A/N: Reading everyone's theories about what's happening is SO FUN. Thank you for the lovely reviews. Here, have a toy.
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EINUNDDREIßIG
TIMELINE X + N
Homura stood transfixed in horror as Walpurgisnacht loomed in the distance. How?! Why was it here?!
More importantly, why the hell did it feel more powerful than in every other timeline she had experienced?!
She only became aware of the others catching up to her when Jinta yelled, "The fuck is all this?!"
"Walpurgisnacht," Homura whispered.
The others followed her gaze to the shadow in the sky. Its massive gears gradually became more distinct through the cloud cover.
"I thought it's supposed to hit Mitakihara?!" cried Orihime.
Homura swallowed. "It is."
"Has it ever appeared elsewhere?" Urahara asked tensely.
Shaking her head slowly, Homura answered, "Never. Never."
"Does the thing follow you instead of the other girl?" Jinta asked angrily.
Homura kept shaking her head. "I don't know. I don't know. This is wrong. It shouldn't be here. It shouldn't feel this powerful. It's all wrong."
Many of the others eyed her sharply. "What do you mean it shouldn't feel this powerful?" asked Yoruichi.
"Just that," said Homura. "It feels so much... heavier. Darker. Like... like there's so much more of it than I've ever fought."
"Fabulous," droned Yoruichi.
"Our past selves will have to figure that one out," Urahara said firmly. "We have an hour to delay it until Miss Akemi can go back in time." He used his cane to abruptly shove Ichigo and Isshin out of their bodies and turned to the magical girl as they recovered without complaint. "Advice about how to fight it would be appreciated, Miss Akemi."
Homura gathered her wits and stood upright. Her face went hard as she spoke. "The doll at the bottom can inflict damage, but the Witch's core is the biggest gear. It can blow fire, create wind, and levitate buildings to use as bludgeons. If it is threatened, it releases Familiars that look like silhouettes of magical girls. They can fly and attack in a lot of different ways." She bit her lip. "But... be careful. It's behaving differently. I don't know if anything else will be different."
The others looked from her to Walpurgisnacht, who was now close enough to see in more detail. It looked like a floating set of gears above and below one massive, spinning cog. A pole extended downwards from its center. Attached to the pole was a huge, upside-down doll-like figure that looked like a porcelain mannequin in a square-necked purple Tudor dress with a tight white corset and billowing purple skirts that parted around the cog and flared out to the Witch's sides. The mannequin's head was sheared off just above where eyebrows should have been, leaving a flat top. A divided hennin was perched on the head behind its ears; an expansive veil wafted about it in the gale. Its only facial feature was a mouth outlined in lurid red lipstick. An intricate mandala of many shifting colors glowed faintly behind it.
Yoruichi smirked and cracked her knuckles. "Well, let's get to work!"
Homura transformed and pulled a grenade launcher from her shield. Mr. Tsukabishi rolled his shoulders and looked like he was making plans as he squinted at the Witch. Jinta and Ururu ran back to the shop, probably to fetch their weapons. The others spoke tersely to one another and began to leap skyward.
Urahara stepped over to Orihime and Homura forward and grabbed their shoulders. "You two stay back."
Orihime only frowned but Homura was outraged. "Don't coddle me! I know how to fight!"
"I am well aware of that, Miss Akemi, and I do not doubt your prowess" Urahara said evenly. "But the entire goal of this battle is for us to delay Walpurgisnacht until your turnback point. If you were to accidentally get caught in the crossfire of so many combatants at once... well. All will be lost, as they say."
Homura's mouth clicked shut. She hated it, but could acknowledge logic.
Urahara turned to Orihime. "Go to the other side of town and find a good vantage point. I want Miss Akemi to observe the fight so she can report our performance to our other selves for improvement. Shield her if an attack gets past us. Her survival is our top priority. Don't stop to heal anyone even if they're dying— they'll be fine in the next timeline. Focus only on protecting Miss Akemi." Orihime nodded her understanding.
Urahara stepped past them, glanced back over his shoulder, and doffed his striped hat. "Meeting you has been very interesting, Miss Akemi," he said with a wry grin. "I suppose I'll see you in the next life, as it were." He jumped up to the rooftops before Homura could respond.
Homura pursed her lips and kicked a rock. The only time she ever sat out the fight against Walpurgisnacht was in the first timeline, before she had contracted. Not fighting it was surprisingly infuriating.
Orihime patted Homura's shoulder as she allowed her fairies to drift around them. "He means well."
