when I was editing this chapter, I realized just how long this entire process has been for me. I'm nearing on a year of writing this and I'm at 90k with the backlog included... well, here's to more! and a reminder, Bazz B and Bambi are not nice people.
Bambietta Basterbine hated the Jagdarmees.
If she had her way she would have used vollstandig and erased the entire camp from existence. However, Uryu in his infinite naivety, decided to give them a chance to swear fealty to him and abandon the war.
Though if she were honest, she had to guess that he put the chances of that happening at a similar probability to actually find water in this endless expanse of pure desolation. After all, he sent her to deal with them. If he was actually serious about recruiting them he probably would have sent Domino. The unkillable sycophant would probably be able to strike a chord with them and convince them to join.
She was absolutely not the one you send to resolve a situation diplomatically. Her order to give them a chance was clearly an attempt to clear his conscience of the fact that they will need to die.
She had no such qualms. She was a sternritter.
As she walked to the camp she was greeted by a pair of lookouts. Their uniforms clearly showed signs of disrepair. Unsurprising given the fact that they have been operating in Hueco Mundo for over a year.
"So, where's your boss?" Bambi knew the guards probably recognized her. She had a reputation for being a black widow back in Silbern.
"He is planning our attack on Las Noches as we speak, he has instructed us that he isn't to be interrupted," the guards were painfully loyal. Fortunately, she had a few cards to play.
"His Majesty has requested that I speak to him post haste, I have an urgent message and it must be delivered now!" The first card being that they probably didn't know Yhwach was dead. Thus, a clever lie of omission would allow her to get this over with quickly.
"We will take you to his tent, he will speak with you after he's done with his meeting," she groaned at that, but it meant she got let into the camp.
What she saw as she traversed the camp was unflattering. It was clear even when they were deployed that the jagdarmees were meant to be abandoned. A sacrificial pawn to isolate Ichigo from Soul Society. It almost worked too, but the kid defied any attempt to gauge his limitations and awoke his quincy abilities through pure instinct and the plan went downhill from there.
But because they were never meant to be legitimately supported long-term, the conditions the members lived in slowly deteriorated over the past year. Starvation was a non-issue due to their ability to absorb reishi from the natural environment to sustain them, but few quincy had the precision needed to create or repair clothing with gathered reishi, and nobody here could based on the varying conditions of the soldat's uniforms.
When she got to the tent that was clearly the tent belonging to their commanding officer she continued into the tent as opposed to waiting. When one of the guards tried to stop her, he found himself knocked flat on his ass due to a precise explosion knocking him over.
When she entered the tent, the commanding officer was still going over the map of suspected enemy deployments, turning around when he heard Bambietta enter.
"I thought I said I wasn't to be interrupted…" he trailed off once he saw who had entered. "I see my calls for reinforcements were finally answered."
Bambietta resisted the urge to facepalm. The war was only supposed to last nine days. The fact that it's a year on and the world hasn't collapsed yet should have made it clear what happened.
"Sorry, I'm not reinforcements. The war's over, we lost, and His Majesty Yhwach is dead," the look of absolute shock on the commander was priceless. Sadly, she had to convince this ass to leave.
"I am here under orders of his appointed successor, Uryu Ishida, to inform you of this and that you are to terminate operations immediately," She doubted that he would listen. This war was supposed to be their moment. Vengeance for both the failed war a millennia ago and for the attempted genocide.
"And give up?!" The commander's voice was filled with indignation. "What of all those Soul Society slaughtered? What of the innocents dead because they served His Majesty and not that corpse-god they call king!" The words he spat were willed with venomous hate. Hate which would never allow for mercy to be shown to Soul Society, hate that would drive him to achieve the goals the war set out to achieve, and thus endanger all other quincy.
"I do not have time for your bullshit. You either stand down or I deal with you and your men as a threat to the quincy," She hoped he thought that was a bluff. She wanted to let loose and turn this camp into a smoking crater.
The silence in the tent became tense. The commander knew this wasn't a bluff. Bambietta wouldn't hesitate to destroy him and his men. He was surprised that she had shown him this much mercy even.
"If Uryu would deem us doing the noble thing, the honorable thing, the right thing, as a threat, then I do not wish to serve such a coward."
Bambietta grinned.
—
Gantenbaine was unamused.
He understood why Lady Hallibel had him escort the quincy. He was the strongest non-critical arrancar at her disposal. However, that also meant that he was basically babysitting while the others were doing the actual fighting. He only hoped that it would be over quickly.
Suddenly a bright flash illuminated the dark skies of Hueco Mundo coming from the direction of the Jagdarmee camp.
"What the hell?" The tall arrancar had no idea what was going on.
