"That, could be a problem." Kisuke looked out on the sea of Dawn's Calvary. He had hoped most were moved to the domed desert where Halibel and Grimmjow planned to attack. But there was still a mass of teaming beasts, their masters straddling their backs, bows, swords, whatever weapons in hand, just waiting for fools like them to take the main gate. But the gate that loomed behind the horde was not their goal. No, their target was the slim figure in all white standing on marble steps and staring down at his command.

"If we engage him, do you think the other soldiers will attack us?" Ichigo asked, they were crouched behind a dune, drawing back all traces of their power.

"If all of us do, then yes." Kisuke answered. "I think it would be best for you to engage him, and Rukia and I will do what we can to hold off the Dawn. If we are lucky, they will let it play out."

"Wait, I thought the whole point was for us to attack together." Rukia protested. "We don't know what kind of power Uryu has."

"I do. I watched him tear Lothure a new one before demoting him."

"Then why do you want Ichigo to face him alone?"

"Because I believe Ichigo can do this. I would like to use an old strategy, one we used on Aizen."

"I get it." Ichigo said. "You want time. Time to build up a kido binding."

"Precisely. And if the Dawn act accordingly, they will watch the fight and not engage us. They will give me the time I need, and you will give the opening."

"When?"

"When I send Rukia to join you."

"Okay then." Ichigo agreed.

"Fine." Rukia was slightly less convinced. "Let's do this."

Ichigo stood up and moved from their cover. Within moments, their position was revealed, but as suspected, the challenge was understood, and the dozens of cavalry remained where they were while the three approached.

"I expected to see you sooner." Uryu had moments ago been far back behind his command, but now he strolled from mere metres away toward them. "I guess I put too much stock in your ability."

"Uryu I'm sorry it's come to this." Ichigo unsheathed Zangetsu, "I don't want to fight you. I should have protected you in the beginning."

Uryu didn't slow down at the sight of the sword. His white outfit was now very much like the rest of the Vandenriech garb, close fitting to his slender form, a short cape hanging over his shoulders. "Ichigo," that irritated sigh came from him and Ichigo hesitated when the hand fell over his shoulder. Had he missed something? Was Uryu really on their side after all?

"I really wish Yvo had killed you like I'd asked." Ichigo's eyes went wide and he barely countered the attack. He stumbled back several feet and when he looked up he saw the only reason he wasn't already hit was because Rukia and Urahara had closed ranks to protect him. So much for staying out of it.

"You can be so tiresome sometimes."

He kneed Rukia in the gut but Urhara caught his hand. Dark eyes narrowed behind spectacles but Uryu just smiled.

"Perhaps you could be useful." A quick nod and the forces behind him tensed. "Take him to the king."

Urahara had no choice but to let go of Uryu in order to counter the Calvary's attack. Their whole plan was quickly going down hill, but Ichigo felt his whole being go cold when Uryu turned his attention back to Rukia.

"And you." His hand shot to her neck. Ichigo raced forward. But in that instant it took him to get there, Uryu had already finished and dropped her back to the dry dirt, her robes washed pure white and her form unmoving.

"You took here power!" He had never seen any of the Vandenreich use their raiti consuming powers so quickly.

"Yes I did." That cold gaze lifted from Rukia's inert form. "And now I will take your life."

"No way." Grimmjow breathed staring out at the host of Dawn's Calvary spread out in the interior of the palace. To some extent their plan had worked. Uryu surely felt them breaking in, but his attention was drawn to Ichigo and so they met no resistance they could not defeat between the two of them. But now, Grimmjow and Halibel could both see why Uryu had no reason to fear them getting inside. Spanning out all over the domed desert were mounted Adhuchas- hybrids and Quincies riding them about in their different divisions. It was a legion. And by the way they were getting organized, the orders being shouted, it was clear they were getting ready to move out.

"This is it. The final assault." he breathed.

"It seems safe to make that assumption." Halibel nodded and crouched lower in the shadow of the broken pillar in which they currently hid. "We cannot defeat them."
"You just said-"

"We have to make a choice Grimmjow."