Homura grit her teeth and huffed. "I know." It didn't stop her from resenting being benched. Face dour, she shoved the grenade launcher back into her shield.
Orihime smiled sympathetically. Like she knew the feeling all too well. "Let's go."
§ x § x §
Twelfth Division's Spirit Wave Measurement Lab was full of tired staff, all subdued but determined in the wake of their department head's death in the field. They worked industriously to sift data from the five recon parties as it came in while a select few struggled to salvage the damaged sensor Ukitake's team had recovered. Akon stood in for Rin, supervising the department's efforts straight through the night. He was nursing his fifth thermos of enhanced coffee when several of the department's alarms blared dire warnings all at the same time.
Akon startled and dropped his coffee but immediately caught it. Scientists scurried to their stations with a chaotic urgency akin to an anthill poked by a stick. When they started looking at screens and gasping, Akon shouted, "Hiyosu, status!"
Hiyosu looked at his superior over his shoulder, wide face pale and eyes bulging more than usual. "Massive Hollow-like reiatsu in Karakura. Wave forms appear to be extremely amplified Witch frequency."
"Classification?" barked Akon.
Hiyosu glanced at his screen again and looked back to Akon in disbelief. "Well beyond Vasto Lorde Arrancar class."
Akon's brows shot up to his hairline. He opened his mouth to speak, but looked around in confusion as the alarms stopped. Then an entirely different alarm started shrieking.
Before Akon could ask anything, Hiyosu numbly said, "On-site sensors are offline. Possibly fried. Wide-scale sensor data interpretation interface for Japan and Korean peninsula has frozen. Either it's exceeded our processing power or the script has a bug that cripples the program past a certain threshold we couldn't reach in beta. Possibly both."
"This didn't happen during the Battle of Karakura back in the war," Akon thought aloud. That had been the most intense gathering and slinging around of reiatsu in the World of the Living since the Twelfth Division's computers had been invented.
"But we anticipated that event and streamlined—" Hiyosu perked up and turned toward the room at large and specific stations to shout, "Shut down global sensor arrays! Shut down Soul Society arrays! Shut down Hueco Mundo arrays! Shut down Precipice World arrays! Keep Mitakihara mission data up! Leave only those arrays that include Karakura and Mitakihara! Shut down Soul Phone communications and monitoring outside Japan! I want every non-essential application killed now!"
Their lieutenant ghosted into the room and joined Akon in standing behind Hiyosu and watching him forcibly disconnect the Japan/Korea data stream, dig into the analytic program, and begin to reinsert exclusion scripts developed during the Winter War so he could try to restart the application and restore the link to incoming data without another crash.
Nemu evaluated everything with unassailable calm then left to notify her captain and issue a standby alert for captain-class fighters. Karakura's regular defenders would likely need backup.
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The fighters arrayed themselves in a battlefront directly in Walpurgisnacht's path. They had barely settled on positions when a short girl with her blond hair in rough pigtails wearing a red tracksuit with a sword slung across her back appeared next to Kisuke in a burst of shunpo.
"Why, hello, Hiyori," Kisuke said mildly to his former lieutenant.
"Don't give me that, Baldy," she snarled. "What the hell is going on?!"
"We seem to be having a bit of a crisis."
"No shit." She aimed a jump kick at him. He dodged, as usual. "What did you do this time?!"
Kisuke turned to look at her with a fake pout, noting the other Visored who had chosen to stay in the World of the Living after the war arrayed behind her. Of course they would notice something like this. "Why do you assume this is my fault?"
"You're the resident mad scientist. It's either you or Ichigo, the resident trouble magnet. You have a longer history of bullshit and we felt some kind of Hollow clusterfuck at your place on Friday."
Kisuke gave a little laugh. "Believe it or not, it's neither of us this time."
"Bullshit."
"There's no time to explain." He pitched his voice loud enough for Lisa, Love, and Hachi to hear. "The monster can blow fire, make wind, and levitate buildings to use as weapons. The biggest cog is the heart of the monster. It can break off minions to act independently. We need to kill it or keep it occupied for an hour or so."
"What happens in an hour?" asked Lisa.
Kisuke scratched his cheek. "Ah, let's say our secret weapon will be ready then."
"'Let's say'," Lisa droned skeptically.
No trust. Honestly.
"No time to explain!" Kisuke shouted as he dodged a carnival pennant that shot past his head.
Lisa sighed deeply and drew her blade.
