Disclaimer: Bambietta Basterbine and all related characters belong to Shueisha.
"We'll get through this, captain! I swear it! We'll defeat the quincy and avenge the captain-commander's death!"
The wolf who had once been Captain Sajin Komamura of the Gotei Thirteen could hear the words of Lieutenant Tetsuzaemon Iba. Though it was difficult, an explosion that rose up on the horizon nearly drowning out the lieutenant's voice with sound and fury, the wolf could hear Iba's words well enough. Even the visible and audible proof that the war between the Soul Society and the Wandenreich was still raging could not bury them completely.
How the wolf wished he could speak to his lieutenant, to tell him that while he appreciated the sentiment, that he appreciated how Iba said that he had done no wrong in pursuing revenge, he knew such words only made Lieutenant Tetsuzaemon Iba just as wrong as Captain Sajin Komamura and Captain Kaname Tosen had both been.
Revenge blackened the soul, made it hollow, and it had cost the wolf everything. His honor, his pride, his station, his title, his humanity, even his identity itself. Gone was the form of a shinigami, having left behind nothing but a mere wolf. A wolf who, in the end, had not even made it within reach of Yhwach, the Wandenreich emperor who had slayed Genryusai Shigekuni Yamamoto. All his sacrifice, all his rage, all his effort, and none of it had led to an equivalent exchange.
All he had done was defeat one small foe on the battlefield, stumbling before he could press on and challenge the true enemy responsible for his pain. It was all for naught, leaving the wolf to be carried around into battle by the man who no doubt still considered him a shinigami captain.
The wolf could understand what he had done, his mind as sharp as ever, but it was trapped within the confines of a beast's body. He could not give it voice and explain the sin his anger had led him to. All he could do was listen to Iba, listen and fear that his lieutenant could follow in his footsteps and consider it an honor, naive to the self-righteousness behind it.
"We'll take down that bastard Yhwach together, I swear it!" Iba shouted, still carrying the wolf on his back. "We'll-"
"Hey, Captain Doggy!"
Iba heard a voice come from behind him then, the lieutenant turning slowly as he heard it continue to speak. It was ragged and soaked in pain, but the voice persisted.
"You! I see you!"
Iba saw her then as well, a woman in the tattered and charred remains of a Wandenreich uniform, her cap long gone. There were blotches of skin that matched the uniform, muscle and bone peaking out beneath the patches of burned flesh. Blood was pumping from the wounds, staining the ground on which she walked. Blood covered her face as well, leaving it adorned in a crimson mask. Yet somehow, despite the horror that he was witnessing, the worst was yet to come. Iba could see that the quincy was not even looking at him, but the wolf upon his back. From the stare, he had to imagine he may as well have been invisible to her.
"And you're gonna pay!"
Sternritter E, Bambietta Basterbine, had found her prey, and she could not be happier. Despite her pain, despite her agony, her lips curled back into a cruel smile, her eyes lighting up.
"The game's not over yet."
Iba understood then, realizing this was the very same quincy that his captain had been fighting. It just did not make any sense to him. How was she still standing?
"This battle was supposed to be a walk in the park for me, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking furball," Bambietta hissed, "but you had to scare me half to death with a nightmare. Me, Sternritter E of the Wandenreich. Me, Bambietta Basterbine. You're going to regret that, Captain Doggy. All the way to an unmarked grave!"
Iba could see that Bambietta was shaking, though he did not know if it was from the pain the quincy was in, the lingering fear she had spoken of, or a combination of the two. Regardless of the answer, he did not care and held his ground, intent on protecting his captain in his present state from the unhinged quincy. "I wouldn't count on that, not with you looking like you've already got one foot in the grave yourself."
Then, and only then, did Bambietta refocus her gaze on the lieutenant. She looked at him intently...and laughed. It was a loud one, Bambietta leaning her head back as she did so.
"Oh, it hurts to laugh, but I needed that!" The quincy tilted her head forward. "Sure, I might be on my last legs, Lieutenant Shades. And yeah, I'm weaker than I should be, but that doesn't make me weaker than a shinigami of your lowly position!"
Bambietta swung her arm forward then, throwing several spiritual spheres at Iba. Sure enough did they all explode upon contact with the ground, the power of her schrift in play and kicking up both smoke and flame.
