I rushed over the rooftops, the somewhat perturbing form of Phantom following behind me.
It was hard to take my senses off of the being, even if I knew the identity that controls the Hollow’s power was almost terrifyingly human for someone that had been bathed in a Hollow’s corruption for as long as he had.
Whispers of memory came to mind from being within his section of Phantom’s soul, an undying will for the sake of a brother he wanted to protect so badly, badly enough that he’d forced himself into becoming a Hollow, and then a starving Adjuchas with the help of a Life Bringer.
I didn’t know the man that stood as Phantom’s originating soul, the one that had consumed hundreds and thousands of Hollows who had lived within Karakura, though restricting himself severely enough that every part of his soul was fraying and wearing down.
I knew that I was gambling. Originally, I had almost hoped that I would find Phantom and delve into its soul, only to find that the reason for its starvation was some strange remnant of a being that’d once been the dominant identity. I had wanted that so that it was easy to sacrifice Phantom without the barest thought, not even a flicker of remorse.
Of course, the reality is that I would sacrifice him even now, if it meant that I could save all of Karakura, and much of Japan, from the terrible result of that Hollow’s soul exploding. But now, an idea was planted in my brain, an idea that I could swear had actually been planted there.
I knew that I was playing into someone’s hand, as my mind flicked between possibilities like the pages of a book. It was the past Life Bringer that had worked on Phantom, the only reason that Phantom’s dominant identity had been able to persist with the dominance he’d sacrificed for.
Sora needed more than an indomitable will to hold that degree of power. He’d been forcibly pulled above the surface of his soul’s darkest waters, allowed to command from on high as the waters creep up and attach to him, trying to assimilate him back into the soul at large.
“What are you doing?” I asked as we ran, not bothering to turn my shut eyes towards Phantom’s body. I could see the strangeness just fine without my eyes.
Phantom’s mask was tilted upwards, looking towards the sky even while its clawed, black feet placed themselves solidly with each step.
“I can’t see it.” The Hollowfied voice of Sora rang out, reminding me that I had given him as much freedom within Phantom’s body as I could.
“The sky?” I asked as I had my sights set on the towering Hollow in the distance, its massive ribbon spilling forth from its body and showing me just how unstable it was, even after all the clean-up work I had done. I turned my attention towards Phantom’s own ribbon for a moment, examining the painfully thin ribbon with its Hollow hole sliced into its end, though it now leaked less blood than before—the black liquid only a thin line trailing down the ribbon to where Phantom ran beside me.
“Yes.” Sora responded, his voice moving Phantom’s mask subtly, “I can’t see, but I can move. I can’t feel, but I know. It’s… horrible.”
The deadpan voice almost made the Hollowfied affectations more disturbing, but for some reason it put me at ease. It was the simple humanity in those words, the same words that I might’ve said myself while I delved into the depths of my own soul, exploring desperately for something, anything.
I didn’t respond, but the idea in my mind, the one that played into the very hands of the Life Bringer that came before me, blossomed further, and pushed aside any thought of abandoning it.
I stopped, only a few hundred metres away from the Hollow that stood taller than the buildings around it. Now Phantom’s mask was no longer trained on the sky, but instead on the meal that it could be enjoying instead. I heard a slight grunt of effort from the Hollowfied voice of Sora, Phantom’s body trembling as the rest of its soul screamed for the taste of the Hollow’s flesh.
“Wh–” He groaned loudly as Phantom’s body forced itself forward a step, “What do you want me to do with that… thing?”
Sora’s voice was layered with pain, restricting himself so terribly despite everything.
“Simple,” I said clearly, “you’re going to eat it.”
Phantom’s body stopped quaking, letting a long hiss of air release from between its teeth. I observed with my spiritual senses as its feel pushed against the concrete rooftop, shattering it, and then obliterating it as a massive boom rang out over Karakura Town.
It was hard to track, but within my spiritual senses, the small and dilapidated form of Phantom screamed through the air with speed that nobody short of Tessai would be able to match.
The towering, Frankenstein’s Hollow didn’t even have time to react. Not even a moment of realisation, its senses not even close to powerful enough to even glimpse upon Phantom’s spiritual pressure.
I watched as Phantom’s body stopped in the air, dead over top of the spiritually bloated Menos, and opened its mouth wide.