He looked at her hard. What choice could she mean? "You mean the humans. Halibel, we haven't even tried to find Renji and Chad yet."

"No, not them, we have to decide what we are willing to lose to do this."

"You have a plan?"

She nodded. "One that seems only suiting for the two of us."

His narrowed his eyes, "we discussed this."
"Think about it, sixth. They draw their power from the raiti in Hueco Mundo, well what better source than Las Noches?" Blue eyes widened in understanding. "So Grimmjow, is it worth the sacrifice? Will you help me destroy the last place we called home?"

"Bring down Las Noches so we can bring down the Vandenreich." He scanned the horizon, felt those long days the four of them had spent here burning energy for the hell of it. The last place they felt at home. But beyond this desert were white halls and high chairs and treacherous chambers, forgotten traps and lost secrets. Yes, he would destroy this to bring the ruin of those who had corrupted Yammy, Mila Rose and thousands of beings in Hueco Mundo.

"Yes."

"Good. Then you look for the humans and I will find what I am sure Aizen left behind."

"A self destruct?"
"Something like that but unfortunately not so simple. I will need to get into the control room and access all of the explosive potential in this place at once. So, try to keep them busy, alright?"

"Sure thing. Watch your back."

She nodded and was gone.

"You ready to do this, Nel?"
"Uh huh."
"Alright, then I am pretty sure I know where they'll be keeping the prisoners. Let's go."

Ichigo fell back in the sand. He gave a nervous glance back at Rukia's still form. He wasn't sure she was even still breathing. Equally disturbing, the commotion between Urahara and soldiers of Dawn had died down and he was afraid he knew what that meant.

"You're distracted." Another hot intrusion into his muscles. He quickly closed his hand over the slim blue arrow in his thigh and dissipated the power but the damage was already done—Uryu's powers had increased incredibly. He couldn't help comparing how much he himself had transformed in three days training for his Bankai to Uryu's transformation now.

Except Uryu had been gone for five weeks.

The next explosion of pain was less easily ignored. Uryu had used his moment of vulnerability to race forward again and now using one of those silver tubes he always carried, he produced a thick, burning burst of concentrated energy just inches from Ichigo's stomach. The energy-blade burned deep into his abdomen, wreaking unimaginable damage on his organs as it half cut, half burned a hole through him.

"GHA!" All he could do was throw himself backwards to disengage his former friend and lay in total shock in silver sand, trying not to picture his raw, burnt intestines, or stomach, trying not feel the slew of blood drenching him.

His chest clenched in a rising anxiety he was not accustomed to feeling. He was going to lose this fight. He was going to fail everyone, the espada, his captured friends, Rukia, Urahara. He would leave his father to defend Orihime. He would fail to save Uryu. He would do nothing to save Soul Society. All because of one distracted moment in battle, because he was still just a kid and didn't know how to carry out war, how to stay focused in every single second. He was seventeen years old and he was going to bleed out in the sands of another universe while his brainwashed friends stood over him with his blood on his hands.

"Giving up already, Ichigo?" Even twisted as he was, the young quincy could understand Ichigo's thoughts. "No, you aren't giving up." He squatted next to him and read his strained features. "You're still trying to find the will to get up again. But you know, deep down, like you've never known it before. You know you've lost."

"Shut up." He lurched upward, sitting to face his class mate eye-to-eye. He coughed on sharp tang of blood in his throat. "How did they do it, Uryu? How did they break you?"

"Break me, Ichigo? They liberated me."

The same words Grimmjow had spoken. Ichigo shut his eyes. "No, Uryu, they didn't. I am going to liberate you. I am going to save you." With enormous effort he put his hands on his thighs and pushed himself up.

Uryu stood with him, holding that determined gaze, seeing the doubt wavering to that phenomenal arrogance, justified by all the victories of his past.

"Is that a promise?"

"It is."

"And you think by saying it like that, speaking it aloud, those words somehow will give you the power to keep that promise?"

