Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Hell Butterfly ❯ King's Burial ( Chapter 3 )

 

Hell Butterfly

 

King's Burial

~03~

 

o)0(o

 

Being trapped in a tornado is a terrible torment. There was sand everywhere, in every crease of his clothes and in his eyes, scratching and scraping every available inch of skin. Ichigo was pretty sure that it was his reiatsu-laden skin that saved him. He could easily imagine a weaker victim being torn to shreds.

 

For the next few giddy, vomit-inducing minutes, he was tossed around like a strawberry in a blender and turned a pretty similar colour - the yellow of seeds when the blood drained out of him in shock, the green of the stalk when he felt sick; red when he was flipped upside down and the blood rushed back until he thought his head would pop. Far too long after the point when he couldn't stand it anymore, a small flying object punched him in the stomach and sent him tumbling out of the windy grasp of the tornado.

 

He hit the sands with a muted, painful thump.

 

"Ow."

 

"Hahah! That din't hurt as much as I thawt it would!"

 

Huh?

 

Was that a child's voice he'd heard? He cracked his eyes open and blinked in dazed incomprehension at the green filling his vision. There was something clinging to his head. When he lifted his arms to try and tug it off., he felt little hands knot into his hair and yank it half out. "OW!" he repeated, not as genuinely, but certainly more forcefully than last time. "Let go!"

 

"Wassat?! AH!! Nel is stuck to sumfing! AHH GETITOFFGETITOFFGEDDIDORF!!!!"

 

"You're holding on to me, retard!"

 

The small fists opened instantly and his previously exerted effort flung the creature off him and into the drift of sand opposite. "Hey! Dat's not vewy nice!" squealed his limpet, flailing to and fro in attempt to undig itself from the hill.

 

Eventually, it tumbled backwards and he saw his adversary properly.

 

It was a little kid a in a green hooded dress.

 

Ok.

 

Ichigo shielded his eyes with a hand and peered in the direction of the twister. Just judging by the screams, Ishida was definitely still in there. Chad probably wouldn't scream. Ichigo had been on a rollercoaster with him just once, and instead of screaming the guy had just clamped his hands on the rail, clamped his jaws together and peeled his eyelids waaay back, creating an effective rictus of terror without the faintest peep of a scream.

 

Ishida, on the other hand, sounded like: "AAAAAHHHH woah woah woah woah woah woah woah woah woah ahhhhhhhhhhhh gah nooooo WOAH!!!!"

 

Stupid Quincy. Ichigo had hardly shrieked at all. Honest.

 

Wait a second.

 

A kid in Hueco Mundo?

 

Ichigo did a double take at the brat, noting green, lots of green, a red stripe that went over its nose and ended rather bulbously on each cheek, and very big, very innocent looking taupe-brown eyes.

 

What on earth was a kid doing in Hueco Mundo?! She even had a scar! A massive, wrinkled swathe of scar tissue sweeping from beneath her green fringe down to the bridge of her nose.

 

Ichigo felt his protective instincts grow incensed. Who the hell had dared bring a kid into this place and do that to her on his watch?

 

The girl - he was pretty sure - was staring at him, apparently coming to a new realisation as she gawped at his robes, sword and lack of a mask or hollow hole. "You you you you you're not a hollow!" she gibbered, pointing.

 

“Nah, I'm Kurosaki Ichigo; Shinigami Representative and substitute guardian for Karakura town," he introduced himself. Hopefully she would calm down, now that she knew help had finally come.

 

She hopped closer, prodding at him with a wavering human finger. "You - you - you're a shinigami?!"

 

"Yup!" replied Ichigo, with two thumbs-up and a sad attempt at a good-guy expression. His face was too naturally...furrowed to pull it off, however.

 

"YOU'RE A BAD GUY!" she wailed morbidly, clutching her head in a tragic pose like the Scream and causing the hood to fall off.

 

To fall off and reveal a deeply cracked skull mask.

 

Ichigo breathed in sharply; flinched back a little. The child was a Hollow? Children could become Hollows?! That was just...tragic...