In one single close of its jaw, Phantom bit its head off in a macabre spray of blood. The bite cleanly separating its head and mask from the rest of its ginormous body. Phantom’s body, while incredibly small, easily consumed much of the Hollow’s soul into itself. The soul and its energy would nourish Phantom beyond even its capacity, with how ludicrously full of energy the Hollow had been.
As I watched the ghoulish display of Phantom slowly savouring the rest of the Hollow’s body with glee, pulling the flesh from the Hollow’s bones, I noticed a very gentle displacement of air against my skin. Though, not before I noticed that Kisuke was suddenly only metres away from me, standing and watching the show.
“It’s more horrifying than I thought it would be.” I said calmly, “Even worse when I know that a man is somehow still living on in Phantom.” I could only imagine how Sora would feel right now. I’m almost glad that I couldn’t give him total control over Phantom’s senses and body, otherwise he’d have to do it all himself.
I waited for a moment. Then a second. I was waiting for a response, a witty reply, a smarmy joke. Anything.
Kisuke would normally be totally incapable of holding himself back from doing so, his dry sarcasm a tool to release the pressure that constantly sat within his mind. He’d changed from the intensely hostile person that I’d first had to deal with into a less hostile, wittier version of himself. It was a return to form for him, I think, pushing away the fear and dread of the future and instead embracing it with sceptical eye and harsh mind at the ready.
But he would never have given up this moment to say something witty.
I swallowed gently as I looked out towards Phantom’s feast, realising that I hadn’t even had the chance to feel relieved that I’d managed to quash the threat to Karakura Town. Not even a moment of relief.
The dread rolled in with each moment of Kisuke’s silence and every one of Phantom’s bites.
I felt my shoulders slacken as I reached out with my senses.
No, I’d noticed this before. Somewhere, deep inside, I’d realised what’d happened before Kisuke had even appeared at my side in silence.
She was gone.
Rage, terror, sadness… none of them were right. None of them fit the description of how I felt in that moment of terrible realisation. Not even close. It was the realisation that a part of me was gone.
No, not even that was true.
It was the realisation that the gauze I had used to fill my wound had disappeared, leaving me with a great hole in my chest, right where my heart was. I stared down at my chest, feeling the massive, gaping hole in it widen terrifyingly, eating me as it did.
Oh, I get it now. I’ve lost my heart and now I’m so incredibly hollow.
I laughed mirthlessly, not even capable of pulling a smile onto my face. The laugh set Kisuke on edge, I could even see his hackles raise and his eyes widen where he stood, shifting his stance beneath his flowing clothing in an instinctive gesture of defensiveness.
“Suzumi is gone.” I stated, my voice dry and brittle, an ugly, grating sound that came from deep down a black pit in my stomach. How else would I characterize the sound of the loss I felt so completely?
“Grayson I–” Kisuke started, before I tsked my tongue loudly, the sharp sound stopping the ex-Captain from going any further.
“No.” I said, opening up a well of emotion that I had only just begun to seal over with Suzumi’s presence. “Where is she?”
“Grayson! The Onmitsukidō took her–” Kisuke tried again, but I just sighed. The air released from my chest was heavy, far heavier than any that I’d produced before, and apparently that was enough to quiet the man as I released the condensed pressure from within me.
“I don’t care who took her.” I said quietly, “I want to know where.”
The single word radiated with a broken resolve, the voice like shattered glass against even my own ears. I could feel any solidity I’d built over weeks and months of training and soul-searching crumble with just one brick removed from the wall.
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It was a weak wall, build only around the existence of one person. One person to solve my loneliness, my isolation, my sadness, my overwhelming grief. But she was no longer here, no longer a being I could rely upon.
She had been a given, in my mind. A person that would never leave, would never be taken from me, and now that she was, it showed my just how weak I really was; how weak we were.
“They took her to Soul Society.” Kisuke’s voice said gently, consoling in a way that only someone who understood could, “You can’t go there yet. They’ll kill you.”
I laughed quietly, almost under my breath, but Kisuke could hear the shattered sound of it.
I had truly loved her, and I still do. But why was it only now that I realised just how broken I was? Why was it when I looked down to my chest and saw a gaping hole, I was reminded of the depths of the sadness I’d left unresolved, having found a heart to fill it with, from someone willing to give me their own.
How horrible I’d been.