"Really Bambi? You just had to show off," Candice was unsurprised at the outcome. Bambi was getting antsy and she really needed to let out an explosion like this for a while. "By the way, you might want to sit down."
"Why?" Gantenbaine rapidly received his answer in the form of a massive shockwave that almost knocked him down. "Shit… what the hell is she?"
"Sternritter E, the explosion. She can turn anything in direct contact with her reiatsu into a bomb. Including the air itself," Candice knew the intricate details of her friend's shrift, as it was shared with her to foster the ability to cooperate with each other.
"Will there be…"
"No. They're total write-offs. Not like we lost anything of value, those assholes would probably eat babies if Yhwach told them too," Candice did some disturbing shit in the name of the Wandenreich, but the Jagdarmees were something else. Not to mention hiding them in the living world would probably take years just to get them to act normally.
"Good, if I knew you could do that I would have kept my mouth shut when the idea was brought up by Nelliel," Petitioning for aid looked a lot like weakness to him, but he didn't complain because the reality was plain as day. No, it was the petitioning of the quincy that he disagreed with.
But that crater where a camp full of them once was made everything he said then look foolish.
"If you knew then you probably would have disagreed even harder," Candice knew the kind of threat Bambi could pose. Around her 'safe' was a very relative term.
"Whatever, those sick bastards are all dead, that's what matters," He genuinely couldn't care less for the loss of those assholes. Their fanaticism was just wrong.
"Ah, been a while since I set one off that big," Bambi could be seen several feet in front of them, between them and the massive smoking crater. She looked as though she had come out of a spa with how relaxed she was.
"So, I take it the answer was a no?" Candice could make a reasonable guess, but she wanted to make sure that Bambi at least asked before atomizing them.
"He called what they were doing here just," Bambi hated that. Yeah, she did some horrible shit, but she didn't pretend that it wasn't horrible because a god-king told her to do it. Uryu was probably not going to like it, but it was more important that they were stopped and he knew that.
"Lady Hallibel will be relieved, now we can safely commit to dealing with our own problems," Gantenbaine started walking to the rendezvous point, the queen would like to finally hear some good news for once.
Rukia had asked that Ichigo come to the Sogyoku training grounds. That in and of itself was weird. She had outright stated her distaste for the execution grounds on several occasions. Hell, Ichigo was sure he could still see the gash he had cut into it with a Getsuga Tensho. But the site of this lesson wasn't the weirdest part. It was that it was after sunset and that he had been asked to be discreet.
While he was certain that it had nothing to do with the awkward situation they found themselves in, it still made this feel charged in a way. Here he was, sneaking into a secret location few people knew about, with the person he loved.
To say he felt weird would be an understatement.
But Rukia had made it clear that this training session was unorthodox and was using resources that were not regularly available.
As he came up to the first entrance he saw Rukia.
"Good, you're here," Rukia was clearly waiting for him as was usual for these sessions. "Come inside. We need to wait for someone else."
"Who?" Ichigo was confused. Why would Rukia be having someone else join them?
"The person who will be training you to use your abilities as a quincy," that floored Ichigo. He never thought anyone who knew about his heritage would be open to the idea because of the war. Not to mention he had little interest as his blended visored and fullbring powers did most of what he needed. He only really made common use of blut due to its defense and offensive benefits.
"Rukia, why are you doing this?" He didn't know what kind of risks Rukia was taking with this. Any potential instructor would have to come from the prison camp. Without official sanctioning, she could be risking her entire career.
"Because you at least deserve the opportunity to choose whether you stay or not," he did. He really did. Not only for what he did for Soul Society but for what he did for her. He didn't just save her life, he had convinced her it was worth living. Much as she knew she did the same for him. "And don't worry, I got the head captain and Captain Sui-Feng to agree," she did not want to have to explain the pages of security protocols she had to read through and the very long write-up she had to send to the Onmitsukido commander.
"You didn't have to do this," Ichigo sighed. At this rate, he fully planned on staying. Soul Society somehow felt more alive than Karakura, and he could probably help more from here than back in Tokyo.
"No, I didn't," Rukia was acknowledging that she had already done all that was expected of her. That this was going above her assigned responsibility to train him. "Yet I felt that I must."
Then Ichigo heard the sound of several shinigami exiting shunpo with a tagalong.
"Lieutenant Kuchiki, Lord Shiba," the leader of the security team escorting Ichigo's new instructor walked forward and gave Rukia a small box. "This is for the device sealing the subject's reiatsu, if he becomes belligerent, seal his power and let us know Immediately."
"Understood, you are dismissed," Rukia waved them away. After they left she removed the bag from the quincy's head, revealing a pink head of hair.
