Extra content posted at the end of Chapter 16! Go back and read it! ...I thought as I was dividing up the chapters that that scene really belonged in the previous chapter but I reluctantly left it alone figuring I'd fix it later, but I forgot when I posted. So now it's fixed and the narrative flows a little more freely. Sorry about the mix up, this chapter really is about what happens at Kuukaku Shiba's residence anyway and it should begin there. So here it is, the pivotal chapter (I'm so excited!) Let's get it started!
I was halfway through the districts heading back when I abruptly thought of another possible source of information out there that wouldn't necessitate two trips to the Rukongai. There was another woman around these parts that might know of something useful.
Kuukaku Shiba.
I hadn't met her much directly but I knew that her little brother had been Rukia's first lieutenant, and her first crush. Call me petty but I'd sort of avoided contact with that family for just that reason. Still, we sorta had a common cause right then so it couldn't hurt to try it out.
:Hm, lesseee...: I thought to myself.
I knew that their strange little fireworks shop was supposed to be able to change locations every now and then, but that no-matter where it was located, it was always noticeable because it was always a little weird. Rukia told me that last time it had had two giant arms sticking up out of the ground on it. Still... it shouldn't be too hard for me to find, all I had to do was look around for a small gang riding piggy back (literally!) and follow their scent back to their sty. I flashed off to a nearby tavern, paid a man for some info about a gang riding pigs and flashed off to that sector, paid again for some information, and flashed off to that sector. By now I was seriously beginning to wonder if it was worth the investment in time and money. The lead panned out though, and I picked up their trail and scented it back. A half hour later I found the Shiba Residence.
:Hoo-boy,: I thought to myself with a weirded-out look on my face.
I couldn't help it, it definitely wasn't everyday that a guy saw two massive stone heads carved to look like the heads from Easter Island that had been decorated with bright neon flowers with a tower painted to look like a barbershop pole standing quietly in a field next to a river.
:Oh, she redecorated. Maybe I should have brought a housewarming present.:
Not one to waste time, I flashed across the river and knocked politely on the front door, which had been painted with a fresco to look like the Last Supper, but all the saints had been replaced with clown faces. I snickered. A heartbeat later I was ambushed by her two massive house-guards. I flashed out of the way before they could catch me. Geeze, I'd been doing more flashing in the last few days than I had in months, it was getting me into shape pretty quickly.
"I come in peace!" I called, protesting my innocence.
The guards regarded me stonily (no joke) and narrowed thier eyes at me.
"I jus' wanna exchange info on who or what it is that's making the ruckus here in the Rukongai, that's all. I figured the Shiba the Elder might know sumthin' about it."
I held my hands up by my head to show that I wasn't a threat. I could take these guys, and it would be fun, but I wasn't there for a fight and that sort of thing tended to give a bad impression.
"Down idjits," the owner of the weird shop commanded from the entry way. "Let the tatooed Soul Reaper in, he's a friend of a friend."
:Gee, what a recommendation... I guess.:
Kuukaku Shiba was another attractive woman, in a rough sort of way. She had all of the right parts in all the right places, but even with her revealing clothes she tended to give off a sort of masculine aura. I kinda liked her though, oddly enough. She struck me as the sort who didn't bullshit around and would tell you what she was thinking right to your face.
The twin guards studied me like pit bulls deciding whether or not to growl as I walked between them into the...establishment.
I followed the woman down into her lair and was seated in a tatami room on a cushion. She seated herself on her own cushions on a dais to denote her status and puffed from out of a hookah for a long minute. I sat there and stared back, pulling my hood off my head and waiting.
"So watcha want?" she asked bluntly.
"Heard a rumor 'bout somethin' goin' after kids an' thought I'd take a look," I said. "It's not official Seireitei business or anything, though the Captain knows about it and doesn't mind as long as my other work gets done. Wondered if you'd heard anythin' about sumthin' called the Shadows."
She regarded me for a long minute, seeming to weigh me and measure me.
"Follow me," she said, rising to her feet.