"Ranged attacks on the gears!" Kisuke shouted as he raised his hands and started chain-casting kidō.
The sky lit up as a volley of attacks converged on Walpurgisnacht. They impacted in a series of explosions that continued as the defenders repeated their attacks until their fallout completely obscured the Witch. The debris and incoming attacks were abruptly scattered by a gout of multicolored fire as the doll portion opened its mouth and started laughing in an eerily distorted woman's voice. It blew a jet of flame at the line of defense, which was deflected by overlapping Dankū shields courtesy of Tessai, Hachi, and Kisuke. While they were distracted, Walpurgisnacht emanated a whirlwind and snapped off the top halves of downtown Karakura's high-rises with frightening ease. It levitated them and their flaming debris around it as a defense and lobbed one massive construct of steel, concrete, and glass at the defenders horizontally. The defenders were forced to scatter with various forms of flash step as the improvised weapon fell and crushed three entire city blocks.
How has that child survived this opponent so many times? Benihime marveled in Kisuke's head as he stared at the disaster area. How has she fought this alone at all?
She did say it's more powerful this time, Kisuke thought.
This is precisely what she described, Benihime countered. Casting aside towers like stalks of flax. She has faced this degree of destruction before.
And here I thought I had stopped underestimating her, Kisuke admitted ruefully. And it's too late to add that to the time capsule.
Tessai flared his reiatsu several times in quick succession to draw the defenders' attention to him. He made arm signals which Kisuke, his longtime friend, and Hachi, his former lieutenant from the kidō Corps, recognized. They all cast the Ninety-First Way of Destruction: Senjū Kōten Taihō from three different directions. Walpurgisnacht was enveloped in a brilliant pink explosion.
The squinting defenders were taken by surprise as broad beams of purple reiatsu lanced out from the pink light. Several of them were hit by beams and sent flying. The beams fragmented and formed reishi constructs shaped like faceless magical girls. The living silhouettes were an ever-shifting mass of a purple and pink nebula pattern studded with stars. Gleeful giggles emanated from them from the moment they took shape and began to spin and dance.
Kisuke remembered Akemi's words: "If it is threatened, it releases Familiars that look like silhouettes of magical girls."
Somehow, that fourteen-year-old magical girl had managed to make this being perceive her to be as threatening as fourteen experienced, high-powered combatants used to coordinating attacks.
I really, really underestimated that girl, Kisuke thought.
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The Familiars swarmed around each combatant. Some bore shadowy weapons; others held magic wands and shot beams of the same purple energy they were made of. Mêlée battle quickly got messy, looking more like an air war dogfight than close combat. The Familiars were fiendishly fast, flickering from place to place with a carefree, mocking grace that soon began to grate on the defenders. The giggling shadows coordinated their attacks, those with weapons rushing in to force defenders to block so those with magic wands could take potshots at them while they were busy. The defender would then be forced to dodge, often taking minor damage while unable to inflict much in return.
Yoruichi, "Goddess of Flash," had no such trouble, though. She kept pace with the Familiars and matched them move for move as she fought using only her body as a weapon. Shadow after giggling shadow fell by her hand, swift punches and kicks popping them like soap bubbles and leaving a trail of purple glitter behind her. Seeing Yoruichi's success, Ururu chose to hold her shoulder-cannon in reserve and fight with powerful blows from her limbs with the occasional use of the cannon as a bludgeon. Likewise, Sado was managing to punch through the Familiars that ventured close to him to try the same pincer tactic with his Brazo Izquierdo del Diablo while blocking attacks from the wand-wielding Familiars with the shield form of his Brazo Derecho del Gigante. He was mostly able to dodge the various blades and polearms as he sought openings to punch the Familiars on attack, but steadily collected wounds from those few attacks that got through.
Tōshirō scowled, released his zanpakutō into its shikai state, and started slinging flocks of icicles in wide arcs around him as he darted through the sky. Effectively stabbed about a dozen times each, the Familiars caught in his attacks burst apart into purple glitter. Ichigo and Isshin released their own blades and lobbed their respective Getsuga Tenshō attacks at the Familiars that swarmed after them. Kisuke, Tessai, and Hachi developed a routine of casting Hyapporankan into the giggling mobs to immobilize them then follow up with devastating destructive kidō.