“They’ll kill me, will they?” I asked almost pleasantly, a small smile on my face as I turned to face the man while the Hollow feasted at my back. “They’re welcome to try, Kisuke.” I could see his face pale even without use of my eyes.
My actions made sense, in that moment. When I raised my hand to my eyes and passed my fingers over each of my eyes and sealed them closed, I almost felt liberated. I could no longer be tricked into believing what was outside would heal me. No amount of training, or power would be able to deceive me anymore.
Not when I forced my eyes to see the black pit where my heart once was, instead of the vibrant, deceptive world around me.
“I’m going to Soul Society, Kisuke.” My voice warned as my spiritual pressure rumbled in agreement, “Either help me, or go away.”
----------------------------------------
There really wasn’t all that much you could do inside of a cell.
Well, no. That was a total out and out lie, there was a tonne you could do in a cell. But when you were permanently restrained upside down, with both feet clamped in a pair of massively oversized shackles that are pumped full of spiritual energy at every moment of every day? It severely restricts your possible activities.
Not to mention the restrictive vest made out of a hyper-dense spiritual material that the 12th Division cooked up when that man really wanted to dull down his abilities for a good fight. Though, Central 46 were basically jumping over the moon when they realised that it could be used to restrain most Captain-level combatants.
Of course, that wasn’t something that really restricted her all that much. It was the addition of the feet shackles, the arm shackles that were constantly being pulled upon, the crazy seals on the cell that blocked her own spiritual energy, and the vest—which was also covered in seals—that restricted her.
She’d say it was overkill, but it was only barely able to hold her in place. Anything less than these measures would allow her to slip away, almost totally unseen, and unheard by anyone. Soifon seems to have gotten over her cocky, self-deluded attitude since their last meeting and finally managed to get the drop on her.
Well, could it really be called ‘getting the drop on her’ when she’d been reduced to a comatose state after… well, everything? Though, she deliberated, she wouldn’t be much of a Captain of the Onmitsukidō if she didn’t take advantage of someone’s moment of weakness.
A small oversight that they had made, was leaving her mouth open and operational. Of course, there was no chance of using Kidō in here, not with the new Captain of the Kidō Corps having laid the foundation for this very cell. Hard to wriggle of the seals designed by someone who was rumoured to be competitive with Tessai back in the day, at least in the Academy.
It was total bullshit, of course. She knew better than anyone just how good Tessai Tsukabishi was with Kidō, good enough to restrain her multiple times, and probably good enough to have ended her in those moments. He didn’t even need to draw his Zanpakutō to do so, which only made it more impressive when you include the fact that she hadn’t either.
Soul Society always found it so easy to forget about the Kidō Corps and the Onmitsukidō. Even the 12th Division would be forgotten about if their Captain didn’t have a… reputation. But the Kidō Corps and the Onmitsukidō are extremely powerful forces within Soul Society, and it always amused her how easy it was for the regular soul, or even other Soul Reapers, to forget that they exist entirely.
It wasn’t until they realised that they weren’t going to cut it as a Soul Reaper in the actual Court Guard, and they decided that maybe they should see what the Onmitsukidō were doing instead. The Kidō Corps had even less people care about them, because of the overwhelming technical knowledge you’re required to have to even think about joining up, even if the pay is good and the hours are relatively low.
Well, she was a bit of a hypocrite for extolling the values of joining the Kidō Corps over the Onmitsukidō. After all, she did work awfully hard for it to be the first name on the lips of any disenfranchised, low born Soul Reaper.
She began to whistle, the boredom finally reaching a point where she had to do something, otherwise she really would go insane. How long had she even been in here? She’d asked a few times, when someone deigned to come down here, but of course they never talked. She’d be a little disappointed if they did—it’d ruin the fun of the intrigue.
Her whistling, even while she was wrapped in every possible restriction, was loud. Piercingly so, she was told. She’d trained it to be so, a good distraction tactic or, if your opponents were weak and many, you could imbue it with a little spiritual energy and voila! You have yourself a lot of Soul Reapers screaming and bleeding from their ears. Good times.
She whistled, almost tunelessly, just enough to entertain her, and annoy anyone that might be listening in. Or, seeing as her voice can project for miles, annoying someone that found themselves in the range of her whistling.