Puzzled, but figuring that if she wanted me dead she'd try an' do it herself, I got up and followed her. She led me down the hall and down some stairs, deeper into her strange little rabbit hole. Then stopped outside of a room and motioned for silence. She very quietly pulled aside the screen door and let me peek in. Sleeping in a pile of futons in the middle of the room were about thirteen or fourteen children of different ages and genders. I looked back over at her questioningly. She led me away from the nursery and out of earshot when she said
"I heard about the rumors of something targeting children with spirit powers so I had my people go out and start collecting them to bring them here so I could place them under wards," she said. "A few of them know other kids who'd disappeared, but none have seen it happen. The thought is that if you've got power and you see one, then you vanish. The rumors are all the same, they come at night from out of the shadows and a kid is gone without a trace."
"Yer kind ta take 'em in so nuthin' happens to 'em," I said sincerely.
"What about you?" she asked directly, looking at me. "You Soul Reapers must have info I don't, didja find anything that'll help?"
"Nothin' concrete," I said.
I willingly detailed what I had picked up on my own at my old haunt and then the stuff the Soul Society dug up, although, I was quick to add, there was no actual link between the two of them and for all I knew it could be a wild theory. I added the little that Amber had been able to tell me, though I didn't add my speculation that Aizen might be involved, and finished off with
"...And that's all I've got so far. If I can't find a real lead soon I may just have ta beg permission to visit the Mortal World."
"You think the boy might know something?" she questioned me, sounding a little dubious.
I shook my head, surprised that that was conclusion she'd come up with... like I'd ever willingly go running to that brat with my problems, I could handle my own problems myself!
"Uruhara," I said shortly. "Ol' hat-an'-clogs might not be part of the Seireitei anymore, but he always seems to know ten times more than anyone else does about everything."
"That's true," she agreed with me. "Thanks for the heads up about the Believed, I dunno that I really think it's true, but its always useful to at least have a theory."
"Yeah, theories are real useful," I said, looking at her in exasperation. "I'd rather have somethin' who's head I can nail to the wall though."
She grinned along with me.
"I hear that," she agreed.
I was about to go my separate way back to the stack of paperwork that was waiting for me on my desk when the wind seemed to shift a bit and I caught a familiar scent on the breeze. At the same time I got that chilled, hungry feeling ya get when you're near a reiatsu so powerful that it freezes you in yer tracks.
"It's here," I snarled drawing Zabimaru and charging back down the stairs towards all those kids.
The woman and her two house-guards were a half a beat behind me. I didn't bother pausing to open the door I just smashed right through it. A lot of the kids startled awake and the elder kids hopped to their feet or knees, looking for danger. Street reflexes had had a little more time to become ingrained in them so they reacted more like they should.
In the center of the room was a circular pinpoint of darkness that was irissing outwards into a gaping hole in the fabric of the world. The hole was blurry-edged kinda like heat-haze and the center was blacker than black. My brow automatically furrowed in puzzlement as I saw more blackness coming out of it. It didn't look like the hole was getting any bigger, but it looked like someone had taken black-soot smoke and condensed it into a cloud thick as pea-soup but the edges of that cloud seemed to sort of shimmer a bit. It was the strangest thing, the shimmer wasn't light but more like it had so much not-light that it warped the air around it. The room was choked thick (at least to me) with the scent of temple and graveyard incense and the temperature had dropped like a stone. I didn't think to pause for a moment more as the stuff that was coming from out of the portal began to make its way over to the kids, who had woken up and were now headed for the furthest corner of the room away from it (never mind that there was no exit there).
"Roar, Zabimaru!" I commanded.
My sword transformed into its shikai state in a blink and I shot it out at the black badness trying to attack a buncha kids on my watch.
The end of the blade went right into the Shadow (it had to be one of them) and went out the other side. The same thing happened when Kuukaku lobbed a small bomb at it, with one end lit. The little bomb passed right through it like it was made of nothing and passed right out the other side.