 

"You're," repeated the girl, teary eyes huge and gap-toothed mouth aghast. Her hand patted him again, as if making sure the nightmare was real. "YOU'RE IT!" she whooped, slapping his arm and pelting away across the sands back towards the tornado. "DONDOCHAKKAAAA!" she yelled, like some kind of mad war cry. “WAIT FOR MEEEEE!”

 

"Oi..." sighed Ichigo, levering himself upright on the uneven ground. He would try to make sense of this development later. "What's a Dondochakkaaaa?"

 

Seeing as he too had business with the whirlwind, he started to trot after the little Hollow girl. She turned round slightly, gawked at him and began to sprint. "Don't chase me, evil shinigamiiiii!" she squealed. "I don' wanna be It!"

 

The screams and the spinning sands drew closer and louder. Ichigo peered at it, intent on finding his friends. "CHAAAAAD! IIIIISHIDAAAA?"

 

"Yes?" replied the polite, cultured tones of the top student, fittingly from the top of the twister. Ichigo face-faulted as he caught sight of the guy. He looked like he was surfing.

 

"How are you doing that?!" blurted out the redhead, sounding far more impressed than he had intended; which would probably lead to Ishida lording it over him for the next few days.

 

"Can't you tell, Kurosaki?" shouted back the windsurfer, one hand elegantly pinning his glasses to his face out of the teeth of the gale, the other hand clinging on to Chad's belt. In a second or two his arm was going to give out and it was going to be very painful for the both of them.

 

"This sandstorm isn't natural! It's powered by reiatsu!" shouted Ishida. "I'm using my famous Quincy 'flying curtain' technique! Because I'm aweso-" his next words were censored by a gob full of sand.

 

"Ne...Shouldn't that be 'flying carpet'?" asked a sneaky, light voice from below him. He looked down in alarm.

 

THERE WAS A GIANT WORM. WITH HORNS.

 

In even more alarm, Ishida accidentally let go of Chad. The long-suffering stoic was whipped away in silence. As suspected.

 

"I'm pretty sure the phrase is 'flying carpet'!” repeated the voice; far too high in pitch to apply to the ENORMOUS SERPENT that was riding out the weather, too great a mass to be tossed around like the rest of them. "Don't you think, Dondochakka?!"

 

"Sure!" roared another, cheerful voice. If Uryuu squinted he could make out the forms of two smaller, vaguely more humanoid hollows perched up on the helmet of the worm. He could pick out purple, white, and yellow with black polka dots. His fashion senses shrivelled in dismay.

 

"Ne, flying-kun! Have you seen our sister Nel anywhere?! She fell off!"

 

"If you lost her, why didn't you just stop this whirlwind and go look for her?!" screamed back Ishida, not in quite his right mind at that moment. If he had been feeling okay, it would have been whoosh with the bow and zap with the arrows right then and there.

 

"Oh, we're not making the weather," replied the skinny-sounding one. "We're just stuck in it!"

 

"Oh yeah! We should be screaming, Pesche, ya know?" gasped its big, jolly…friend?

 

"Right! Off we go! AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!"

 

"Woah woah woah!!!" screamed Dondochakka, or whatever his name was. He made it sound like he was being spun at high speed. In truth, the only person that was happening to was Chad. (Who, incidentally, had just zoomed past on his fifteenth revolution.)

 

"Bawa bawa bawaaaa!" chimed in the snake. If chimes were fifty foot long.

 

The hurricane stopped as abruptly as it had started, the powerful winds swerving to a halt and several tonnes of sand dropping to the ground in a great whoomph!

 

Chad crawled out of the heap like a newborn zombie. “Never…again…” he croaked. In his mind the sentence continued: …not again. I will learn shunpo. I will achieve flight. I will master the arts of channelling the winds. But I will never go through that again.

 

Externally, there was a long pause until he uttered a simple “No.” with finality strumming from every vocal cord.

 

Meanwhile, Nel was running back into the fond embrace of a skinny purple Hollow in a loincloth, and a giant tiki mask with disproportionate arms and legs. Ishida saw them clearly for the first time and shuddered. Horrific combinations of yellow, purple, green and red between the three of them made the swiftest stitcher and dandiest designer in Karakura wish he had never come.

