Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Hell Butterfly ❯ Rain City ( Chapter 10 )

 

Hell Butterfly

 

Rain City

~10~

 

o)0(o

 

Drilling, pounding, drumming rain; falling so hard and fast that Ichigo was terrified the glass buildings all around him would smash. Every drop that hit his unprotected body felt like a hail bullet. The wind was a mad scream, a vast beast roaring at the rain to attack more ferociously.

 

Clinging to the flagpole as the whole world turned upside down, the ground was above his head but his feet were swinging nauseously over open, stormy air. Hunched over in his ragged black cloak, hiding from the downpour, Zangetsu was crouched on the underside of the mast.

 

Only the Hollow seemed to be affected by `normal' gravity, standing on the window panes that cracked beneath his feet. With the slow laugh of one resigned to death, he danced back and forth across the side of the skyscraper, waving a white sword around like a child with a stick.

 

Ichigo stared round at the violent tempest of his inner world, too terrified to even choke out the questions whirling inside his head. The rain was pouring upwards, lightning flashed below, and above all the drowning sounds of the squall he could hear the ominous clink-clank of steel.

 

“These are the heavenly chains,” said Zangetsu simply, looking up through his amber shades at the distant ground. At the base of the building, huge doors were grinding open. The clatter of a million metal links echoed, rushing out of the dark portal like the noise of falling shingle.

 

His fingers were slipping. If he fell into the sky here, would he remain in his own mind or tumble beyond it into insanity? Risking the vertigo that would cost his precious grip on the anchoring flagstaff, Ichigo looked down. The gale was stinging his eyes to tears and something gigantic was dropping out of the roiling black clouds; accelerating up towards him.

 

A ruptured moon, a cosmic satellite gashed with a gaping wound - as though Getsuga Tensho really had assaulted the heavens and bit straight through; now tossing its prey at its master. His entire body baulked away from the impact.

 

But the moon had frozen, hanging in midair the same way it had hung at the top of the sky. Above him Zangetsu was standing, balancing on the thin shaft and walking sombrely forwards.

 

“W-why…”

 

“This is the turmoil of your soul.” The enigmatic zanpakuto gestured all around them at the storm, the spinning Hollow, the topsy-turvy tower blocks. “You are dying.”

 

Frowning, shaking his head, he struggled to get the right words out before it was too late. “No, n-no; why are…you - leaving?”

 

The man paused, his dark hair flaring in the crosswinds.

 

“I have lived in your soul, but I am not you. We are avatars of each other's powers, but we are not one. When you die, there will be nowhere for me to exist. And thus I am returning to my own home.”

 

He stepped over a gap of infinite depth, hands tucked inside the pockets of his swirling cloak, the black blade with its hilt-less tang and bloodless white bandages sleeping on his back.

 

“Until next time, Kurosaki Ichigo.”

 

“Zangetsu -”

 

The zanpakuto leapt into the chasm of the moon, and the flagpole vanished.

 

o)0(o

 

For six heart-stopping seconds, Ichigo plummeted into the depths of a thunderstorm. He couldn't hear his own screaming, but felt his throat grow raw - a tiny detail in a chaotic rush of adrenaline and flashbacks and lightning.

 

His fall ceased with a vicious jerk. Black chains like that which had once adorned the hilt of Tensa Zangetsu were coiling around him under their own power, dangling from the grey-blue skyscraper above him. Winded by the abrupt stop, he gasped airlessly to catch his breath. The chains were beginning to draw him upwards again.

 

And despite that being a good thing, despite that surely saving his -evidently already deceased - life; Ichigo could not help but fear his new destination. As he was winched back to the familiarity of the city of windows, he saw his inner Hollow battling the dark restraints that contrasted so starkly against his pure white shihakusho, skin and hair. The Hollow was no longer wielding a zanpakuto either, and the reminder sent a pang of loneliness through Ichigo's heart.

 

“Hey! What'syourname!” yelled the teenager, no longer content to allow this insanity to rule him. The Hollow looked up at him, only distinguishable by a white blur and the blue of its tongue through the heavy downpour.

