"Hey."
"Mmm…"
There was a hand on my shoulder. My neck was sore and it protested as I turned to look around. The pile of books told me I was in the 4th squad headquarters' library, and a blueish blob was floating down into my field of view.
"Wake up, now…"
"Hmm…Isane-fukataichou…what time is it?"
"Morning." She said with a chuckle, straightening up and looking at the nest of books I'd made.
I yawned and unfurled, stretching and blinking at the light coming in through the windows. The antique oil lamps spaced around me had long since gone out, cool and without a wisp of smoke between them.
"I see you pulled another all-nighter."
"Yeah, I…I thought I was on to something, when I found that book on mortal condition integration."
"A study of medical conditions that have such an affect on a person in life they translate to the spirit-particle based body after death." She read critically from the introduction of the largest tome. "I remember referencing this a long time ago, when I was first assigned to fourth squad. You also pulled out the case studies on Ukitake-Taichou and Tousen-Taichou, I see."
"Yeah. Blindness and the symptoms of a mortal disease. They're the most severe examples of the condition in the past thousand years."
She offered me a hand and helped me up, and I stretched out a second time, quieting my protesting muscles with a soft run over a few key pressure points
"Did you find anything useful?"
"No. Two pages in, I realized this condition is completely unlike mine." She gave me a puzzled look, and I flung an arm out to take in the whole library with one irreverent sweep. "But it was probably the last book in this entire place I haven't read yet."
She tilted her head slightly to look over my shoulder at the room beyond. 4th squads' library held information on every medical condition ever recorded and every technique devised. It was part school, part archive, part research lab. And it was understatedly massive.
Isane sighed, coming back with a smile that I recognized, worn by doctors across creation that I'd been on the receiving end far too many times for my taste. She looked about to say something, but a small voice interrupted, one of the resident nurses asking for assistance. I turned and began sorting the piles around me, saying a worn-out farewell as Isane excused herself and hurried out, and a few minutes later I was outside and on my way to get cleaned up before my daily duties.
I'd been a member of fourth squad for nearly six months now. Altogether, I'd been a shinigami for…almost a year, I think. My birthday, or maybe 'deathday' would be in a week or so. Huh. Too bad I didn't have much to celebrate. I was at the lowest rung of the ladder, both in rank and by the popular opinion of fourth squad. I hadn't even managed to release my zanpakutou a second time, no matter how much reiatsu I had crammed into me. I didn't want to believe it had been a fluke, that there was a cure for this…whatever it is.
But if the answer wasn't with fourth squad, where would it be?
In the distance, I could see the battlefield. Huge plumes of dust had been kicked up by the fierce fighting hung overhead like storm clouds, the bellows of furious hollows sounding out like thunder, followed closely by bright flashes of kido. I ploughed straight into a chaotic miasma of reiatsu, waves of the stuff thrown about by hollow and shinigami alike. The soup of energy was punctuated by wisps of half-dissolved cero energy that chilled my skin as I ran though them, and I tried to shake free the invisible shards of broken kido spells that stuck to me and stung like nettles as I brushed them.
No one had seen this battle coming. It was a quiet section of the 25th district of Rukongai, where anyone with a trace of spiritual power had been recruited into the shinigami long ago. And yet, one morning a host of hollows had burst out from elsewhere and attacked anyone in sight as they stalked and slithered and crawled a seemingly random course across the landscape.
Third squad was the closest, and had gone in to eradicate them. Five minutes after the two groups had clashed, a second swarm of hollows had been drawn towards the fight. Five minutes after that, huge hollows were happily wading into the melee. 3rd squad had called for reinforcements, and by the time fourth squad arrived to help the wounded who had been relieved by the support from Seireitei, an entire town had been smashed to rubble by an army of hollows that numbered in the hundreds, a trio of menos grande waving above the chaos like flags, a living battle-standard to declare the invader's identity.
Just my luck that this all happened on my day off.
There was no hospital, no fixed place to bring the wounded shinigami that had been pulled away from the fight. The first man to be lowered to the ground by the arriving medics had announced our presence, and everyone else had simply brought their injured there,setting them down wherever there was room for a medic to work
With no reiatsu to fuel healing techniques, I was running from body to body, bringing supplies or fetching doctors or being shouted at to stop and press here so the patient wouldn't bleed to death in the time it took to prepare the coagulants. I tried not to think about how much blood had soaked into my uniform, or to count the number of still forms under white sheets. Just focus on the training given me to keep doing what I had to-
"Hikaru!"
"Here!"
I crouched down next to a squirming body and handed a vial of foul-smelling salve over it to the medic hunched over her. I held the woman down as the medicine was applied to what looked like an acid burn across her stomach. She was bandaged and I was sent on my way, handing cloth and supplies out at a call, running back to the supply train when my pack was empty. There was more work to do. A lot more.
In time, I'm not sure how long, the menos were toppled and the frequency of screams had dropped. It was a matter of cleanup now, to find any hollows missed and secure the area. I was exhausted and freezing cold, the hollow reiatsu clinging stubbornly to me. I was rubbing my hands together as I was called, the surroundings not as chaotic anymore, fewer injured coming to us and many of those in better shape having been cleared out.