"I don't know Uryu. But I said it, so I will do it. You should know that."

"Yes, Ichigo, I know at least, that you believe that."

"Well, maybe you should start believing too." Ichigo pulled his hand away from where it was clenched over his wound and placed it instead on the hilt of his sword, "Bankai!"

"Is Grimmjow okay?" Nel squatted next to her protector while he knelt on all fours just gasping in air. He had dutifully filled his promise to draw attention away from what Halibel was preparing for their enemies, but it had cost him. His black and white attire was dashed with crimson and white cotton soaked clear with perspiration, but it was the globs of blood he spat into the dry orange dust of the desert plains of Las Noches that were the real concern.

Pantera shivered in his grasp, his face pale as he tried to calm his breathing and the beating of his heart after the last encounter. The whole place was full of those bastards, but they still had trouble locking on to his spiritual pressure and as long as Nel stayed close they could hide for as long as they were out of sight.

He had no idea he was kneeling in what was left of Halibel's old place, it was ruined beyond repair or recognition. Nothing in the landscape was familiar from those endless days, so he was never aware that as he leaned back against broken marble, he had once sat in that same spot, drinking tea and listening to Halibel tell him he could not abandon the arrancar child.

"I'm fine." he breathed, even as he shut his eyes and let his head fall back against the ruined pillar. They were fairly deep in the rubble so as to not be seen, but that false light still lit the space enough for Nel to see the lie. Though he couldn't see her at the moment, in the long pause that would usually be filled by her voice, he could feel her glare.

His tired sigh escaped him and he rolled his head to one side to meet her eyes. "Okay, I just need a minute." he amended.

"Pantera is still hurt, isn't he?"

"I dunno, Nel." He wiped a hand through his damp hair and stood up as far as he could in the collapsed in building. "But we haven't finished our mission so let's not waste anymore time."

"Is Grimmjow going to save the mean Soul Reaper and the Big guy?"

"Yup. Figure they're in the cells where we were or the lab, so you ready?"

She moved next to him and he felt the fabric of his jeans go taught where she held tight.

"Okay, stay close to me, Nel. And don't..." he looked down at her knowing she'd already witnessed so much, but the pair they sought out could be in any condition when they got there and he didn't want her to see their tortured bodies. "Just if I tell you to close your eyes, do it, okay?"

She knew. She may be a child, stubborn and never listened, but she knew what he meant and just nodded.

Grimmjow had managed to create a fair bit of chaos in the part of Dawn's Calvary that were organized in the domed desert. They were still far larger and more powerful than him, but through a succession of quick attacks, he had managed to disrupt their perfect order. And with so many of them being the arrancar hybrids, they were not so quick to fall back in line as the pure quincies would be. By not allowing himself to be drawn into any lengthy battles, he had managed to spread his destruction with little damage to himself and now not only was the distraction paying off for Halibel, but for himself as he made it out of the desert and back into the side hallways of Las Noches unseen.

"I hope Halibel is almost done." He breathed, pushing through doors and making his way as quickly and stealthily as possible to Szayel's lab. "I don't want to get caught up in a fight in this place, we may never get out again."

He met little resistance on his path. He was quite adept at finishing off the lower level Vandenreich with hardly a sound, especially with Pantera back in his hands. But when he finally got to the cells he found them empty.

"They aren't here." He said, searching out with his spiritual pressure as well as with his eyes. "Then they must be in the lab." But he paused on his way from the cells and stood before one door in particular.

"Nel doesn't want to go in that room." He didn't respond. The broken table, those high backed chairs. He didn't want to go in there either. If he had any doubts about destroying this place, they were erased with the comfort of knowing that that room would be turned to dust with everything else.

"Let's go." He couldn't feel them in there either, so there was no reason to enter. Instead, he took them back to the labs. But once again, disappointment met them.

"Where else would they keep them?" Grimmjow muttered, looking from room to room even though there was no trace of their spiritual pressures.

"Grimmjow doesn't think they are already dead?"

"I don't know Nel. But if they aren't here, then where are they?"