Uryū was constantly on the move, unable to take the time to prepare more than simple single-arrow attacks among the chaos— archers really had no business being in the thick of things. He hit nearly all his targets once he grew accustomed to their movements and never failed to negate the magic wand beam attacks when directed at him, but he had little effect on the overall battle apart from some... unique results when he did land a direct hit. No one else had really noticed in the heat of battle, but Uryū's mind was racing with ideas.
Just as the horde seemed to thin out a bit, Walpurgisnacht changed its behavior. It hovered in place, rotated on its axis in the center of its ring of floating wreckage and fire, and switched out its creepy laughter for singing scales like a ghostly soprano. A thrum of power passed through the sparkling haze of purple glitter, which re-condensed back into the giggling magical girl silhouettes they had been before their defeat.
Uryū wasn't sure who it was who snarled "son of a bitch!" at high volume, but he agreed with the sentiment as Walpurgisnacht's unhinged laughter returned.
However, the regrouping of the Familiars allowed him the moment to do something he had been trying to set up for what felt like forever. Uryū drew back his bowstring, paused for a moment to gather extra reishi, and loosed a small volley of Licht Regen arrows as a test, tightly controlled so they wouldn't hit his allies. The blue-white projectiles impacted the formation of the Familiars. Those that suffered direct hits to the torso were consumed in white embers like tissue paper in a flame. Nothing was left behind— not even the purple, glitter-like reishi.
That was surprising enough for Karakura's defenders, though it made sense considering Quincy powers. Then Hiyori made her enraged return to the battlefield.
Having been flung all the way out of town by the initial salvo and stunned against a tall building, Hiyori returned beyond furious and charged into the fray with her blade already released into its serrated cleaver form as the reconstituted Familiars attacked. She hacked Familiars in half without bothering to keep her distance or even defend herself, uncaring of the injuries she sustained in her blind charge. Each of the bisected shadows broke into purple sparkles, but the little clouds immediately drew to a central point where the shadow-girls's hearts would have been, changed colors, and coalesced into egg-shaped gemstones that immediately hatched and set Hell Butterflies free to drift heavenward. Kisuke saw it amid the renewed chaos and actually missed a step in his shock, losing his hat, an ear, and an inch of his shoulder to a giggling shadow. Hiyori, unaware of the significance of the result and further provoked by incessant giggling, kept hacking until Walpurgisnacht's mannequin head turned and blew a gout of fire at her. She had sense enough to retreat from that, at least.
Uryū saw a chance. He drew another Heilig Pfeil and shouted, "Kurosaki!" as he aimed at Walpurgisnacht's head through the mob.
Ichigo appeared at his side immediately. Quick on the uptake, his eyes darted between the bow, the Familiars, and the doll and said, "I take it I'm going in when you shoot?" He wiped out the first wave of giggling shadows that rushed their way with a Getsuga Tenshō.
"Go bankai and follow right behind my arrows," Uryū barked. "See if you can take the head off that thing and stop the fire and replacements!" He amassed more energy into his Heilig Pfeil.
Ichigo nodded grimly and raised his sword arm. He braced it with his free hand and incanted, "Bankai. Tensa Zangetsu." Blue reiatsu flared around him and bled into a blackness that glowed red. When the light cleared, Ichigo's loose kosode had become a snug cloak that flared out behind him and his wide black blade had narrowed. He crouched in a starting position. "Ready."
Uryū immediately loosed a wider barrage of arrows. Ichigo used the enhanced speed of his bankai to chase in their wake as they eliminated the Familiars between him and the Witch. Walpurgisnacht's head turned and blasted multicolored flames at Ichigo, but he just flared his reiatsu and charged straight through the blaze. He emerged on the other side singed but intact, already charging his blade with a Getsuga Tenshō. Ichigo roared as he wound up and lopped off the mannequin's head with a single slash.
The laughing stopped.
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Homura followed in Orihime's footsteps as she led them west, first running then taking to the rooftops. Karakura was eerily still even for a stormy Sunday morning. Homura was disturbed to find most humans they encountered unconscious. It was as though everyone had simply dropped in place, some causing minor traffic accidents, more littering the sidewalks with bodies and umbrellas, others sprawled across cafe tables. They ran into a conscious person every couple blocks, but they were often lone children. Teenagers seemed very drowsy and weighed down and little children sat by their parents and cried in confusion. Orihime looked distraught about running right past them, but pass them she did.
"What happened to them all?" Homura called over to Orihime.
Orihime looked surprised that Homura didn't know. "That Witch's reiatsu is too dense for most souls to stand. Even stronger souls like those in Karakura. The ones who are awake are strong enough to resist it."