"I really hate having to wear a bag over my head," Bazz B complained as he felt the smaller woman undoing the restraints on his hands and legs, allowing him free movement. The collar sealing his power however remained.
"If you hate it so much, we can simply not stop the training until Ichigo reaches the level we need him to be at," Rukia suggested sarcastically. This was a necessary measure to ensure secrecy.
"That was the plan," Rukia was flabbergasted at the quincy's response.
"What?" She looked at him, surprised at his response.
"I'll explain when we get inside. Let's just say it will take a while," The three then began the climb down the ladder. The large open space of the training ground opened up almost immediately, with only a short tunnel though the structural reinforcement that keeps the hill from collapsing.
After they got inside the training area properly, and their feet on solid ground, Bazz B began his lecture.
"So, quincy are humans who have a fragment of Yhwach's soul in them," That much Ichigo and Rukia already knew, though this confirmed it. "This fragment cannot be destroyed or removed, the holder can only lose the ability to use or access it. This is why many of the sternritter survived auswahlen with their powers relatively intact," he then turned and sat down, looking at both his minder and his student. "When a quincy dies that fragment returns to Yhwach. This is my guess as to why he didn't give a shit if we lived or died."
Ichigo could attest to that. Knowing that Yhwach was the one who condemned his mother to death made that fight especially personal for him.
"However, this also means that all of Yhwach's fragments know what he knows, including techniques. All that is needed is for them to remember," of course, Yhwach could police what fragments knew what, but that was irrelevant given both the context and his current vegetative state, "When Olpie trapped you in his 'jail,' and you started to try and break it, you inadvertently created the very conditions used to awaken one's quincy powers." He let that sink in. He knew the kid was smart enough to fill in the blanks.
"So we're going to battle to the point of exhaustion while you fill the environment with your reiatsu?" And Ichigo was spot on. Bazz B grinned.
"Exactly, now miss, I know you have the controller for my collar," he looked at Rukia while tugging on the red choker. "I'll need this off completely in order to do this."
Rukia glared shards of ice at him. "I have a name."
"Yeah and I didn't care to read it in the Intel booklet," Rukia continued her glare, but she did turn off the restraint.
Bazz B could feel his power being allowed to flow again. It was good to be back, even if only for a short time.
"By the way kid, one catch to all of this, no sword," Bazz B watched as Ichigo put down his sealed zanpakuto and did some initial stretches to make himself limber before getting into a fighting stance.
This was going to be fun.
Hallibel was walking among the sands of Hueco Mundo along with her fraccion, as well as Grimmjow and Nelliel.
The queen of the endless desert had a fondness for the former trecera. Partially as she was the first fellow arrancar she had met, and help with onboarding her to Aizen's forces. Unfortunately, it was not long after that Nnoitra made his move and caused permanent damage to her mask. If it wasn't for Orihime, Nell's mask would still be broken.
"Any idea where these upstarts are boss?" Grimmjow was getting impatient.
Hallibel extended her pesquilla, and what it saw was surprising.
"Odd, this was where Roka said they were gathering," she could only see one source of reiatsu in the distance. One that seemed somehow familiar.
"Apacce, Sun Sun, Mila, return to Las Noches," they didn't like the order.
"What the hell?" Apacce replied almost immediately. Normally her hot-headed aggression would be tolerated, but not now.
"It is not safe for you. Return to Las Noches now!" Hallibel used a far more pointed tone. This caused Milla Rose to grab Apacce by the collar of her shirt before she and Sun Sun disappeared in the flash of sonido.
"So, it's bad enough you dismissed your brats, what is it?" Grimmjow looked over at Hallibel. It was rare for her to dismiss them, especially so pointedly.
"There is a single unknown reiatsu signature over that sand dune. Exactly where Roka said our opposition was gathering," it didn't take Grimmjow long to put two and two together.
"Whoever is over that crest killed the entire army on their own," Nelliel's soft-spoken words were not reassuring. Not soon after saying that the sound of Gamuza being drawn could be heard. Tiberon and Pantera stayed in their scabbards, but Hallibel's hand instinctively hovered over her zanpakuto's hilt.
When they finally crested the dune, the sight before them was gruesome.
The entire desert before them was soaked red with the blood of hollows, and the air thick with the stench of death.
In the center of this field of blood and gore was a single child of indeterminate gender. Hallibel cleared her throat before making her presence known.
"Child, what is your name and why are you here?" Her voice boomed authoritatively over the open desert.
The child, covered in the viscera of his fallen foes turned and looked at her with curiosity before smiling.
"I'm Hikone Ubuginu, and I'll become king of Hueco Mundo."
so. that's chapter 30. I hope you enjoyed it, and remember, feedback is always welcome.