 

“Ne, Nel Tu,” said the worst offender in a whisper. A whisper that did not know how to do its job properly, as everyone could hear it loud and clear. “Who's that fella following you?”

 

“Ssshh, Dondochakka! Don' let It hear you!” whisper-shouted Nel back to the oversized mask. “I tagged him, and he could stwike back at any time!”

 

“Wow,” said the purple Hollow with a hint of awe. Something about his tone of voice in general gave the impression he had delusions of intelligence. “That shinigami camouflage must scare away a lot of the weaker Hollows.”

 

Nel's little face broke into a very wide grin - so large it pushed her eyes shut. “He ain't camouflaged.”

 

The motionless masks of her companions managed to trade a worried look. Their blank, empty eye sockets moved from Ichigo, to Ishida, to Chad, to Nel; to Ichigo, to Ishida, to Chad, to Nel - to - Ichigo - to - Ishida - to - Chad - to - Nel - pretty soon their eyes were spinning out of control.

 

“W-we'll protect you, Nel!” they cried in unison, both leaping to her defence. However, Dondochakka was so giddy he charged off in the opposite direction. Eventually the little Hollow-kid had a solid wall of idiot between the invaders and herself.

 

“You guys…aren't like normal Hollows at all…” Ichigo had a huge sweatdrop rolling down his left temple and a strange expression. Attacking these guys would be like crushing a small, well-meaning ant who only wanted to take a cube of sugar home for its poor grandmother, just for the fact that it told bad jokes. Or something like that.

 

"Oh yeah!" said Nel in sudden surprise. "We din't introduce ourselfs!"

 

Ishida wondered if this was a bad thing: Hollows usually only gave their names to those they were about to kill. Or, to be more accurate, arrancars did.

 

"WE ARE NEL DON PE, DESERT THIEVES!!"

 

"THE THREE SIBLINGS OF DONCHAKNOW!"

 

"SUPERHADOUKEN TRIO!!!!"

 

The intrepid invaders of Hueco Mundo could not quite believe their eyes.

 

"Bawa wa wa waaaa!"

 

“Oh! Sorry Bawabawa, we didn't meeaan to leave you out…”

 

“Let's try again!” Again, they struck poses of the ilk usually found in tacky Saturday morning cartoons. Sooner or later the boys would have to admit this was really happening, but they clung to the last shreds of sanity and disbelief whilst they still could.

 

"NEL DON PE BAWA!" cheered Nel, doing a star jump.

 

"No no no, I thought we were gonna say siblings, capische?" Tear tracks were streaming out of the mask's eyeholes. Forming a huddle, the four Hollows burst into a heated argument.

 

The humans just started to edge away; they didn't need any more introduction than that. They would even resort to begging to prevent there being further repetitions.

 

"Frikkin' weird Hollows round here..." muttered Ichigo as he made his escape.

 

"WAIT!" screamed Nel. "We can't give an intwo like dis! They're wunning away wif the wrong idea!"

 

"Well, uh, whaddyu suggest, friend?" The following whispers, for once, could not be heard. The `siblings' nodded unanimously, and turned back to their…missing…audience.

 

"OIII ITSYGO!" hollered the tiny girl, hands cupped around her mouth. "Get back here, you uke!"

 

"WHAT?!" shrieked the boy, voice hiking in pitch.

 

"Ok go, go," prompted Nel. They scattered into position, and then cried “TADAA!!” with one voice.

 

"The great Nel Tu-sama-chan, amazing awwancar of Hueco Mundo!!!" She pointed frantically at her undisguised human features and the fissure in her skullcap.

 

“And Pesche Guatiche, super fly masked guy!” He raised the flap of fabric over his right eye dramatically, though they were all too far away to see the significance of this gesture.

 

“And DONDOCHAKKA BILSTAN!! DONCHAKNOW!"”

 

"BAWABAWAAAA!"