"Ah."
"Orihime! Is that you?!"
Both running girls glanced down at the street. A dark-haired girl in a karate gi was leaning against the doorway of a dojo looking ill.
"Ah! Sorry, Tatsuki, I'm busyyy!" Orihime shouted. She kept running, so Homura did as well.
"Tatsuki" followed along in the street until she was more surefooted, then joined them on the rooftops. She kept up with them but it obviously took great effort for her to use her magic to propel her through jumps. Homura gauged that she had powers, just not on the high end of the scale like most of the people she had met in Karakura.
The young woman didn't bother saying anything until Orihime had them skid to a stop on a five-story office building in Naruki City. After taking a minute to breathe, Tatsuki turned to look east for the first time. She stared in disbelief. "Dammit, Hime, who did Ichigo piss off this time?!"
"It's not his fault!"
"That's what you always say! He's always in it up to his eyeballs!"
"No, Tatsuki, really— it's not his fault!"
"Sure."
Homura gasped. The older girls turned to her. She was watching the distant battle with military-grade binoculars.
Tatsuki screeched, "Where'd you get those?!"
Orihime quickly added, "Do you have more?"
Homura shifted and held her binoculars in her left hand and used her right to reach into her shield and pull out a second pair and blindly hold them out in Orihime's general direction.
Tatsuki stood by and sourly looked between the battle and the two spectators as Orihime tensely explained the abilities of shinigami and allies. Then there was a bright pink flash like a bomb going off and the distinct sound of many windows shattering as the sound caught up with the light. Tatsuki sighed. "Is there even going to be enough of this town left for the shinigami to cover up?"
Homura noted that the young woman seemed familiar with shinigami activities despite her low power. Interesting. She had more important things to think about, though.
Homura and Orihime ignored Tatsuki and continued to mutter questions and answers at one another as they watched the battle. After awhile, a shockwave of Walpurgisnacht's heavy reiatsu hit them. Homura braced herself and kept watching.
"You didn't say it could revive the little ones," Orihime said worriedly.
Gaping, Homura said, "It's... it's never done that before."
"Oh," Orihime squeaked.
A bit later, both cried out in surprise.
"What?!" Homura gasped. "What?! Are those—?! Are those—?!"
Orihime fiddled with the focus on her binoculars. "Butterflies?!" she finished in confused shock. "Like... like when..." She lowered her binoculars and looked at Homura with wide eyes. "Like when shinigami purify Hollows. With their zanpakutō. Their souls... Oh my God." Tremulous hope brightened her features. "Homura—!"
Homura's mouth opened and closed. She was stunned speechless.
There was a way to snatch the souls of magical girls back before the Incubator could consume them.
Her mind couldn't focus on one idea for more than a second, racing and trying to apply the new knowledge to various scenarios. Orihime resumed her pose with the binoculars, explaining things again with more cheer. Tatsuki seemed to have no idea what was going on, but trust that if Orihime had shifted gears, something good must have happened.
"Oh! Ichigo and Uryū are going to work together!" Orihime gushed happily.
A moment later, both spectators made sounds of happy surprise. For one breathless second they saw the potential for an actual defeat of Walpurgisnacht— if a shinigami could get close enough to behead such a crucial portion of the Witch's offense, surely they could handle the rest!
Then they cried out in horror as everything went to hell.
§ x § x §
Walpurgisnacht's severed head fell from its shoulders and was consumed by the black flames of Ichigo's Getsuga Tenshō. Ichigo regained his footing and was about to lunge for the mannequin's supporting pole when its neck exploded in multicolored flames and wide beams of starry purple reiatsu. The force of the blast threw Ichigo down into and through the roof of his old high school. Walpurgisnacht's laughter was replaced by unholy shrieking as Ichigo jumped out of the rubble and wobbled to a fallback position to get his bearings. A multitude of carnival pennants shot out from the raw neck wound and stabbed into all of the Familiars. Rainbow flames and starry purple reiatsu raced along their strings and enveloped each Familiar in shifting light that burst away to reveal dozens upon dozens of Witch sigils. They were so dense that all of the defenders were caught in a different sigil.
"What the shit, Urahara?!" Hiyori shrieked.
There was no time to answer. Those who knew about Witches had a moment to dread what would follow before they all disappeared from the battlefield.
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This chapter was replaced with an edited version on November 1, 2019. Reviews with timestamps before that date refer to a slightly different version of the chapter.