A/N: Your reviews and theories bring me such delight. Thank you.
The Witches in the next couple chapters are a mix of anime canon, Kazumi canon, and my own creations. Some of the labyrinths from anime canon are fleshed out from watching videos of the Battle Pentagram PMMM video game on YouTube. This is especially true of Elsa Maria, for whom I took extra liberties on top of what was done in the game.
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ZWEIUNDDREIßIG
TIMELINE X + N
One second Jinta was in the air over Karakura; the next, he found himself floating upside-down in some kind of giant snow globe with carousels stacked on top of one another revolving around the outer edge, each pixelized horse bearing a TV screen with a test pattern and illegible pixel script. The water glowed with a soothing blue light that reminded him of the ambient light of a TV screen at night. Bubbles rose upwards as snow gently drifted down. At first he only heard dainty music, but then girlish laughter rang out above him. Looking up, he saw a flock of cut-out etching prints of artists' reference dolls each with a single angel wing and a halo. Some of the things had TVs where they should have had heads. They were all fluttering around a big CRT computer monitor that had long, black, cartoonish pigtails on its sides. It seemed to use the long hair as wings or flippers. Jittery images flickered on its screen.
Alone with a Witch and its Familiars, Jinta summed up his situation with a low, "Shiiiiiiiiiiiit."
He wondered why the hell he could breathe underwater. Or was he really underwater? It both did and did not feel like when he went in a swimming pool— he was buoyant, but there was no water resistance when he moved. Whatever. Things needed smashing and he was good at smashing things.
As he wound up to swing at the first of the winged Familiars that dove at him, the screens of all the carousel horses flickered and changed from a test pattern to looping video of many of his memories of Yuzu and Karin. There were occasional images of happy times, but they only served to make all the rest of the screens featuring his newest memories worse in contrast.
Yuzu laughing. Yuzu laying dead on the shop's table. Karin smirking. Karin screaming and screaming and screaming while clawing at her scalp. The pile of clubs and baseball items from Karin's labyrinth. Karin's Witch. Yuzu eagerly listening to him recount a baseball game. Yuzu's corpse strung up inside Karin's Witch. Yuzu's body falling, falling, endlessly falling. Karin laying dead in her father's arms. Yuzu laying dead on a futon like a sleeping princess. Karin looking at the room of people listening to Homura from her father's lap, face haggard and eyes hollow. Karin gleefully needling him over something or other. Karin lying dead among walnut shells. Yuzu smiling at him while holding groceries.
Yuzu dead. Yuzu dead. Yuzu dead.
It was traumatic, yes. It made him feel uncomfortably guilty and frustrated and inadequate. But Jinta reacted as he reacted to many threatening things that got past his armor of bravado and hurt those he loved: An enraged thirst to beat the hell out of anything available overtook him. And there were a lot of things available.
More of the doll-like Familiars the size of grown men jerkily crawled out from behind the carousel borders and bubbled out of the Witch's monitor. Jinta grit his teeth and jumped up to meet them, his first swing knocking limbs and heads off various minions. They kept attacking him and trying to grab him with greedy hands until he managed to completely break them apart. Another wave of dolls rushed him as he tried to angle himself for the Witch. As he was countering them, the big computer monitor drifted down past him while laughing at him with the tinniness of a recording being played from a phone.
Fucking laughed at him.
Jinta flared his reiatsu as high as it would go to bowl the jointed dolls over with his power and used shunpo to get to the side of the labyrinth. He bashed in the screen on one of the carousel horses without looking at it, keenly following the Witch with his eyes as two of its winged Familiars held it on opposite sides and pulled it back up toward the top of the snow globe in a spiral while it chimed with laughter. Jinta snarled, kicked off from the carousel at an upward angle, turned like a swimmer as he crossed the entire labyrinth. He landed hard against another carousel layer and rebounded upward at high velocity. The crunch of glass and plastic as his iron club smashed into the Witch and the Witch rocketed into the opposite wall was viscerally satisfying.
The Witch wobbled away from the carousel wall in dizzy circles and bled a color test pattern as the dolls that had been carrying it turned on Jinta. He dispatched them easily, doll parts flying in every direction. The Witch's monitor sizzled and arced then spewed more Familiars. After brutally dissembling them, Jinta saw one of their heads floating in a perfect position; he instinctively swung at it like it was an oversized baseball and sent it careening into the Witch's broken screen— and straight out its back in a shower of plastic, glass, and color test-patterned blood. Jinta leapt down and nailed the monitor with one last mighty swing. It crashed into a carousel horse and shattered completely.
Jinta stood and panted as the carousel collapsed around him, uncaring of the Grief Seed that floated where the Witch had been.