 

The humans just stared, once again falling into a stunned silence at the horrific introduction.

 

"Guys, we're in Hueco Mundo. Is this some kinda joke to you or what?"

 

"MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY," thundered a voice as large as the tornado of not ten minutes ago. The newly revealed arrancars screamed as a shadow fell over all seven of the assembled.

 

"EEEEK Lunuganga is back!"

 

"HO NOES! It's the guardian of the white sands!"

 

"We're all gonna get owned!"

 

A living mountain was drawing itself up out of the sand, slowly forming a glaring white mask beneath the battlemented peaks of its head. It was not the usual skull-shaped visor, rather a humanoid face with glaring eyes and a moustache that formed a complete ring around the back of its cranium. A vast fist hovered above them.

 

"I HEARD NEWS FROM LAS NOCHES THAT THERE WERE INVADERS."

 

“Yeah, what of it?” muttered Ichigo rebelliously. Maybe he should just get `ryoka' tattooed across his forehead.

 

Belatedly he realised this had been said out loud.

 

"Ohh, or Kurosaki, I could make you a t-shirt that says 'Ryoka without a Cause'."

 

"But I do have a cause! I'm saving Inoue-san!" The grainy guardian above them roared, displeased at being ignored.

 

"It's going to be beautiful," sighed Ishida. “A subtle blend of reds and golds to match your hideous hair, and none of those clashing purple tops you wear, no sir."

 

Chad grunted. "I feel sorry for Inoue."

 

Ichigo took serious note of this and grimly hefted Zangetsu in one hand. "Right. Let's stop stalling and playing with these kids. Time to rescue Inoue!"

 

"My god, you have such a hero complex, Kurosaki!" retorted Ishida, snapping out of his tailoring trance. He summoned his spirit bow, and paused. Wait a second. It was octagonal…

 

BOOM! Getsuga Tensho ripped a chunk out of the towering sandman Lunuganga, and a vast blue crescent sped away into the black sky.

 

The Hollow began to collapse. Ichigo turned away smugly. “Yosh!”

 

Guatiche sniggered. “That's never gonna work, evil shinigami."

 

"Why not? His head's in half. Look."

 

They looked. There was no damage in the slightest. Ichigo pointed with his massive zanpakuto in disbelief, gibbering. “Wh-wh-what the hell is going on? How did he-?!”

 

“He's made of sand, didn'tchaknow.”

 

"WHAT CHEATING SCUM," rumbled the colossus, leaning forwards and lifting its arms. “YOU HAVE NO MANNERS IN BATTLE.”

 

"Baaaaad guuuuuy!" jeered Nel from behind them.

 

"I WILL TEACH YOU TO SUBMIT TO THE SANDS OF THIS LAND."

 

"It was a fair shot!" insisted Ichigo; firing again with the black blade.

 

Lunuganga's fist left a sizeable crater in the ground where Ichigo had just been standing. "Shit!" yelped the boy, grabbing Nel from reflex and shunpo-ing away. But the ground was slipping away, sucking at his feet as he tried to escape. The plains had turned into a desert of sinking sand. Several metres away the earth was draining down into a vast pit, one that was expanding far too fast.

 

"We're gonna get puréed." purred Nel, almost as if she enjoyed the prospect.

 

Ichigo skidded and the moving sands swallowed him all the way up to the waist. He could barely move his legs to escape, the grip was so heavy. "There is something seriously wrong with you, kid."

 

"I'm a masochist," she informed him, smiling proudly. "Pain is my home slice."

 

o)0(o

 

Karin was kneeling before the arrancar king, like a subject who had been brought before him for punishment. Her legs and arms were leaden, her head tipped back just enough to see a small prophecy of what was about to pass in the bedroom of her absent brother. A katana had been unsheathed, the metal dull for the light feared to touch it.

 

Where was Ichigo now?

 

Where was the shinigami with the overflowing power to overcome all obstacles and threats?

 

Where was the One Guardian, the Ichi-Go, when she needed him?