"The Explode is all sorts of fun, but I hope you like my engelssaiten trick," Bambietta said. "You shinigami might have heard of it as ransotengai or whatever Yhwach's new wonder boy called it. It's a big pain in the butt, and hurts like hell in my current condition, but when you can't depend on your friends to help you back up..."
Bambietta's maddened smile dropped them, hands reaching up to clasp at her arms. She shook for a moment, eyes wavering for but a moment. Then did she take control of herself physically, finding it within herself to speak once more.
"You've just got to do it yourself."
Bambietta had finished her sentence, but it had not been with the maddened bravado that Iba and the wolf had been hearing up to that point. No, it was the whispered voice of an insecure young woman, one who was teetering on the brink of more than she was willing to let on.
However, when next she spoke, she was a changed woman, restored to her former confidence, her voice dripping with bluster and power.
"If I'm gonna be someone's puppet, I'll be my own damn puppet!" Bambietta turned her back to the shinigami lieutenant. "Shocked I can move around with spiritual threads? You shouldn't be. The Wandenreich has had a thousand years to prepare for this war! Now then..."
Bambietta watched as Iba reached for his zanpakuto tucked away within the bandages over his ribs, no doubt prepared to pull the small weapon out and unleash it. Unfortunately for him, Bambietta's spirit threads and the Explode were quicker still, even if the harsh movement caused her to grit her teeth, agony seering through her arm. An orb of the Explode shot forth from her hand, striking the lieutenant right in the face.
Then did the sunglasses that Iba wore explode. The lieutenant fell back and screamed, the wolf falling away from him.
"Sorry but not sorry about that," Bambietta snapped. "I just wanted to see those damn eyes of yours full of shock and despair, Lieutenant Shadeless."
Bambietta could see it, the shock she wanted, the fear, but there was still that damned pride burning within the shinigami's eyes. Pride and...
"Oh, I bet that's the same look that's in my eyes right now." Bambietta recognized it well enough. She grit her teeth then, shaking a slight bit before steadying herself. "And the same look that was in Captain Doggy's before. Similar but...different."
Bambietta took a step closer, seeing Iba once more reaching for his zanpakuto.
"Neither one of wants to throw our lives away, do we?" Bambietta asked. "No, we fight to live. We're not like that mongrel over there who threw it all away before he even entered the battlefield."
Bambietta glared at the wolf and saw him grow smaller and more withdrawn, his tail moving between his legs. It almost made her want to laugh, but it was too offputting and surprising to manage that.
"Huh." Bambietta looked at him perplexed, raising up a gloved hand to wipe her own dripping blood from her eyes. "What's this now, hero? Where has your strength gone?"
The wolf said nothing save for a weak whine. It was all he could do, the captain he had been nothing more than dust in the wind now and forever. He had sought revenge and failed, leading one to fight past her limits and her fears and rise up again solely for revenge on him. And his lieutenant...
"It resides with me now," Iba said, staring down Bambietta with unwavering eyes. "His strength, his conviction. They rest upon my back and within my heart."
The wolf looked to Iba then, feeling a great swell of pride in the man he had mentored for so long, but there was anxiety building within him, a fear he hoped that Iba would not prove right.
"And if avenging the captain-commander has fallen from my captain's reach," Iba said, at last drawing his zanpakuto out for battle, "then it falls upon me to avenge both Captain-Commander Genryusai Shigekuni Yamamoto and Captain Sajin Komamura!"
No! The wolf wished with all his might that he could utter that word, to turn the man he had mentored and trusted with his life away from the same path he had walked, but it was beyond him.
Bambietta, meanwhile, simply glared at Iba. She had seen it well, how he had carried his defanged captain across the battlefield, how even now he supported him. How he would fight what he had to know was a losing battle to protect his comrade.
It was enough to make Bambietta's grin fade, the corners of her mouth dropping, her teeth coming into view as they grit together. Enough to make her burn with rage, to crave violence.
To succumb to envy in its purest state.
It had only been minutes ago that Bambietta Basterbine had lay on the ground of the Soul Society, her body battered and broken. No, not just her body, but her spirit. The shinigami known as Captain Sajin Komamura had thrown everything away for the strength to achieve victory before the battle had even started, and had used it to turn Bambietta's power against her.
Worse, he had made her retreat from battle. He had made her cast away her pride and her honor and succumb to the fear of death and give into panic. It had availed her not, Bambietta having been unable to escape the determined shinigami, and it had only added to her shame.