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"What the flying fuck?" Hiyori wondered aloud as she suspiciously inspected her surroundings.
She definitely wasn't in the skies above Karakura anymore. The floor was purple and lavender checkerboard tile. The sky was a washed-out pink strung with garlands of paper snowflake cutouts and curly ribbons that didn't seem to be fastened to anything. Old-fashioned zoo cages with vertical bars were scattered around, each made of white wrought iron and supporting a pedestal above it. In the distance there was a broad circus ringmaster's dais made out of a similar cage. Atop it was the most bizarre creature Hiyori had ever seen— and that included the new high bar her standards of weirdness had reached during the battle so far. It was like some kid had mashed things together to make something vaguely doll-like. Its head was a giant brass whistle decorated in filigree, the mouthpiece positioned as a snout. Hiyori wasn't sure what the hell its rabbit-like ears were actually made of, but they reminded her of two zipper-pull tabs stuck on the sides of the whistle. The main body looked like a poofy lavender bodice and sleeves; one arm ended in a large hand and the other tapered off into a whip with a weighted flail at the end. The torso ended in ruffles at a structure that took the term "cage crinoline" literally, a series of curved vertical bars resembling a wide-skirted dress while forming an enclosure for something small shivering inside it. There were more ruffles at its base and the whole thing was perched on a pair of stubby legs that ended in catlike paws. All told, it didn't look particularly threatening. It was more ugly-cute than anything. Something Hiyori could see Mashiro buy and call art to make Rose and Kensei twitch.
"Where the hell am I." Hiyori looked around listlessly. "So, what, am I supposed wreck this place? Is there even anything here? Can I just get the hell out? What the hell." She scowled harder. "If this is Urahara's idea of a prank I'll ram my shoe down his throat. Ass."
Seeing nothing else to do and thinking of the weird giant doll-thing... "outside"? … Hiyori sighed in aggravation and started marching for the strange creature that emanated the most Hollow-like reiatsu. "Can I leave if I chop you to bits?" she wondered aloud.
The creature startled as though frightened by her words and shrilled its whistle while cracking its whip. Purple cats appeared from every direction, walking out from behind things that should have been far too narrow to conceal them. They were cute but had no mouths.
Hiyori had zero patience left. No way was she going to wade through a sea of cats to do anything. The small Visored willed her Hollow mask into existence, charged a red Cero, and launched it at the weird construct. Its torso blew apart, whistle and whip and frills flying every which way.
The cats were very unhappy about this. They looked at Hiyori with slit eyes, opened previously unseen mouths, and yowled at her as one. Oh, hey, they did have mouths. Hiyori just hadn't expected them to be placed vertically in the centers of their foreheads running up to the tops of their heads and filled with shark teeth. Nope.
Hiyori lost track of time in the ensuing brawl, her world consumed by fur and claws and teeth as she hacked at the unending feline swarm. It was surprisingly difficult to fend off the tiny army. Every time she destroyed three, five more would shred into her clothes and skin. She could feel blood running down her back and legs from the abuse her back took— she couldn't swing her damn sword at her own back so the little bastards really laid into it. Flaring her reiatsu gave her a brief respite by blowing the cats away from her, but they pounced right back even angrier than before.
So here she had gone from some poorly-understood but epic battle to getting mauled by a herd of fluffy house cats. Mauled by cats. Hiyori could hear Shinji's mocking laughter in her head.
Hiyori roared and turned to the remains of the whistle-creature. From what she could see between the constant shifting of furry bodies attacking her, the whole thing had fallen apart and revealed the little creature she had seen huddled within the cage: A cartoonishly cute purple bunny. The structure around the bunny had summoned the cats. It would make sense for the bunny to be related, too, especially since the cats were herding her away from it.
That bunny was dead meat.
Hiyori kicked, slashed, and screamed her way through the cat army. When she got close, she flared her reiatsu to blow the cats back and darted up to the bunny, which quivered and cringed and looked up at her with tearfully terrified doe eyes. It was too frightened to move.
Hiyori sneered and cleaved it in two.
She didn't know why the hell it turned into a girl then turned into a goddamn purple Easter egg then turned into a Hell Butterfly, but at least it got her out of the ridiculous zoo.
