about her tangled personal history with Gin. But Hisagi knew he wouldn't be able to let it go, deep down, and that nothing would be the same on her end, either, after what had happened last night.

Whatever he might have chosen to do eventually, however, Shuuhei found his thoughts concerning Rangiku harshly derailed as a pulse of hostile, Espada-level reiatsu reached him from outside the house. Springing to his feet, grabbing Kazeshini and hurrying outside, Hisagi didn't say a single word to Matsumoto as he found himself running beside her through the halls. He figured she already had enough on her mind, and the last thing she needed before fighting an Espada was to hear him jabber.

The two of them were standing opposite Szayel Aporro Grantz and Sun-Sun moments later, who had their zanpakuto drawn and were more than ready to fight.

"My my," Szayel said with his usual condescending tone, "So eager to die. Clearly these past years have taught you nothing, Shuuhei Hisagi."

"If you think you've seen everything I have, Espada," Hisagi parried evenly, "I'd be glad to prove you wrong."

The two Shinigami shared one last nod of encouragement before they used shunpo to split up, reducing the risk of getting in the other's way while they fought. Shuuhei came to rest on the roof of a shack far from where he had been just a few moments ago, barely having enough time to catch his breath before Szayel appeared, perched on a nearby roof as well.

"What's the hurry, Shuuhei?" the Espada taunted. "So worried about losing that you needed to give yourself a little head-start?"

"Not at all," the Lieutenant replied smoothly. "I just hate keeping people waiting."

Grantz chuckled for a moment before vanishing in a burst of sonido. His speed was much greater than Hisagi had remembered it being in their previous encounter, something that told the Shinigami his Arrancar rival was being serious this time. Drawing his zanpakuto and blocking a strike that would have cleaved him in half otherwise, Shuuhei used the time the deadlock afforded him to his advantage, unfastening the weaponized choker from around his neck and jumping away just in time to avoid the ensuing explosion. As he turned around to survey the cloud of smoke, Hisagi's eyes narrowed when he saw and felt no sign of the Espada—

Only to have a brief burst of reiatsu stun him for long enough that his guard wavered ever-so-slightly, and the next thing Shuuhei knew he was looking down at Szayel's zanpakuto, which had been stabbed clean through his right lung.

"Do you know why I didn't carve you up into glorious little ribbons the last time we met, Shinigami?" Grantz's voice floated through the haze in Hisagi's head with infuriating smugness. "It's because we hadn't been ordered to crush you yet; Aizen-sama was waiting for something. But now, it's open season on you insects. Good for us," he finished, pulling the blade from his opponent and smiling as Hisagi slumped over down onto his knees and then down onto his stomach,

"So very, very bad for you."

Waiting for a few moments to watch the blood begin to pool under Shuuhei before he sheathed his sword, Szayel couldn't keep a small frown from creasing the corner of his mouth.

"Such a shame, Shinigami. Our final battle together, and you couldn't even force me to release. I didn't have a chance to show you the true breadth of my abilities last we met, and now you will die a dog's death, never given the chance to witness the epitome of my genius."

The Espada was about to turn around and walk away when Hisagi's reiatsu spiked massively, his hand shooting out and grabbing Szayel's left ankle before yanking hard and throwing Grantz off-balance. As Szayel fell Shuuhei vanished in a burst of shunpo and materialized behind his opponent, delivering a hard knee to the Arrancar's spine before he'd even hit the ground. As he skidded to a halt on another roof, Szayel turned around sharply to regard his enemy once again and could only wonder how he was still breathing after the wound Fornicaras had carved into his chest. Grantz's expression became suffused with shock, however, when he saw that the gruesome gash's bleeding had stopped completely. Hisagi stood upright, his only signs of fatigue being a slightly crouched back and labored breathing. It appeared as though his overall reiatsu had decreased, but Szayel realized that a substantial amount of it had been diverted to completely staunch his bleeding and to keep his wound from getting any worse.