Thus had the angel who thrived on bringing her enemies down with explosion after explosion been conquered by that very same fate, her body having fallen from the heavens in the aftermath.
To be betrayed by her own power, the Explode, had been heartbreaking for Bambietta. However, it had proven itself nothing more than the prelude to the quartet of betrayal that encircled her now, the harbingers of heartbreak that looked down upon her.
Sternritter T, Candice Catnipp, who looked down at Bambietta with equal parts cruel pity and relief that she had fallen in battle. "I guess this is karma for killing all the hotties on me."
Sternritter P, Meninas McAllon, who looked down at Bambietta with a vapid face that just barely let out a hint of emotion, that which was nothing more than condescending and utterly false concern. "You know he didn't look like a dog anymore, right? But you seemed real hung up on that. Oh Bambi, you can be such a bimbo."
Sternritter G, Liltotto Lamperd, who was not even looking down at Bambietta, paying her no mind, more enticed by the popsicle in her mouth. "Some leader. And this just goes to show you're the biggest loser of us all. Now we finally get to take center stage."
Then there was the last of the quartet who had left Bambietta behind in the war only to scurry out when she had been humbled.
Sternritter Z, Giselle Gewelle, who looked at Bambietta with nothing but love. Love untempered by consideration or desired consent, just love in an uncontrolled and uninhibited state. "Talk about a subversion! But don't worry, Bambi! I told you we'd miss you-"
"You'll miss her!" the other three shouted in unison.
"Don't listen to them, Bambi," Giselle said, moving down to straddle Bambietta's torso. The contact made Bambietta's injuries scream with pain, but Giselle paid her discomfort no mind. She instead leaned over, looking deep into Bambietta's panicked eyes. "They don't know what they're talking about. How can we be the Bambis without you, right? You're Bambi! Without you, we're just the Femritters or something like that!"
"Please don't, Gigi!" Bambietta shouted, seeing her friend and beginning to sob. "You...can't! I... I..."
"Shhh..." Giselle put a single finger down on Bambietta's mouth, adding just enough force to keep it from being a gentle action. "The begging is cute and all, but save that for later. For when I ask for it."
Giselle was so lost in the moment that she was not even paying attention to her friends who watched on, unaware and unconcerned with how they felt about the moment. Whether they wanted Bambietta gone altogether or around in the form Giselle had in mind, she did not really care. If Bambietta did not wish it, the same rule applied. This was her choice and her choice alone.
Well, not a choice in the here and now. It had been made a long time ago by Giselle. It had been made the day she had met Bambietta and the others. None of them would leave her. Not ever. Not through broken friendships or even by something as silly and pesky as death. They would all stay by her side forever and ever, friends to the end. But Bambietta...
She was something else. So strong, so fearless, so bossy and headstrong. Giselle loved every little thing about Bambietta. From the way she thrilled at getting to cut into enemies with a smile on her face to how she vented her frustration cutting into allies with the most bored expression possible. How she would sometimes fidget with her skirt, making sure nothing was showing when flying around with her vollstandig. How she would go into long form tangents about the wonders of Star Wars at the drop of a dime. How she would never wear her glasses into conflict, relying on the screams of enemies, splashes of blood and explosive detonations to guide her in the right direction through the battlefield. The way she would look on perplexed with a goofy expression etched upon her face when things took her by surprise. How she would go into a flashing sprint with the beinarbeit technique if the wind blew off her precious hat...
There was so much about her to love, Giselle sometimes wishing she was a soldat that was invited into Bambietta's room, consequences be damned. However, this day had given her something new to love about Bambietta. The shinigami captain who had thrown everything away to defeat her had brought out a side Giselle had not imagined was buried deep down within Bambietta.
Oh, Bambietta had spoken with Giselle at great lengths in the past about her fears, and Giselle had loved the level of trust implicit in it all, returning her own deeper emotions to Bambietta, but this had gone beyond that.
Faced with unyielding strength of character, Bambietta had broken. All her bluster, all her confidence, shattered on the spot. She had become a frightened lady, nothing more.
And it was the most attractive Bambietta had ever been to Giselle.
Giselle reached out then, hands wrapping around Bambietta's throat. She was so glad that Bambietta had survived the assault of the shinigami, allowing Giselle this chance now. Death was assured in defeat, the Wandenreich's rules carved into eternal stone. Bambietta would be gathered up and executed for her failure, but Giselle had always planned to skirt past that rule.