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Tōshirō frowned at the labyrinth around him, hazy gray shapes shifting in the light filtering through the frosted glass panels of the many overlapping, colorless rose window frames that surrounded him. The shinigami glanced at his sword arm and found that despite the apparent diffused light he was in such deeply black shadow that only the faint glow of his own reiatsu gave his form any definition. He looked up. And up, and up, and up. Sloping, softly glowing white paths decorated with artfully swirling white briar patches trailed upward, interspersed with grand white marble staircases that floated in the air unsupported. The rose window walls, if they could be called such, were constantly drifting and rotating in different directions, forms twisting like tree branches and adding to the uneasy atmosphere. Upon closer scrutiny, the upward path seemed to wind around a large, curved white structure. Far, far up, there was a horizontal extension that ended with a red glow, the only independent color he had seen yet in this monochrome world. Tōshirō stretched out his senses; the Hollow-like reiatsu felt strongest there, too. That was probably where he was supposed to go, then.
While Tōshirō urgently wanted to get back to the battle outside, he forced himself to remain cautious— his past experience had taught him brutal lessons about rushing into battle without forethought. So he began to carefully ascend the path. This labyrinth had the intrinsically big feel characteristic of cathedrals. A combination of the imagery, the sudden jarring change of scenery, and knowing he had essentially been dragged into some girl's nightmare made his skin crawl. Like he was intruding somewhere sacred. Like fighting his way out would be desecration. Somehow, fighting Witches was infinitely more disturbing than fighting Hollows he knew had also started out as plain souls. He knew from Karin's labyrinth how deeply personal they could be. Whether or not he understood the significance of what he saw, Tōshirō knew he was touring a soul laid bare. As a private person himself, the thought appalled him.
He could see vague movement along the path above, dark shapes shifting as though on patrol. It was a long path that would take a while to fight his way through. Frowning, Tōshirō thought to his zanpakutō spirit, I want to do this as quickly as possible. Bankai and fly up? It's wide open... I think. He couldn't look up for too long as there was a bright white light shining from the distant apex of the labyrinth.
Hyōrinmaru shifted in unease deep in Tōshirō's soul. It seems too simple.
Tōshirō hummed unhappy agreement. I want to try. We'll just have to be careful and fall back to the path if necessary.
The dragon rumbled and rose to the surface of Tōshirō's soul.
"Bankai. Daiguren Hyōrinmaru."
Ice burst into existence from the shinigami's back. Wide dragon wings made of ice unfurled around Tōshirō. He looked like he had an ice sculpture of an Eastern dragon wrapped around him protectively, a long tail trailing down from the wings, ice flowing down his right arm and ending in a dragon's snout over his hand creating the illusion of the dragon holding the sword in its teeth. His feet and free hand were clad in icy armor shaped like dragon claws. Tōshirō glowed with the blue-white light of his reiatsu, his ice shining past the shadows he had been engulfed in.
Tōshirō gave a great flap of his wings and launched himself skyward. He flew around the central paths in a wide circle, spiraling up the labyrinth while wary for attack. The briar patches on the main path got larger and wilder as he ascended. When he judged he was halfway up, the white briars developed into actual trees. He soon encountered sprawling, jagged branches. With a swing of his sword, he shot a dragon construct made of ice at the branches above him. He managed to get through the first barrier, but as he prepared to destroy the next set of dense branches, they came alive and shot toward him with rapid, jerky growth. Tōshirō wrapped his wings around him and let the sharp branches hit and shatter themselves, then opened his wings and released a wide arc of ice before him to meet a third wave of branches. Once frozen solid, Tōshirō lashed out with Hyōrinmaru's tail and smashed them.
So he progressed, fighting for every inch of ascent, trying to only spend time fighting those branches directly in his path. It came as a complete surprise when branches he had passed reversed direction and shot at his back. The dragon armor protected his spine and vital organs, but his sides and legs were pierced through many times. Hyōrinmaru roared in fury in Tōshirō's head as they harshly snapped their wings up and down to break off the branches. More branches closed in from all sides; the shinigami became the epicenter of a wild winter storm in his efforts to fend off the encroaching projectiles. Out of the corner of his eye, Tōshirō saw something black— actually, multiple somethings— scrabbling up into the pure white branches like spiders. He instinctively lashed out at them with a blast of ice without really looking at them.
We need to retreat to the path. Hyōrinmaru sounded as frustrated as Tōshirō felt. We should not have to defend from below if we are on solid ground.
We hope, Tōshirō thought darkly.
We hope, Hyōrinmaru agreed.
Tōshirō managed to turn toward the central path. He jabbed his sword straight out. A wide, powerful bolt of ice lanced out from the blade in a straight line for the path. Tōshirō shattered the ice with a thought and dove through the impromptu tunnel with the fastest combination of shunpo and flight he could manage. He hit the ground hard and immediately expanded his ice wings to curl them around him in an armored dome. Tōshirō took the opportunity to breathe deeply and regroup.