 

The crowned man, monster, had placed one foot upon her still and lifeless body, holding the reddish ferrous chain that linked them in his empty hand. She could feel electric charges stream out of his palm and zap along the chain into her heart. It stung enough to bring tears to her eyes, even in her numb state of shock.

 

Now he was leaning down on his leg, pinning her physical corpus to the floor as his fist wrenched the chain from its core. The toppled hostage of Karin's real body grew an ashen grey colour, twitching and seizing up before losing all tension with a sigh akin to a death rattle.

 

Heart-attack. Recognised some part of Karin's brain. I'm dead. I didn't know dying was like this.

 

You step out of your body before you feel the pain?

 

Pain, travelling up a fast-eroding Chain of Fate, hit her hard. She nearly bit the tip of her tongue off; shrieking in a voice none among the living could hear. Of rescue there was no sign.

 

"I-I-Ichi-niii...." she groaned, gasping for breath in the thin air of the spirit side, aware on some level that only he could counter this assault. Yuzu and Oyaji couldn't see ghosts.

 

Oh, but she wished her doctor-father was here now to take the hurt away, and she wished Yuzu could be there now to hug her and help her forget the things she had seen and felt...

 

"Don't die so hastily, larva. Aizen-sama would be displeased."

 

Barragan, the royal, empty man, stood over her with a curled lip and cruel granite eyes. "I am going to knight you, in a fashion," he snorted distastefully at the concept, but orders must.

 

"Yuzu..." bleated the tiny, twelve-year-old girl at the feet of the thousand-year King.

 

"I dub thee," stated Barragan slowly, and with grandeur..."in the name of Barragan Luisenbarn, King of Hueco Mundo," he raised his zanpakuto, though to her shivering confusion the blade was positioned hilt first. "Under the authority of the Dark Konsou, by the desecrating touch of the King's Burial..."

 

The pommel glowed with a black and endless illuminance, etched out were characters that gave away the purpose of the ritual.

 

Death Unrisen

 

“Hollow,” he intoned, smashing the sword into the centre of her forehead.

 

There was no blood.

 

Only burning black kanji upon the pale paper of her skin.

 

“And thus the blade falls for a second time, under the name of a mask.”

 

No visible blade moved, yet she felt her heart cleave away from her soul and hide itself someplace where she could not follow. As the dark symbols smouldered and sank deep into her skull, she felt overwhelming loneliness well up out of the void they left behind.

 

“No no no…” mumbled the lips of the delirious child, the last words she would ever speak as her mind and brain were eaten away by the devil's soul burial; as she turned involuntarily into something that was not herself, and yet was her…

 

“No…no…I don't believe in…no don't…I don'tbelieveinghosts…”

 

Karin flopped forwards; soul as pale as the corpse in which her blood had stilled, surprised at the sudden halt of her heart. Catching herself automatically on limp arms, she fell backwards again into stabbing rays of shadow matter. The ground cracked open to consume her slight form.

 

All reality vanishing, she tumbled lifelessly into a black, pathless nowhere that slithered betwixt other stranger dimensions.

 

He watched the maggot sink through the floor into a mysterious place that only the unconscious soul could tread, dark shafts of non-light flickering around the surreally normal room. There was slight curiosity in his small, aged eyes. A konsou had never before been performed by Hollows, and as far as he knew he was the only one among the arrancars to boast the ability.

 

It made the theft and corruption of pluses almost…legitimate.

 

Out in the calm, midday street, Yuzu felt her twin vanish; and crumpled.

 

o)0(o

 

The coffee cup slipped from his nerveless fingers, spilling searing brown liquid down his Hawaiian shirt; Isshin's latest hyperactivity-inducing drink shattering on the pavement into fifty jagged fragments. He had been hit by a sour instinct.

 

For a moment stunned, he leaned down to pick up the pieces and slit his thumb on a razor ceramic edge. The sting of the cut brought him back to his senses.

 

“I have to get home,” he said hoarsely, bolting out of his seat and sprinting away down the road, the café quickly left far, far behind him. Belatedly feeling the faint, vulgar reiatsu in the direction of the Kurosaki residence, Ryuuken took off in hot pursuit of his one-time colleague.