It was a relief that the shinigami had not managed to kill Bambietta, and the Wandenreich's high command would not get the chance. Giselle would do it herself. After all, she owed Bambietta that much, to die at the hands of a friend. And as far as Giselle was concerned, Bambietta owed her the chance to do it in return. Consent, after all, was never an option.
"Stop...it...Gigi..." Bambietta gasped, the sternritter fighting for every breath of air she could suck in. "...Please..."
"Nuh uh, silly goose!" Giselle said. "I mean, did you ever listen to any of the guys when they said that? Oh. Right. Nope! You never had to! You just killed them out of the blue all quick and easy! But..."
Giselle paused with her talk, though she kept choking the life out of Bambietta.
"You killed them so fast they never even knew what hit them," Giselle said, tilting her head to the side. "Even showed them some of that bouncy cleavage before slicing them in two. And here I am doing it so slow..."
Giselle suddenly smiled, a luminous blush flaring up across her cheeks, a slight bit of drool slipping out over her lower lip.
"Don't get the wrong idea, Bambi!" Giselle said, her voice's tone that of a pleasant melody. "I'm not a sadist! This is just getting me wet is all!"
Giselle shook her head then before glancing down at Bambietta. She could see the tears at the edges of her eyes, and it made Giselle all the happier.
"You're both getting wet," Meninas observed, though her phrasing needed work. "Oh my."
"Pathetic," Candice snapped. "And to think I was scared of her temper tantrums."
"If you're going to keep her around whether we like it or not, Gigi," Liltotto said between licks of her ice pop, "then get this over with before I finish my snack."
"Fine," Giselle said, looking at her friends before turning back to Bambietta. "Spoilsports. No sharp objects though, Bambi. I really don't need the inconvenience of putting you back together once you're a zombie. But asphyxiation? You'll come back from that in a jiffy! But even if I can't quite do it your way, I can make you hot and bothered before you go..."
With that, Giselle suddenly kissed the struggling Bambietta right on the lips. For Giselle it was a dream come true. For Bambietta, it would have been once upon a time. Now, however, that dream had become a nightmare, for the quincy who feared death above all things was being molested by the seemingly physical manifestation of its will now. Not a shinigami, but by an angel of death, Giselle Gewelle.
Bambietta squirmed beneath Giselle, legs trying to kick out from under her, but it was to no avail. Komamura's attack and the redirected Explode had left Bambietta's body badly hurt, charred and marred by the power of it all. She could barely move, allowing Giselle to have her way with her as she was, fatal results waiting in the wings.
Bambietta felt her heartbeat skyrocket then, as if her heart wanted to live up to her schrift and detonate in a fiery display of cruel irony. All because Bambietta knew this was her end. Even if she could rise up and fight, she was still hurt and spiritually crushed. She could not hope to fend off those she had considered her friends. Four sternritter against one who had lost so much power in defeat? There was no hope.
No hope.
It was clear to her then. There had never been a chance for her to survive this war, was there? Even now, even if by some miracle she saved herself from this unholy situation, she would be executed for her loss to Captain Sajin Komamura.
No! No, no, no! Bambietta refused to accept that. Just who the hell did this world think she was? This battle, it was not over yet! She would push past her limits, deal with this before her, then track down the captain who dared make her feel small, like a coward! Who dared to make her fear death once again! Who had cast her into the hell she was experiencing now!
Bambietta's right hand twitched then, the sternritter trying to tug at hope. Hope, and the matter around her. There was one last trick she could try and employ, one she had practiced many a time within the hallowed halls of the Wandenreich's castle.
Invisible particles that made up the Soul Society solidified around her, forming strings, tethering to her existence. It was the power of engelssaiten, a particular challenging quincy skill to master. Bambietta knew she was no goddess when it came to its application, whenever she had tried leaving her to move about in an uncanny way that made her appear unnatural. Even Giselle had been afraid and put off by it.
However, now, it was her only way to move, to fight back. Her fingers kept twitching, spiritual strings puppeteering Bambeitta under the command of her mind and soul. It was so alien to her to control her body from the inside looking out and back again, but it was her only hope.
Bambietta almost found it a relief to focus on such a complex task, allowing her to ignore how Giselle was pushing against her lips, against her own body. She just needed a little more, a little more and she could try something, anything, to save herself.
It was so very hard though, her windpipe beginning to compress in Giselle's harsh and loving hands, making Bambietta's whole body scream for oxygen, for life. She knew Giselle would take it away and give it back in the worst way possible, but she would not let it happen.