The two guards behind us rushed at it, and that's when the Shadow counterattacked. As the boys leaped at it, black lightning... that couldn't be called lightning because it seemed to be made of the complete absence of light, shot out from the center of it, hitting the two men in the centers of their chests and sending them flying backwards into the wall where they promptly slumped down, unconscious.
"Aniki!" a familiar voice called from the top of the stairs.
"Don't come any closer!" Big Sis Kuukaku commanded.
She began to chant the opening lines to a Hado attack.
I brought my extended sword up through the Shadow, slicing it lengthwise and then curling it around to try slicing it width-wise just to see if there was some solid part of it that I might be able to hit. I dodged out of the way of it's darkning attack and tried again, keeping it distracted while she finished her spell.
"Hado forty-two, shui-yue!" she called.
A frozen lance of water and moonlight appeared in her hand and shot towards the spectacularly unaffected Shadow. In reply another lance of darkning shot towards her.
My tongue seemed to burn with the scent of incense and ozone but this time, when the thing attacked, I noticed something I hadn't before. Just before the Shadow attacked the strange shimmer that rippled along the outside of the shadow like oil on top of water seemed to thicken in one place.
"Miss Shiba!" I said, getting an idea. "Do it again."
"It didn't work!" she snapped at me.
"Yeah, but I think I have an idea," I replied, pulling Zabimaru back into blade rest.
"Hey, little Brother," I called out, unable to remember the guy's name in that moment. "Come get the kids out."
I charged at the shadow again, extending Zabimaru even though it went through it and keeping its attention and lightning attacks on me. The guy who had come to the Seireitei with Ichigo when he'd nvaded to rescue Rukia snuck into the room and led the kids out while I kept the Shadow distracted. Seeing its prey escape didn't seem to make it very happy and it made a noise that sounded a lot like the scream of metal being torn and rent in half combined with the sound of someone scraping their nails across a chalkboard. I shuddered.
Kuukaku started her chant, so I got moving.
I didn't let up for a moment, dodging and weaving around its attacks. I jumped from spot to spot only pausing long enough to let it target me and to strike out with my chain-blade. It wasn't even thrown for a loop when I launched myself over it and attacked from above, but it did almost manage to get me by guessing my trajectory as I landed. I barely managed to bring Zabimaru to blade-rest in time to block its attack. I kept one ear cocked for the sound of Kuukaku chanting in the background between darkning attacks. It didn't seem to have any openings but I kept at it, darting Zabimaru in for attacks as I ducked and weaved in dance-like patterns, always keeping in motion.
There was something interesting I noted when it attacked, the surface of the shadow deemed to ripple just a hair more thickly in one place and at that point what could only be described as a dark sort of glow, no it wasn't a glow, it was like the Shadow seemed to take on a dark sort of substantial form at that point. I tried launching Zabimaru at it, but was repeatedly repelled. Bingo.
"Aim for the center," I gasped as it finally managed to score a hit past Zabimaru's guard on me. It stung like the dickens, like getting tazered by Rukia's best Hado attack. "Where it gets thickest."
"Hado forty-two, Shui-yui!" she concluded.
Moonlight and water lanced liqudly at the center of the shadow. The surface of the thing thickened and shimmered even as the lance passed harmlessly through it but that was the opening I'd been waiting for. I shot Zabimaru at the place where the heat-shimmer was still thick an eyeblink behind where Kuukaku's hado attack had just hit before the shimmer could disperse back out along its formless form again.
It struck... sort of. Zabimaru didn't hit anything actually solid, in fact it felt to me a little like sticking a knife into tapioca pudding. It didn't seem to stick much and the Shadow was quick to seize an advantage and send darkning down the length of my blade and into my body.