Well, we ascended more than half way, Hyōrinmaru said sourly. That is something, I suppose. Tōshirō got the distinct impression that his dragon was offended by being forced out of the sky— by trees of all things.
Tōshirō panted and looked through his ice dome, watching and listening as the sharp briar branches endlessly peppered his wings and tried to chip them away. They weren't strong enough to overcome his ability to regenerate his wings by pulling the moisture from the broken pieces back into the main structure, though. The black things were crawling around the dome, too, but the ice distorted Tōshirō's view enough that he couldn't see what they were.
He looked down and assessed his injuries. The shorn ends of white branches protruded from the backs of his legs and left arm. Most worrisome was a wooden spike lodged in his side that managed to pierce all the way through to his front. The sharp tip protruded a good six inches out from the fleshy space just above his left hip.
Wonderful.
Take it out. I do not trust it, Hyōrinmaru said tensely. Take them all out.
Tōshirō scowled doubtfully at the biggest wound. Blood loss—
Kidō will not work fast enough. I will freeze it. We do not need to worry about internal aftereffects— Akemi is going to undo all of this soon.
Tōshirō blinked and drew up short in thought. That... could actually work in their favor. They could afford to take risks they usually couldn't. Freezing parts of his own body and continuing to fight was something he could do— had done— in dire circumstances, but thawing and recovery could be troublesome even for an ice spirit. If he didn't do it just right, he could be uselessly sidelined in the Fourth Division infirmary if this mess turned into a war. If he didn't have to account for that...
Do it, Tōshirō thought.
The shinigami grimaced as his dragon froze the flesh around the branch, then yanked the spike out. Hyōrinmaru prodded him to get the smaller ones. Tōshirō thought the sharp pain from several wounds was due to the ice his dragon had formed around the more bothersome branches, but was proven wrong when he yanked on what was essentially a wooden stake in the back of his right thigh and removed it with great difficulty. He actually screamed as it tore loose. Sensing Hyōrinmaru's alarm, Tōshirō looked at the spike instead of tossing it away.
Roots.
Hell no.
Matching pain lanced through his lower left leg. Something moved in his left arm.
"FREEZE THEM!" Tōshirō screamed aloud.
Hyōrinmaru was doing so before Tōshirō had even finished forming the words. After a few minutes of frantically plucking glorified splinters with roots out of his extremities, Tōshirō was furious. His left leg was stiff from the knee down due to the extent of the freezing his zanpakutō had been forced to do there. Same for his right thigh and upper left arm. Shifting his weight from one leg to the other just caused pain in different places, though favoring his right leg made his torso wound hurt less. But Tōshirō was a shinigami captain; he was no stranger to pain. This was nothing compared to what he endured during the Winter War. This pain just made him more driven.
After another moment of testing his weight and movement, Hyōrinmaru sheathed Tōshirō's body in more extensive ice armor beneath his uniform. Let us finish this, he growled.
Tōshirō got in a ready position and made his wings explode outward with a thought. The sheer number of ice shards mirrored the attacks of the branches and shredded them. He jumped into the best shunpo he could manage, cutting down anything in his path. Hyōrinmaru partially reformed their ice wings, but kept them smaller to enable his shinigami to move more freely on the ground and pulled moisture behind them in a shimmering trail in case they needed the wings to shield.
Tōshirō quickly found that the spider-like black shapes he had seen earlier were disembodied hands taller than he was mincing around in pairs on their fingertips. He slashed through them as he rushed past, jumped out from between pairs that tried to clap closed on him, and dodged around energy attacks they shot at him by pointing and mimicking a gun. Sometimes new ones would fall from above and try to swat him like a fly, but an arc of ice kept them from landing a hit. Fighting and glorious adrenaline took his mind off the pain as he relentlessly pressed upward along uneven white ground and intricate white tile and elegant white marble steps.
As he ascended, the path and central structure became more shadowed. By the time he reached the top, they were pitch black. A final staircase rose along the central structure and led him to a rounded platform that stuck out as the structure continued upward. When Tōshirō stepped forward and looked up, it became obvious that he had climbed an enormous statue of a crowned woman, its head still towering above him. In context, he realized he was standing on the statue's horizontally extended arm. At the far end, the arm ended in a fist holding up a massive red monstrance. A shadowy figure knelt as though in prayer at the juncture of hand and wrist. It looked like a girl with hair made of loose vines and fused legs that transitioned into widespread roots, hands clasped reverently before her bowed head. The Witch was completely black. Beyond the monstrance, a stationary rose window emanated harsh white light.