 

“My, my…” hummed Urahara to himself, sipping his hot cup of cha with the cold realisation that they were already too late. The spiritual presence was barely there, and only masterful disguise of aura could explain the Espada-strength nausea induced by something so weak. Yet he did not panic, nor make any attempt to move to the rescue of his old friend's children. Hundreds of years' service in the Gotei 13 had taught him to cut his losses and move on without hesitation.

 

But then again, if he was there…maybe they wouldn't be too late.

 

Pulling a custom Soul Candy dispenser out of his haori (it had a cute black kitten face on top), Kisuke popped a pill and burst out of his body with the café staff none the wiser.

 

“Pay the bill, would you? Oh! And buy us some muffins for later. Ja ne…” chirped the shinigami to the faux soul, disappearing from view in a single flash step.

 

o)0(o

 

“AAAGH! WE'RE GONNA GET MASTURBATED!” screamed the tiny green-haired arrancar.

 

“Don't you mean masticated?” asked Pesche, shouting to be heard over the tidal roar of the quicksand.

 

There was a brief, un-forecasted blizzard. Lunuganga froze, and more importantly, so did the deadly downwards slide of his antlion's trap. The Hollows cheered wildly. The humans just scrambled to get away from the danger zone.

 

Rukia watched Ichigo approach with an uncharacteristically happy look on his face. Was that aimed at her? For saving him from the big nasty hollow? Or was it just that he was pleased to see an ally. The reason didn't matter. Because no matter what, as soon as he came within striking distance she was going to -

 

WHAM

 

The heel of her palm connected with his chin, snapping his head back and making him give a cry of pain.

 

"OW!" he yelled. "What was that for?!" Backing away, he rubbed his new bruise. That had hurt.

 

In reply, Rukia merely tagged Renji with a simple high-five. The tall man gleefully stepped forwards and introduced his own fist to the strawberry's stomach.

 

"Hwerk!" choked Ichigo, folding in half. "I don't get it..."

 

"Are you stupid?!" snapped Rukia, shouting in her angry-tirade-voice that she had been born with but polished to perfection in the haughty Kuchiki household. "Why did you leave without us? Why didn't you wait for us to come back? If you knew us at all you should have realised we would find a way to come and help Inoue. Do you really think you are the only person here who owes her a rescue?"

 

"Sorry," apologised Ichigo, now tending to two bruises. "You'd been called back by the Soutaicho, and seeing as both of you have always seemed pretty obedient to the old guy - up to and including your own execution, Rukia - I figured you wouldn't be back any time soon. What did he say? 'This is a time of war, ryoka, we cannot waste resources!' or something..."

 

"He doesn't call you ryoka anymore," chided Rukia, to which the carrot-top just shrugged. "And to give a living teenager the soul reaping powers of a...somewhat older...graduated shinigami is illegal. In fact the only injustice of that execution was the method."

 

"Whatever..." sighed Ichigo. He didn't seem sufficiently chastised, so Renji tagged Rukia again, and she walloped Ichigo, again.

 

"Next time, have a little faith in us, and never force me to say something so pathetic-sounding again!"

 

Wincing, the Kurosaki boy nodded his full agreement and backed out of range. "Ok, ok..." He tried to look pitiful.

 

"Now who are these weirdoes - mmmph!" The two shinigami had been gagged in 0.2 seconds. "Don't ask for their names!" insisted Ishida in a terrified hiss. "Or they'll really tell you!"

 

"But," Renji spat out Chad's hand with a grimace; "why are you hanging out with Hollows?"

 

Nel heard him and jumped up and down excitedly. "We gonna lead you guys to Las Noches!"

 

"We didn't even tell you we were going there..." said Ichigo, accusing.

 

"Well there's nowhere else round here worth seeing."

 

Rukia frowned. "Point. But then why do we need you as a guide? We can see where it is from here."

 

"Aha," said the child quickly, "but d'you know where the doors are? Plus Bawabawa is reeeally fast at twavelling through sand."