But it wasn't a child's voice that answered him. "In our home world, of course."

Grimmjow rolled to the side just before the hammer smashed into him. It landed in the wall, knocking stone and plaster free to fall down all around them. Grimmjow came up quickly, sword held defensively above him and he couldn't stop the groan that caught in his throat.

"Lothure." Damn. He had precisely not wanted to get into a fight like this. Lothure called himself a Stein Ritter, whatever that meant. All Grimmjow knew, was that the very top brass bad ass, of the Vandenreich called themselves that and there were only a handful of them. The four Commanders of the Dawn, the Dusk the Midnight and the Twilight among them.

He had defeated Dachs easily enough, but that had been a fluke, the Commander had been wounded, emotional, and hadn't know that Grimmjow had reunited with his zanpakuto. Yvo had been another, and that encounter had nearly killed him. It had taken Ichigo's Getsuga Tenshou to finish him. So here, alone with Nel, in the centre of enemy territory when he was waiting for Halibel to blow the whole damn place to Kingdom Come, he did not want to get in a standoff with probably the strongest of all the Commanders.

"Thought you could come back here, Grimmjow, cause trouble and not face any consequences?" Lothure asked, reading the look on his face while he dislodged the oversized hammer that was his weapon.

"Well, it would have been ideal." Grimmjow swallowed back any fears and let his arrogance reclaim him. "But what's another dead Vandenreich to me, huh? Nel." She obediently let go and moved to the other end of the lab, perching in an opening higher up where she could watch for any dangers coming her way.

"You brought the arrancar child with you even here? How strange. What exactly are you planning, Grimmjow? What brings you back here after all this time?"

"Well, this was our home, I figured it's time to take back what's mine."

"Ah yes, you got your sword back so now you think you're indestructible. But I heard a rumour that I am very eager to put to the test."

Grimmjow braced himself and felt the soul shattering strike reverberate through the steel of his blade and back into his very soul. Yvo had figured it out, so why shouldn't the rest of them know? He was floored in a matter of seconds, but the bastard had already gotten three heavy hits against Pantera.

Lothure stood over him in satisfaction.

"Well that was quick."

Grimmjow was half stunned, the shock to his whole being was slow to pass but there was no way in Hell he was going to let it end like this. When Lothure raised his hammer again, he rolled in a backwards somersault and vaulted to his feet. When the hammer came down right before him, he didn't waste a second in striking down at Lothure's exposed neck.

Now it was his enemy's turn to dodge. Grimmjow was thoroughly disappointed to not have cut clean through his neck and decapitate him, but the burly quincy had not moved quite fast enough and a line of blood ran down one side of his neck. He put a hand to it and felt just how much slid over his pale flesh.

"Well, now I am surprised."

"Shouldn't be. I did say I would break the Dawn after all, so starting with you seems to be a good choice."

"Break the Dawn, eh? Like you tore apart Midnight? You think because you massacred one measly squadron hardly out of its infancy you can single-handedly destroy hundreds of soldiers who've been in this fight since day one. We're the Dawn for a reason- the beginning the first light of the Vandenreich. We are its core, its, foundation, and in a few hours, we're going to finish things in Soul Society once and for all."

"Why did you wait so long then? Oh that's right, your King thought he and a few Stein Ritter could do it themselves, well look how that turned out. They failed, and you won't even make it to Soul Society. Besides, you were demoted, weren't you? Some kid took your place. How's that feel?"

"I respect the orders of my Lord. Unlike you and that witch. You abandoned your ruler, and you fell apart."

"Aizen was no king, no lord, and neither is that black caped son of a bitch. He's just another asshole on a power trip. He'll come crashing down just like Aizen, just like all of them."

"Oh, and what are you then? You're just an animal who learned to walk on its hind legs and thinks he's better than me, better than the Vandenreich. Well, I think you, Grimmjow, will come crashing down first. In fact, I intend to make that happen right now."