Tōshirō wished the Witch had a less human silhouette. In retrospect, he was glad Karin's Witch hadn't been humanoid. The Arrancar he had fought in the Winter War had been human in their own way, but had actively and deliberately been trying to kill shinigami. Witches, he gathered, were madly lashing out in mindless pain. A more human appearance made a Witch more difficult to fight— it was easier to see the girl whose soul had been distorted and feel pity.
Akemi had been right to use the words "put her out of her misery."
Tōshirō steeled himself, surveyed the area, and charged at the Witch's apparently unprotected back— he figured there must be some kind of defense and wanted to draw it out into the open from the start. He was proven correct when the loose roots at the base of the Witch thrust into the ground. Black, snake-like Familiars sprouted from the ground in neat, garden-like rows and lashed out for the shinigami from either side while small branches sprouted from the Witch's back and spread to look like the silhouette of ragged angel wings. Tōshirō slashed the first wave of Familiars in half. Their bodies fell to the ground and writhed before disintegrating in shadowy clouds. A second wave immediately followed the first, whiplike bodies with the heads of many different animals slavering at the chance to tear him to shreds with their teeth. Too close to defend, Tōshirō dodged around them— straight into the branches suddenly growing from the Witch's back with explosive force, accompanied by a grinding and groaning of wood that sounded uncomfortably like a tortured human wail.
Eyes wide, Tōshirō thrust his sword forward and shouted, "Ryūsenka!" in hope of either shattering the branches or delaying them for the two seconds it took for the full extent of Hyōrinmaru's wings to materialize around him once more for protection. He ended up getting a combination of both, a good deal of thick branches snapping off when contact with his blade caused ice to blossom explosively. Those branches remaining slammed into his wings and bore him skyward. Tōshirō allowed the Witch to throw him and even propelled himself backward with it, hoping that he could avoid being badly stabbed by moving the same direction as the attack. The smaller side-shoots of the branches sheared off against his icy armor. When the branches reached their greatest extent, Tōshirō beat his reformed wings and continued to move back and up. He perched on the giant statue's crown and looked down at the Witch.
The Witch had an entire jagged tree sticking out of its back. It was black and enormous, making the kneeling figure look like a little girl sitting by a felled redwood. The branches stayed still for a few moments, then shivered and incrementally withdrew to the Witch until they were once again the seemingly harmless ruined wings on its back.
Tōshirō frowned in thought. Rushing at it from behind and hacking at it would probably end with him badly injured or dead. Those branches were no joke and the Familiars were extremely maneuverable. Its back was just too well-protected. Ideally, this Witch would be best handled by a team working together, one to draw attention to the back and the other to sneak attack the front. But Tōshirō was alone.
Well, not completely.
Hyōrinmaru perked up in interest. They conferred for a minute. I like this plan, the dragon said smugly.
It's a gamble, Tōshirō demurred.
A reasonable gamble, considering.
A minute later, the shinigami dropped from the statue in a full stoop, body shimmering as he silently conjured multiple ice dragon constructs to snake out and meet the Familiars head-on. Dragons with maws full of icicle fangs crushed the heads of the first line of defense while the shinigami rocketed past them and shot a bolt of ice straight at the Witch's back. The Witch responded with another explosion of monstrous tree limbs. The shinigami didn't bother to dodge, instead being run through multiple times and carried back in the onslaught until he completely shattered.
His ice clone destroyed, Tōshirō allowed his concealment kidō to lapse as he dove for the Witch's unguarded front from atop the red monstrance. His true blade stabbed the Witch in the heart. For the briefest of moments, Tōshirō was face-to-face with the Witch. Unexpectedly sane brown eyes opened and stared at him in surprise before the Witch burst into particles of shimmering red light and coalesced into a Soul Gem as the cathedral wavered out of existence.
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WITCH DATA
H.N. ELLY (Kirsten), The Box Witch with a covetous nature. She is a staunchly reclusive witch. Anything she covets she locks away within glass. The thoughts of her prisoners are laid bare, but one can strike her thoughtlessly without problems.
Minions: Daniyyel & Jennifer, whose duty is transportation. Anything they touch becomes easy to carry.
RITTERRÜSTUNG VON HEULSUSE, The Beastmaster Witch with an anxious nature. She presents herself as commanding figure who kindly relies on her whistle instead of her whip for training because all her pets obey her commands. Behind this facade, she weeps because the one she truly wants to command is fate, but it will not obey her.
Minion: Esra, whose duty is to perform tricks.
ELSA MARIA, the Shadow Witch with a self-righteous nature. She continually prays for all of creation and drags all life equally into her shadow without breaking her posture. One hoping to defeat her must know the blackest anguish.
Minion: Sebastian, whose duty is to blindly believe.
Minion: Julia, whose duty is to compel prayer.