Returning her focus to Giselle's kiss, Bambietta forced herself to act. If Giselle wanted it rough, she would be glad to return the favor. Bambietta bit down on Giselle's lower lip, forcing blut arterie to flood throughout her face and strengthen it.
So close together, she saw Giselle's eyes widen before her own, and Bambietta bit harder, twisting her head to the side.
Giselle broke off the kiss then, sitting back up with a scream. Blood gushed from her lower lip, a piece of it missing..
Bambietta, meanwhile, spat out the pound of flesh she had taken from Giselle, lip included, and took advantage of the shock she had no doubt caused all her so-called friends. She pulled on the spiritual makeup of the world around her, forming her sword through the quincy cross sewn within the palm of her grip, holding it in a reverse grip. Then, puppeteering her right arm, she swung it up and drove the blade with a sickening squelch right into the base of Giselle's neck, burying it just deep enough that Bambietta could let go of the weapon and leave it protruding. How she had hoped to push it in deeper, but there was only so much she could do in her state of disarray.
The blood, uncomfortably high pressure in its exit from the wound, sprayed across Bambietta and the ground, splashing against her face. However, she did not care. She was alive and the blood and the schrift that ran through it meant nothing to her then.
It was what came next that did.
The other sternritter came to Giselle's aid in a flash, Liltotto holding her gloved hands against her friend to put pressure on the wounds. "It's okay, Gigi! Just take it easy! You can fix this kind of damage, no problem! Just hold on!"
Then there was Candice, who suddenly crouched down by Bambietta, an electrified finger pointing right at her, the threat very much alive. "That was your last chance, Bambi! Gigi's the only reason you were even going to get to stick with us!"
Finally, Meninas grabbed Bambietta's face with unimaginable power, fingers tightening around her skull enough to allow the tips of them to draw blood from the skin. "Now we'll just have to make sure there's nothing left for her to work with and bring back."
Maddened eyes peeking out from between Meninas' fingers, Bambietta knew one simple movement could end her. However, even if she could not use her sword to strike or fire off explosive spheres, she did have other methods. Even now, it was easy to let loose under such emotional distress and turmoil. Her spiritual power leaked into the area around her, flowing all around herself and her fellow sternritter, the Explode at the ready.
Then did Bambietta's eyes flash with unbridled hatred. "Repent with your deaths, all of you!"
The Explode erupted all around Bambietta, ripping through the ground around her to form a perfect sphere. All its sound and fury crashed against the quartet of sternritter that surrounded her, leaving them to scream as it spread past them and out over the horizon for all to see.
The envy continued to consume Bambietta Basterbine even as her mind pushed away her bitter memories. "A friend to the end, is that what you are? Such a loyal subordinate to a shinigami deserves to be rewarded..."
The wolf that had been all things Captain Sajin Komamura leapt then, biting into the hakama of Lieutenant Tetsuzaemon Iba, trying pull him away by the leg and dissuade him from the all consuming vengeance that had already afflicted Tosen and the wolf himself. He would not allow another to succumb as he had! He would not allow another to sacrifice their everything as he had!
Iba, however, tried not to think of what his former captain was trying to do. He was prepared for battle, knowing it would be one he might not walk away from. He held his short zanpakuto horizontal before himself, three fingers of his free hand tracing across its blade. "I will carry out Captain Komamura's revenge on you, quincy! Fracture, Sukarusu-!"
The shinigami never had the chance to finish his release command, his shikai denied to him. After all, Bambietta had no interest in him. None at all. To her, this lowly shinigami was just someone she wished to finish in a flash, someone she saw through with ruthlessly abandon. Beinarbeit had closed the distance between the sternritter and the shinigami, Bambietta's sword cleaving downwards, splitting the unreleased zanpakuto in two in the process. The twin remains clattered against the ground, leaving Bambietta to grin as she waited to see Iba's remains follow suit.
Unfortunately, all she was greeted with was the sight of a very much intact Lieutenant Iba falling upon his back, blood exploding from a wound that ran down his face and chest. The lifeblood of the spirit, an oxymoron if Bambietta had ever heard one, fell upon the battlefield and her already tattered uniform both, soaking into the fabric and staining it further.