The banter was done, but it had succeeded in getting Grimmjow's blood boiling. He once fought in anger in every single battle, and had since learned to use a little more reason and calm. But right now, he wanted to make Lothure lie on his back and look up at him, know he was nothing more than dirt, that the Dawn would break, the Vandenreich fall. So he let his arrogance and pride drive his actions, make him numb to the pain when that hammer glanced off his blade. He let himself forget that there was a greater plan at stake here, that he had just found out two of their allies had been taken beyond their reach, and instead was prepared to give everything just to win this one fight.

Pantera bit into Lothure's collar. His attacks with that blue lit hammer were fierce, but every time he made a powerful strike, he left himself open for just a moment while his hands were raised above his head. The next cut went across his abdomen, the next over his ribs and the next over one shoulder. Grimmjow jumped back from this last hit just before the hammer came down again.

"Not looking too good there, Lothure." he smiled cockily and as the large man raised his arms again he dodged forward with the intent to end it.

He had been played the fool.

He felt the difference in the wind that rushed in the wake of their movements, felt the tightness of Lothure's muscles as Pantera began its penetration right over his heart, but mostly he felt the radiation of that sneer of triumph and that hammer fell twice as fast, twice as hard as any of those hits.

Lothure had let himself take the blows, drawn Grimmjow into his direct line of fire, made him over confident so he would go for the kill right beneath that descending strike and then he'd used his full power to execute the move far faster than Grimmjow could register.

The best he could do was to move his head out of the way and save himself from a lethal blow, but the flat of the weapon connected dead on with his right shoulder, and it was over. Bone crushed under the power of it, his collar snapped, shoulder blade crunched, and the shoulder itself looked caved in underneath the torrent of blood. It was dislocated, hanging low and limp at his side, Pantera falling to the floor while he stood in the shock of it. His left hand came up to vainly try to hold his ruined shoulder together and the room spotted black. He didn't scream, he was still in shock when he fell to his knees.

"GRIMMJOW!" Nel screeched from her perch, but her voice was distant, there was a thrumming in his ears, in his whole body.

"The mistake of an arrogant child." Lothure sneered down at him, the cuts Grimmjow had lain in him were mere scratched compared to this. One hit. Just one hit from the commander of the Dawn. "It cost you your arm. And now your life."

Grimmjow took a shuddering breath. He realized he was panting, the pain was starting to kick in and his body shutting down, but when Luthore bent and picked up his fallen blade, he knew the pain was just starting.

"Will you die, Grimmjow, when I break your blade apart?" He set Pantera on a table and put his hammer over it.

"How much of its pain do you really feel?" He let the hammer fall with little force but it still landed with significant weight and Grimmjow jerk in response. Lothure smiled. "Good."

He raised it up higher this time before letting it drop. The espada on his knees lurched again, eyes hazed, he was half gone with pain already but each jarring force brought him back.

"Grimmjow!" the hysterical voice sounded next to him when the hammer came down hard enough to make him scream. But when he turned to face her, the next strike was too much and he collapsed to his left side. "Grimmjow!"

She turned back to Lothure only to see him raising his hammer all the way above his head this time.

"Grimmjow has to fight back!" She screamed at her fallen hero as she held onto the sides of his face. He spasmed under her touch and she heard the ringing blow to Pantera.

"Still alive, Grimmjow? Well, I think this one is it, here, goes." The hammer began to rise again.

"Grimmjow has to get up!"

Nothing was real to Grimmjow anymore. The room was painted in over bright colours, his own blood choked his breath and slowed the flow of oxygen to his brain. The tiny hands that dug into the sides of his face were barely there. Even those desperate eyes couldn't make him get up. He saw the hammer fall, and he knew it would be the blow to break it. Nel did too. She let her hands fall from his face and moved away.

"No." it was the only thing he could do: let go of his shoulder and wrap his hand in the back of her cloak. He might not be able to save himself, but he wouldn't let her throw her life away to save him. So he held her there while Lothure raised high his weapon.

The hammer fell.

Terrible news about Kubo. Hoping the situation improves. In the mean time I will work at updating my own stories.

Riza