The question, the Arrancar thought to himself with a smirk as his confidence surged back to the fore, was if the Shinigami could keep that up under pressure. Disappearing with the harsh buzz of sonido, Grantz emerged right in front of Shuuhei and thrust forward with his zanpakuto. The response was one he had been expecting, as the Shinigami calmly parried the blow and held strong as their swords crossed in another deadlock.

"Not bad, not bad," the Espada observed calmly, a hint of amusement in his tone as he leaned forward to the point where he could see his own reflection in Hisagi's eyes, "but how long can you hold out like this? Sooner or later I'm going to force you to attack. And once you pour reiatsu into your shikai, the floodgates will open back up on that wound of yours. Sooner or later, Shuuhei Hisagi, you are going to die by my hand."

"That might be true, Grantz," the Shinigami parried lowly, "but that doesn't change the fact that the last sight I'll be seeing is your corpse decomposing into spirit particles. Reap, Kazeshini!"

Szayel was forced backwards by the power of the release, but his expression stayed frozen in a lethal smile. He hadn't expected the stoic Shinigami to be so eager to dig his own grave, but Grantz wasn't about to question his luck. Now, all he had to do was outlast his enemy until the whelp bled out. Baring his teeth as he sharpened his grin predatorily, the Espada decided to follow Shuuhei's lead.

"Sip," he spoke, raising his sword up and preparing to swallow it, "Fornicaras."

Shuuhei braced himself as the Arrancar completed his release, knowing what to expect and slinging one of Kazeshini's blades into the mist directly where he knew one of Grantz's tentacles would be. Feeling the chain coil around the appendage, Hisagi allowed himself a small, victorious smirk. He could definitely win this, even in his wounded state.

"So predictable, Shuuhei."

The Shinigami felt himself get lifted off of his feet as the tentacle he had been about to sever pulled hard on the chain, yanking Hisagi right into his waiting opponent.

"Shit!" he swore, knowing what was about to happen and feeling powerless to stop it as one of Grantz's other tentacles came up to envelope him, suffocating the warrior and covering him in darkness.

Yumichika Ayasegawa was never, ever drinking again. Forcing the cheap swill down his throat all night to work up a decent buzz was one thing, but the fact that the rotgut alcohol had the temerity to kick him in the ass with a hangover the next morning was too much. Even if the bartender gave him free booze and he was pretty sure the old man's daughter wanted to screw his brains out, there was only so much the Shinigami was willing to take in pursuit of earthly pleasures. As soon as he got out of the winding labyrinth of streets and back to the run-down house his group of rebels called home, Yumichika was going to sleep for a solid week no matter how many curses Soi Fon threw his way.

"Yo, pretty-boy," a booming voice rung out that made Yumichika want to die on the spot for the headache it gave him. "Long time, no see."

Ayasegawa snapped out of his haze in a flash, his training in the brutal, take-no-prisoners Eleventh Division showing itself in force. Drawing his zanpakuto from its sheath, he faced his brutish opponent and smirked.

"I wish it had been longer, Yammy," he retorted without missing a beat. "I had no idea you were such a glutton for punishment; was the last thrashing I gave you too lenient?"

"Cut the shit, Shinigami," Rialgo snapped back in a tone that put Yumichika on edge instantly. Something was different about the Arrancar this time, without a doubt, even if he couldn't quite place what it was.

The Shinigami wasn't given very much time at all to think, though, as Yammy disappeared from view with a harsh buzz and the next thing Yumichika knew, he was flying through the air after a fist connected hard with his jaw.

What the fuck was that? Ayasegawa thought, shocked, as he swiftly turned his momentum into a tight flip and righted himself, staying in the air. The hulking monstrosity had never moved that fast in any of the other clashes they'd had, to say nothing of the force behind his punch. Since when had the measly Decima Espada been able to hit like Zaraki?

"If you have time ta think, pretty boy," a rumbling voice broke in from behind him, "you should be fightin' instead!"

This time Yumichika was quick enough to catch Yammy's fist on the blade of his zanpakuto, but if he'd been a split-second slower the Shinigami had no doubt that his brains would be splattered on the ground. As Rialgo's knuckles slid along Ruiro Kujaku's steel with an incredibly irritating grating noise, Yumichika decided to see if he could get any information out of his thick opponent during this brief pause.