Oh yes, that was the reason Bambietta was so very enamored and proud of the white uniforms of the quincy. To let it all soak in, to show her enemies what fate awaited them. For that precursor to their fate to be nothing more than charred husks behind her or blood caked into her very identity of a quincy.
Still, it vexed Bambietta. She had been wholly committed to cutting the shinigami clean in half, to give him a quick death and to satisfy the burning anger and despair that plagued her soul. However, her injuries were still slowing her down, dulling her reflexes and power.
She glared at the wolf then, eyes ablaze with hate. He had put her in this state! To make her weak, to make her friends see an opportunity to show their true colors, to make her...kill her friends. Now the wolf had brought her down so low that she had been all but forced to spare a damned shinigami!
Bambietta wanted her ignorance of her friends back, to revel in not being able to read the room in regards to their true feelings for her. To be unaware that the only thing that had freed her from her loneliness was her temper and the power that had backed it up.
Bambietta wanted her ability to kill the shinigami back in place of being able to kill her fellow sternritter. To strike down death itself, to cut through her own innate fears. To move past being the young girl who had watched everything succumb to death, putting that fear into her heart that it was her future.
"Death, the high cost of living," Bambietta hissed beneath her breath, shaking her head as she let her despair become encased in bravado that the wolf and the four wolves in sheep's clothing had shattered and preyed upon the remains of respectively. "Revenge? Revenge? That, Captain Doggy, is revenge!"
Bambietta would not let the wolf realize her failing, trying to make him believe that she had meant to wound but not kill the shinigami lieutenant. So she walked towards Komamura, hatred radiating outward from her eyes, a hellish grin spreading across her face.
"You threw everything at me, Captain Doggy," Bambietta rattled off, her body moving unnaturally from her spiritual puppetry, like she was a corpse fighting the flames of hell to make one last impression on the world. "Your strength, your pride, your conviction, your life itself...and now look at us."
Bambietta stopped then, roaring with absolute frustration, her voice reaching a crescendo no explosion of hers could have hoped to ever reach.
"You threw it all and I'm still standing like a lively girl, you primitive beast! All you did was make me stumble for a moment, but–"
Bambietta flinched, fear seizing her heart, the indignity of her fleeing from death itself that Komamura had become in her eyes carving into her soul like her schrift had so long ago. She refused to show it, even if she was internally breaking more and more. She who had felt karma's grip at her throat, she who had killed those she had loved and trusted in her own maddening way. She who had forced herself up to prove to the Wandenreich that she would not fall to a mere shinigami's ambitions.
She roared once more, throwing her head forward, eyes burning and bloodshot, hands clenched into fists that bled blood from the intensity, staining once pure gloves.
"My wrath still remains, Captain Sajin Komamura!"
Bambietta's teeth grit together, veins pulsing beneath the surface of her flesh as blut arterie surged through her body. She lunged for the wolf then, beinarbeit skating her across the ground, engelssaiten pulling her arm back, supporting it as she held her bloodied sword.
The wolf could see the attack coming, realizing that this was his end at last. However, he looked not at Bambietta, but at Iba...and he howled.
It was all he could do now, the wolf succumbing to his bestial sorrow. All he had sacrificed, all he had lost in following down the foolish path of the man he had condemned once before, and the wolf knew that he had nothing to show for it.
"Snap, Tobiume!"
The wolf saw it then, a fireball slamming into Bambietta, exploding upon impact. The quincy was thrown to the side then, feet skidding across the ground as she cried out.
The wolf turned then, as did Bambietta, and both were greeted with the sight of a newcomer on the field of battle, Lieutenant Momo Hinamori of the Fifth Division.
"How can someone be so smart and so stupid?" Bambietta spat, glaring at Momo. "Clever enough to activate your zanpakuto to sneak attack me before I knew you were even here...but foolish enough to take me on again after what happened last time. And you hit me with an explosion? Do you have any idea what I was going to do to him over that?"
"Yes." Momo put both hands on the grip of her pronged zanpakuto, her mind racing. She was afraid, that much was true, the sight of Bambietta's hellborn smile still sending shivers down her spine even now, but she would not back down. "And that's why I won't let you kill Captain Komamura!"
"You're not even his lieutenant," Bambietta said, a perplexed look coming across her face. Yes, she had seen the wolf who had once been a captain save Momo and her own captain earlier, but now...now it bothered her a great deal to see the reverse. "That idiot over there I get, but you... You're not his subordinate, and I doubt you're his friend. So why...why would you throw your life away for him?"