In my long history of battles I've been knocked around, sliced open, nearly ripped apart, limbs dislocated, being floored by kido attacks and nearly nicked to death by a cloud of tiny petal-sized blades... so I've experienced many various ways that pain could be inflicted on my body, some of which had been very painful indeed. There had been times when I had thought that I wouldn't survive, even if I wanted to. Getting hit by that Shadow's darkning attack blew all other orders of pain I had experienced thus far completely out of the water. It felt like a chemical burn beneath my skin, rising in mounting waves as though someone had flayed the flesh from my body and then poured brine water on it. My bones seemed to heat up like a blade being forged and my blood turned to liquid lightning inside my shell, which threatened to fly apart. I couldn't do anything but scream in agony.
It cut off abruptly but I felt Zabimaru, which had been sunk in the semi-solid puddin-spot in the Shadow suddenly start getting pulled in, as though someone had the other end and was pulling on it. I pulled back and whipped downward. Like a fish on a line, the Shadow fought me. I was about to try another attack, or go Bankai on its ass, when suddenly a great sheet of darkness with an oily heat shimmer over it flooded at me like a tidal wave. It crashed into me with a force that felt like pure, concentrated reiatsu, the level that can freeze a man in his tracks. I was lifted up off my feet, but instead of being knocked back I found myself being borne along with that force as easily as a leaf was borne on the surface of a river. My head went under and I was completely enveloped in darkness.
Everything was a blur of silence and motion. I couldn't see anything, and my nose was too overwhelmed by the smell of incense that I couldn't smell anything either. My body felt weightless and at the same time... I felt heavier than I could ever remember feeling. Even that time Ichigo had beat me and I couldn't move my limbs even to save Rukia's life. I wasn't sure if I lost consciousness or not because I couldn't see or hear of taste or feel or smell anything at all.
The last thing I sensed was the strange not-here feeling of passing through a gateway through the dividing world and then everything just cut off.
The next thing I knew I was lying on my back on a hard surface. A dim sort of yellowish light was shining down on me. I blinked my eyes and groaned. Forget a hangover, this felt like an all-over-body hangover. Every part of me ached as though I'd been ordered to run circles around the Seireitei with everyone in it beating me with clubs gauntlet-style. I didn't move for a long moment, trying to sort myself out. There was no one single injury as far as I could tell, I felt like one giant bruise.
:Now I know how a cockroach feels when it gets stepped on but the guy doesn't finish the job of killing it,: I thought to myself.
I mentally nudged at the place in my soul where Zabimaru slept and went cold with panic when I didn't feel him respond. I didn't even feel his presence and for a very significant portion of my life that presence had been my one constant. I felt suddenly like a man who'd woken up missing his arms and legs. Zabimaru just couldn't be gone! He was part of me, part of my essence as a Soul Reaper, he just couldn't be not there!
I noticed something else as I lay there in pain, the very fact that I felt pain like this at all. For a Soul Reaper, pain was relative; one could be injured and feel a sort of pain, even vast debilitating pain, but even that pain was a step removed from the immediacy of flesh. The pain I felt right then had every bit of that normal, human, living pain in it and then some. In addition I felt... heavy. It felt like every part of my body was weighted down with lead, so much so that even the thought of getting up was enough to make me cringe in exhaustion. And that just wasn't right, I'd been bed-ridden more than a time or two, but it had never felt like this!
:Zabimaru!: I called, I had to settle for a mental shout into the corners of my soal because my voice wasn't working right then.
My chest tightened and I tried to move my body, it was painful as hell but I pushed the pain aside and sat up, casting about frantically for my buddy. As soon as I got a good look at myself I wanted to lay back down and close my eyes and hope the nightmare passed quickly.
:No. No this can't be...: I moaned to myself. :This is impossible.:
I was sitting out in the middle of a deserted street in what could only be the Mortal World and it was night outside, that light over my head was a street lamp. I was completely naked, and the binding marks on my body were gone. My gigai was heavier than any gigai I had ever felt before.
:In fact,: I realized with a sinking feeling of dread. :It's not a gigai at all.:
I brought my hands up before me and waggled my fingers, searching for Zabimaru's Binding Marks on me and finding none. They were gone, he was gone, and there was a tiny cut on the back of one hand that bled out a red, metallic blood.
I was mortal.
Dun dun duuuun!