"You're certainly moving quickly for someone of such an ungainly figure, Rialgo," he said as calmly as he could, the guard of his zanpakuto beginning to waver slightly. "Care to tell me your secret?"

"You think that really matters, pretty-boy?" Yammy said with a chuckle as his fist began to crackle with red energy. "All that counts is that I'm about to blast you into chunks!"

The Shinigami bolted away with a burst of shunpo in order to get away from the bala, reappearing behind the Espada as the attack left a crater in the ground.

"Hado number 33: Soukat—"

"Too slow!"

Not even turning around, Rialgo raised his other fist up behind him and shot off another bala, this one finding its mark in Yumichika's sternum and sending him flying through a nearby house. Dazed, bleeding and feeling pain arc through his body as he tried to move shattered bones, Ayasegawa could only stare as his opponent strode calmly through the wreckage, stopping just in front of him and rearing back for a finishing blow.

"Don't worry, Shinigami," Yammy taunted. "I'll make sure your face is so beat up that they won't even know it's you."

As the Arrancar's fist raced downwards, Yumichika's lips curled up into a smirk as he tightened his shaky grip on his zanpakuto and spoke.

"Split and deviate, Ruiro Kujaku."

"You know, Shinigami," Sun-Sun said coolly as she cut through yet another gust of ash like it was nothing more than swatting an impertinent fly, "you could at least try to make this interesting."

"Shut up," Rangiku spat, twisting out of the way of a lunging strike from the Arrancar's sai-shaped zanpakuto and raising her hand out in front of her.

"Hado number 31: Shakkaho!"

Sun-Sun didn't even flinch, grabbing the sphere of red energy in her hand and slinging it right back at its conjurer. Matsumoto spat up blood as the kido slammed into her stomach, flying backwards and barely bracing herself against the side of a building rather than hurtling through it. Rangiku was tilted and she knew it, but the only thing she was going to get if she let her emotions continue to run rampant and distract her was a piece of cold steel lodged in her throat. Turning inwards and feeding on her anger rather than letting it claw away at her, the Shinigami focused and retaliated once more.

"Growl, Haineko!" she shouted, and for once her lazy zanpakuto didn't hold back, answering her call wholeheartedly and hurling forward a veritable wall of abrasive ash. Her mouth curled up into a fierce smirk as Matsumoto instinctively felt the attack ripping into the Arrancar's hierro-protected flesh, and she pressed the assault further by twisting the ash into a tight tornado in order to close off any possibility of escape.

"This is what you call putting out an effort, Shinigami?"

Rangiku's eyes widened as she felt a surge of twisted reiatsu from within the core of the tornado, and a heartbeat later a beam of red cero energy ripped the attack to shreds, barreling on to engulf her as well.

"Bakudo number 39: Enkosen!"

The golden shield strained against the force of the attack, and for a moment Matsumoto thought she was going to give out first. After she pushed one final time with all of the strength she could muster, though, the Lieutenant was relieved to feel both her barrier and the cero mutually break down.

"Not bad for a stopgap measure, Shinigami," a soft, piercing voice spoke from right behind Rangiku as she struggled to stay upright, "but I must wonder how many more tricks you have like that up your sleeve."

Matsumoto whirled around just in time to dodge a stabbing sai strike and grabbed Sun-Sun's arm, using it to flip her over with the hopes of throwing her to the ground. But the Arrancar read the move perfectly, landing in a crouch and twisting her captured hand so that it faced directly at the Shinigami before firing off a bala. The Lieutenant was forced to relinquish her grip and evade with a burst of shunpo in order to dodge what would have been a lethal blow, but she wasn't about to give Sun-Sun the advantage again.

"Hado number 73: Soren Soukatsui!"

The twin plumes of blue flame arced towards their target with deadly speed and strength, but the Arrancar faced down the barrage without flinching in the slightest.

"Strangle her to death, Anaconda."