 

“I don't have a name, ya Horse!” it screeched back, voice distorted by inhumanity. “But you can call me King!”

 

Ichigo almost laughed in disbelief. What a joke. They were both dying, and it was still harping on about that? “What `King'?” was his exhausted reply. “I let you have a turn and…and Karin killed you! You can't get much more dead than we are!” It was difficult to raise his voice over the cacophony.

 

“There's always Hell!” shot back the pale monster cheerfully. It had stopped fighting the chains, and now its human counterpart saw the way the shackles just slipped over its skin, skidded through the Hollow hole, but never quite managed to catch hold. But they must have been irritating nonetheless, for the beast was beginning to deform.

 

He had been dragged almost in line with the alter-ego. Ichigo thrashed against the chains, trying to reach the crumbling building. The Hollow was prowling the shattered glass on bleeding feet. A thick white tail with vivid red markings flicked behind it, the mask both haunting and healing now hid its human face. Garishly bright orange hair fell down its back in a spiky mane. The hole was clearly visible.

 

Ichigo stared, because he had never seen the true form of the minus him before; having always been trapped on the inside. It was hard to comprehend how they could possibly exist as the same being.

 

“Why is this happening to me and not you?!”

 

The Hollow turned to face him fully, eye to eye if it tilted its head back, and close enough to reach out and snag the tangle of chains in a bleached claw. Ichigo's slow ascent halted momentarily.

 

“Because you're the soul, and I'm soulless.” Its speech reverberated with a harsh buzz. Its cold, wet, bone face knuckled against his. “But without you in me somewhere, without the base of this inside world for me to exist in, I'm just gonna disappear. Like Zangetsu-jii would've if he'd stayed after you were gone.” One of the spines on its shoulder fractured and broke off, illustrating their shared imminent doom. It did not regenerate. “Zanpakutos only kill the Hollow; then the soul is released again. But the soul hid in the first place because there were things it couldn't bear.”

 

Drenched to the bone, losing circulation in the tight nest of chains, Ichigo had never felt more weak and helpless as his pale imitation explained the secrets of life and death.

 

“That's what these are for…” and it flicked the metal binds, making them hum eerily; “Chains of Fate and the Soul Sleep. They got cut up when that Kuchiki bastard made Sode no Shirayuki let go of you, and that's why you had to get spiritually fucked up to get Zangetsu back again. That's why you've got me, and that's…all you've got time to hear.”

 

“Oi!” shouted Ichigo desperately; “Tell me what it means, I don't get it!”

 

The Hollow shrugged carelessly, liberating the rusted links one teasing claw at a time. “Don't matter…you'll forget anyway. Your soul is going to sleep now.” Its words were jagged razors under his skin. “Your memories are getting locked away, and I'm about to vanish.” As the monster let go and sent the straining chains streaking up the side of the building in a blur of rain and windowpanes, a final mocking question echoed loudly in Ichigo's wake.

 

“Didja think this city was empty, your Majesty?”

 

o)0(o

 

The doors into the unfathomable tower block were open. No gaping maw, no esoteric portal, just plain and simply open; and solely dark inside. He would never come out of those doors again after entering, but the ferrous chains had throttled him, and he had no oxygen with which to fight. Even if such necessities did not matter in a dream world, Ichigo could not bring himself to move anymore.

 

Motionless, with tears of pain and fatigue and fear streaming down his face, the boy was dragged into the shadows, and swallowed by the skyscraper. He was not a powerful vaizard any longer. Somehow he knew the only thing entering this building was his purest self. And even without seeing the deconstruction, he could tell the Hollow was gone.

 

In the sinister, formless oblivion - a dark tunnel with no light at the end - Ichigo turned round and gazed sadly at the gates closing behind him. This was death.

 

This was the end of Kurosaki Ichigo.

 

When only a sliver of the outside world remained, he witnessed a flash of sunset gold; and everything stopped.

 

o)0(o

 

Alliriyan~*