"Because..." Momo said, looking at the dejected and forlorn wolf near her, "I owe him for saving my captain and I from you."
The wolf came alive at that, ears twitching.
"No one took the murder of the captain-commander harder then him," Momo began to say. "And maybe he fell to vengeance, but he did not sacrifice his honor for it. He could have fought to avenge the dead, but I'm living proof that deep down he chose to protect all that remains because it was the right thing to do."
The wolf felt the burdens of the world begin to slip away, Momo's words cutting through the despair he had felt. Had he...had he held himself from falling entirely into the pit that his old friend had cast himself into?
Bambietta said nothing at first, simply beginning to pace, slowly walking around Momo in a circular motion, her eyes refusing to unlock from gazing into Momo's own. "And that's enough for you to throw away the life he saved?"
Momo stepped to the side, getting between Bambietta and Komamura, following the sternritter's movement.
"Yes," Momo retorted simply. "He is my one of my comrade after all."
"Comrades.." Bambietta whispered before she let loose a laugh.
"And you," Momo continued, never letting her resolve wave in the face of impossible odds, "are a monster."
Bambietta stopped in her tracks, her head tilting forward. Locks of hair fell down, bangs obscuring her eyes. "Of course I'm a monster."
Bambietta whirled her head around then, hairing whipping about before settling upon one shoulder. Her eyes were manic, wild, completely unrestrained, the skin around them still caked with the blood of Giselle Gewelle.
"And I have a mountain of corpses behind me to prove it!" Bambietta shouted. "And that's why... why..."
Bambietta reached up then, touching her throat with one hand, rubbing it slightly.
"That's why I have no true comrades like all of you. No one who would come to save me when I was beaten down. You and Lieutenant Sha- You and that man came to defend Captain Komamura without hesitation, just as he protected you despite his darker impulses. And I..."
Bambietta dropped her sword then, the summoned weapon fading into spiritual matter before it could even touch the ground.
In response, Momo took a tentative step towards Bambietta, her grip on her zanpakuto still tight just in case. She felt as if she was approaching a hornet's nest, but she felt the need to approach nonetheless.
Bambietta shook her head. "Why would anyone want to save me? I killed my fellow quincy whenever I felt like I needed to find inner peace. I won't deny it and I won't apologize for it, but I suppose that's part of the problem. Pretexts leading to death. And my friends...weren't my friends and all I was just too damn stupid to recognize that. They were friends with each other, while I...I was the girl they only tolerated out of fear. And when they had the chance, they tried to kill me when Captain Komamura failed. And the one I..."
Bambietta took a deep breath then.
"The one I loved and who loved me despite it all, was going to kill me too. Because the Wandenreich is all about death. We cause death to stave it off. We fight to kill, and we kill to survive. Death at your hands, or death at His Majesty's own if we live to speak of our failure."
Bambietta's head lowered, even as Momo approached closer.
"Gigi loved me while the others hated me. And even she was going to kill me because she feared death as much as I do. To 'save' me...for herself. And why should I have been surprised? What the hell do any of us sternritter know about the world? We're just pale shadows wandering from battle to battle. How could love hope to remain pure in a world like that? And I...killed them, just like so many quincy. I killed Gigi."
Bambietta's whole body felt as if it had been drained, engelssaiten the only thing keeping her standing. Violence was not at the forefront of her thoughts, nor the desire for power to keep herself safe. Even her desire for vengeance was faltering, looking at Komamura and not seeing the being who had brought her low anymore, just another victim of the world.
Bambietta looked at Momo once more, the expression on her face quiet and calm, all the rage and hatred drained from it. Both of those and just about everything else. It was nothing like the smile that had sent fear coursing through Momo when last they met.
Then Bambietta spoke, her tone as far removed as they one Momo had heard before.
"I'm so damned tired, Lieutenant Hinamori."
Momo came well within arm's reach of Bambietta, looking her in the eyes and noting the tears on their edes. Though she was a monster, Momo could see she was just a sobbing soul beneath it all. Momo also knew that she had a decision to make now, recognizing that the war was still one that had to be fought. She also had a captain and lieutenant to get medical care for. And if she could end this confrontation without battle, especially one she was not entirely sure she could win, she would take it. So she raised up one hand slowly, brushing the end of her kimono's sleeve against Bambietta's face to wipe away the blood that adorned it.
"Then rest, Bambietta Basterbine."