The combined force of the kido and the energy released by Sun-Sun's resurreccion was enough to send Rangiku flying clean through a building and into a hard concrete wall, but she kept her wits about her long enough to roll sharply to the side, avoiding an attack from the now-released Arrancar that pounded a hole into the concrete rather than through Matsumoto's head. Sparing a quick look of disgust as her eyes swept over Sun-Sun's serpentine form, Matsumoto lashed out again with Haineko's ash storm in an attempt to force her enemy back onto the defensive.

"If this is really all you can do, Shinigami," the Arrancar said dismissively from behind the thick veil of ash,

"I should just end this here and now."

A sudden surge of reiatsu scattered Haineko's offensive like it was nothing, and this time Rangiku had no strength left to erect a barrier between her and the cero that lanced forward to crush her.

"What's wrong, Soi Fon?" Hinamori jabbed in an irritatingly calm voice as the pair of warriors clashed in yet another deadlock, the multi-pronged blade of Tobiume grating determinedly against the black and gold steel of a released Suzumebachi. "You're holding back. It's unlike you."

Soi Fon said nothing as she leapt back out of the deadlock, growing more and more frustrated by her inability to snuff out Momo's life completely. A few homonka crests stood out on Hinamori's skin like bull's-eyes, but no matter what angle Soi Fon tried, the assassin simply couldn't get in a second hit.

"Why don't you bring out your bankai?" Hinamori pressed as she readied her zanpakuto for another round of blows. "Show me your true power, Soi Fon, and then I might just show you mine. If you convince me you're worthy of seeing it, that is."

"You're still holding an ace up your sleeve, Momo?" her opponent scoffed, hoping that Hinamori would rise to the bait. "I doubt it. You only reached the rank of Lieutenant because that was where Aizen needed you; what could you possibly know of power?"

Rather than respond to the provocation by getting angry, however, Momo simply chuckled as a chilling smirk spread across her face.

"I know enough about power to have destroyed Toshiro Hitsugaya."

Soi Fon was taken aback by the certainty with which her opponent spoke, feeling something sink in her stomach.

"You're lying," she parried at last, far more weakly than she would have hoped, and Hinamori's smirk only widened.

"Am I?" she retorted, before a sudden spike in her reiatsu almost sent Soi Fon back a step.

"Let me show you that power, Soi Fon," she spoke as she raised her hand to her face and materialized a Hollow's mask, pulling it down and changing her eyes from a cold brown to a lethal black-and-gold.

"Let me show you why it is that Aizen-sama will stand over your corpses as the sun sets." Focusing her considerably augmented reiatsu, Momo used the energy to corrode and banish the black homonka from her body as Soi Fon could only look on in shock.

"I will admit, it's been a long time since I've had an occasion to put on this mask," Hinamori mused, before disappearing in a flash of shunpo,

"So do please try to stay alive long enough for me to enjoy it, will you?"

Feeling a sharp burning sensation blazing along her right arm, Soi Fon glanced down and saw that the tendons controlling her dominant hand had been cut, Suzumebachi hanging limply by her side as her own lifeblood trickled down and dripped from the tip resting on her forefinger.

"That should at least make this less of a hassle," Momo spoke as her defiant opponent spun around to face her, despite being weaponless and wounded.

"Actually, on second thought," the traitor spoke, as much to herself as to her prey, "simply chopping you up would be no fun at all. I think I'll try this instead," she finished, holding out her right hand palm-up and speaking a single phrase.

"Hado number 90: Kurohitsugi."

There was no way for Soi Fon to stop the black walls from forming, and no way to resist the agony that seared through ever fiber of her being as the multitude of black spears ripped through her flesh.

…………..

………………

A/N: I'm not dead! Man, sorry that update took so long, but Greek had to wrap up, and boy was that final week a pain. And so the climax begins, at long last! Hope this chapter proved enjoyable, and please do review if it did. Also, this chapter contains something of my own spin on Wonderwice, as I was hoping Kubo would have him speak finally in this latest chapter, but it was not to be. So, once again, I find myself diverting from canon a bit.

Also, big ups once again to JasoTheArtisan for encouraging me to beef up these fights a bit, and improve the chapter overall. Go read and review his stories sometime; they're all quality.