 

The invaders brightened up a little. A free ride sounded extremely tempting right about now. Above and behind them, the vast iceberg formally known as Lunuganga began to crumble and subside back into the dunes.

 

"Nice cape, Kuchiki..." noted Ishida, twitching his glasses so that they flashed spookily. It was a talent that had to be worked at to fully perfect.

 

Rukia looked up at his admiring tone. "Ah, yes...um...Nii-sama gave it to me," she admitted, blushing slightly at the rare attention from her stoic brother. "He said it would protect from the sand and desert winds."

 

EHHH??!

 

Their faces were pictures. She only wished her Soul Cell Phone had a camera attachment.

 

"Woah," said Ichigo in a disbelieving tone, some seconds later. "Your brother's really mellowed."

 

"He gave one to Renji too, but was far more begrudging."

 

"Maybe he didn't want to encourage his fukutaicho to leave at such an important time," said the spiky-haired redhead defensively.

 

Rukia's reply was arch and cutting. "Then you should be a little more concerned about abandoning your responsibilities, ne Renji?" She broke into a cruel laugh as he sank into a deep depression.

 

"I can't win...I can never win..." he sobbed. They clucked their tongues at him sympathetically, holding back grins.

 

"SO!" shouted Nel, feeling the centre of attention had not been her for long enough. "Let's get goin-AAAHHHHhhhhhhh........."

 

The ground had vanished. In moments, too few to react, the entire group were plummeting into a deep underworld beneath the dunes, as the sand poured away like the timekeeping of a giant's hourglass.

 

The Hueco Mundo desert returned to its former pristine, empty state. Rising up, the Guardian of the White Sands let loose a mocking laugh. “LEARN YOUR PLACE,” roared Lunuganga, although his victims were gone. “TRASH CAN NOT RESIDE UNDER THIS SKY, AND LUNUGANGA IS IMMORTAL!”

 

o)0(o

 

Lunuganga may have been immortal, but Kurosaki Karin was not. Kurosaki Karin was mortal, and her end had already visited her.

 

Isshin did not know whether her death had been premature, or whether this was fate. He only knew that he had not been at home during this dangerous time. He was perhaps one of a mere handful who knew that there was a spiritual war raging on the other side of existence, beyond the barrier of the air.

 

Why had he not thought?

 

Why had he underestimated…war?

 

Why had Karin been alone when she needed him?

 

Picking up Yuzu, who seemed to have shrunk back to the baby he had held on her first day of independent life; and holding her tight…was all he could do now. Bury her face in her father's chest. Shield her eyes from that which they had already seen and had cauterised into her memory.

 

He didn't allow himself the same safety in the darkness behind closed eyelids. He stared down at his dead daughter, clinging to the only child left within his reach; the tears caught too unawares to know they should have been streaming down his face in a Niagara Falls of grief.

 

He'd seen this before. Oh, yes, he had seen this many times before; be it strangers in the clinic or close friends and comrades in the long-abandoned past. Most of them older, but some just as young. Just as small and defenceless.

 

He thought he had known anguish, but oh, nothing had carved his insides out and left him this empty since Masaki…

 

Masaki…

 

Since Masaki was murdered by the Grand Fisher…

 

Yuzu shuddered inside the numb circle of his arms. He did not want to imagine how much worse this might be for her, with her innocence and unguarded emotions.

 

Without her twin.

 

A twin, even fraternal, being one of the closest relationships birth could offer…if the twins born chose to behave that way. And for all their differences of opinion and personality, Karin and Yuzu really had been that close.

 

No matter what thoughts entered and spun uselessly round inside Isshin's head, nothing distracted from the most heart-rending truth.

 

Exactly the same.

 

Just as Masaki had died.

 

A Hollow, Arrancar, Espada; whichever. The name did not matter. All that mattered was that a Hollow had entered this house, the only civilian house in Karakura that contained two captain-level shinigamis; and for the second time, taken away a beloved family member; leaving them cold, limp, ashen, blue, stone dead and growing stiffer on the floor.

 

Karin…

 

Masaki…

 

There would be no summons to Soul Society for either of them.

 

o)0(o