Unohana was there, the worst cases brought to her, slipping shinigami into Minazuki's mouth after she'd stabilized them. The smile that she always wore was gone, replaced with a flat, neutral expression marred only by the signs of concentration. Not crying, never crying. The smile might disappear, but she wouldn't allow anything more. It was something I'd heard. I guess it was true. I can't imagine what it took to hold those feelings back if this is what she'd been doing for the last thousand years…
I was halfway to her for new orders when the ground shook. The air rippled and chilled, and I turned to see one of the shinigami holding the barrier on one knee. A single hollow could cause untold bloodshed among the wounded, and it was standard in large-scale operations to maintain a barrier to prevent their entry, by creating a wall solid to their approach and even reinforcing the barrier between worlds.
But something wanted in. Badly. The air froze and fractured, shinigami hurried away, carrying the wounding on stretchers or raising their hands, whispering kido incantations under their breath. Ice formed on my arms and I staggered as I backed away, one hand on my zanpakutou. It hurt, so much…
A massive arm punched through a sliver of black and sank it's claws into thin air, impossibly finding purchase in nothing. Lighting and fire flew up to meet it, scorching the limb but failing to dislodge it. A hand gripped the edge of the breach, and tore at the boundary between here and there, stretching the gap wide enough for hollows to begin crawling through.
I heard blades drawn. Someone shouted my name as a hollow approached, a kido impact smashing its head to one side.
Move!
The chill was pressed deep into my body, and my legs refused to obey the thought. The hollow turned back, remaining focused on me despite the rain of kido smashing into it. It was huge, too large to be any ordinary class of hollow, and it reached out towards me, it's reiatsu numbing me to the bone.
Someone shouted my name. Someone close...
The hollow's hand split down the middle, and it roared in pain. I slid to a stop outside of it's reach, zanpakutou in hand and dripping blood.
Cutting it a little close, aren't we?
"I…I can hear you…how?"
The ground shook as the monster stumbled back, clutching it's injured hand.
Damned if I know…
The hollow focused on me once again, digging it's clawed feet into the ground and tensing like a runner awaiting the starter's pistol.
But maybe we should think about that later!
The hollow's body unfurled, launching itself forward at a speed surprising for it's bulk. It didn't get twenty feet before it toppled and ploughed into the dirt, one leg spraying crimson into the air. I was behind it, arms aching from the effort of cutting through the thick mass. I saw another target and leapt again, spearing a hollow with a textbook strike through the back of the skull. I rode the dissolving body down to the ground in front of some very surprised and equally relived squadmates.
I brushed myself off with a smile, saluting the surprised group in front of me before turning back to the fight. I twisted back around to face a shinigami next to me a second later.
"Hey!"
He jumped at the word, glancing nervously between me and the huge hollow pulling itself upright.
"It's the seventeenth, right?"
"Y-yeah…"
I laughed, openly.
What?
"You heard him."
So what? What's so special about today?
"It's the seventeenth!"
So?!
Behind my back, the other shinigami looked at me strangely. Between talking to myself and beginning to laugh like a madman, they must have thought I'd lost my mind.
"So…"
My body still hurt, daggers of cold sunk deep into me. But there was something else now, a warmth that was spreading outwards, snapping and crashing against the chill in my veins. Something I hadn't felt in a long, long time.
"It's…"
Oh!
"My-"
The hollow stood, eyes burning with hatred, and I raised my sword horizontally, one finger pressed against the very tip of the blade.
"-fucking BIRTHDAY!"
Whooooah!
"And I feel like a dance…"
I flicked the sword out, a single drop of my own blood on the blade.
"Sanguine Jester!"
The hollow was slammed backwards, the butt-end of my scythe impacting on its forehead. I kicked off and spun, taking it's jaw clean off as it opened in mid-cry of surprise. I landed in the dirt and flipped away at the hollow covered it's wound with one hand and flailed at me with the other.
It froze suddenly, and I felt reiatsu whip past me, being drawn inwards towards something.
"Cero?!"
Red light pooled in what was left of it's mouth, and I leapt straight in as those knuckleheads at the 11th had taught me, dashing between it's legs with my scythe out, digging deep into the hollow's stomach. But there wasn't enough force behind the blow and the blade stuck fast. The next thing I felt was a massive hand wrapping around me, yanking shinigami and scythe upwards to be flung high into the air.
I found my center and twisted to face my opponent, gauging the angle. I flung my scythe as hard as I could even as the cero took form and boiled out towards me.
I hit the ground hard, flat on my back, my uniform sizzling and burnt. The fastest flash-step of my life ordeath had still left me grazed by the outer edge of the attack.
"Ow…"
A face appeared above me, a squadmate asking me if I was alright, if I needed help. I lifted my head weakly, just enough to see the last of the huge hollow's body dissolve, my blade deep in its chest.
"Only with my landings…"
The day was won, a bloody victory in a pointless battle. But it was a victory nonetheless. By all accounts, no less than five menos-class hollows had been slain, and more then three hundred of the lesser varieties alongside. The tired army returned to fanfare and congratulations, officers praised by the higher-ups even as the wounded were rushed past to relief centers.
It was a personal victory for me as well. Sanguine Jester had remained, apparently to stay. He didn't return to the sealed form of a sword, but obliged me by folding up into something more portable, an unassuming bone-grey rod with gaudily coloured streamers catching the breeze. There was still a lot of work to do, work that I would be included in now that I had some reiatsu to speak of, and I threw myself into it wherever I was needed, happy despite a lingering chill.
It had become so bright and warm outside, intolerably so, and inside me the chill seethed with disgust and resentment.