Which was very few to none, unfortunately. The Onmitsukidō’s secret prison wasn’t used very often, only really when they are taking in a massive influx of people from a secret war they were waging, seeing as the prison was virtually inescapable and doubled perfectly as torture chambers. Especially so with the channels in the floors that let the blood trickle away down the halls and into whatever dark pit.
Oh well, she could only hope that there was one other unfortunate soul locked in here with her who could hear the annoying–
There was a sound.
It wasn’t even hearable to her, just the mere vibration of it from an insane distance was enough to tell her that there was indeed a sound, able to determine that even without any use of her spiritual energy.
It’d been a while since she last heard a sound, and there was nothing that lived down here. aside from theoretically the other prisoners. She let the collection of footsteps make their small clamour of sound as they passed through the corridors of cells within the complete black.
Maybe they thought they were safer because the prisoner couldn’t see, but they were clearly wrong. In fact, there was unlikely to be many in Soul Society that could actually see in the lightless depths, something that she’d found extremely helpful during her long days above ground.
She waited patiently as the steps drew nearer and nearer, her mind quickly calculating the heights, weights, and relative physical abilities from their footsteps alone. There were six people, more than she had seen in total for what had to be at least a few decades. And seen was a strong word.
Four of them were basically flunkies when it came to physicality, and they even had the gall to be nervous. Clearly Kidō Corps Wardens. The two others… One led the pack, veritably glowing with power as their steps guided them straight and true, and the other was the new prisoner. Steps were heavy and solid, though weighed down by some version of moroseness.
Interesting.
They turned the corner, coming even closer to her as they walked the prisoner to their cell. She waited, searching for the perfect moment when they stopped dead, right in front of her cell, and the one opposite her.
The leader, a short woman with ruthlessly short cut black hair and a face marred by vicious wounds, reached out with a simple talisman that unlocked the cell in front of her. As simple as that talisman might be, it was entirely foolproof. It couldn’t be spoofed or messed with, and the only way to open the cage was to have that key, or someone strong enough to break it open, of which there were few.
She watched in the darkness as the four Kidō Corps members brought the prisoner into their cell, her face covered by a black veil and her throat entirely restrained by a black, metal version of the more commonly used red spiritual restraint.
They were worried about her strength. Or, at least, what she could be capable of. Enough to use the skill of high level Kidō Corps members, powerful enough to maintain the mantras for restraints that are usually set aside for at least 3rd seat Soul Reapers, usually weaker Lieutenants.
They released the girl, the black shackles retracting from around her throat and the veil lifting, allowing her to gasp in a breath of the horrifyingly stagnant air down here, the high-level restraints having supplied her oxygen through a pipe straight into her lungs. A brutal restraint for those who could use a voice command of any sort.
The Onmitsukidō woman flicked a finger to release some sort of bind with what seemed to be her Shikai released into a beaded bracelet and cursed nails, skin slowly going a purple colour that surely hurt the woman deeply. Just as she raised the small talisman to lock the gasping prisoner behind bars…
“Boo!”
The shockwave of sound that she forced from her throat battered against the fragile ears of the Kidō Corps members, their ears bleeding underneath the white garb of their Warden headdress. The Onmitsukidō Soul Reaper fared better, with her ears only just surviving the sound blast.
She couldn’t help but laugh.
“Oh my!” She said in her sultry tones, “Did you seriously not know that I was around when you put that one down here? Is that how long I’ve been in this little hole?” She cackled manically as the Onmitsukidō woman scowled as the cowering Kidō Corps Soul Reapers, waving the talisman, and locking away the other prisoner across from her.
“Don’t speak to her! Mistress Soifon has forbidden for her to be talked to.”
“Aww, don’t be like that! I’m right here, if you stay and chat, I’ll even be nice?” The Onmitsukidō girl snorted and commanded the blubbering Kidō Corps Wardens away, leaving her and the other prisoner totally alone.
So very alone.
“Well, well,” she began with a grin, “what’re you in here for? Must’ve pissed them off like no tomorrow to be thrown in here, just by yourself and all.”
The other girl didn’t react, but she could study her face as her new companion struggled to recover from whatever had been done to her. Being in those restraints, even as a person capable of resisting them, is exhausting to say the least. They stimulate your spiritual energy into responding and constantly exhausting your reserves while it tricks you into feeding it your own spiritual energy. If you knew the trick, or you had enough spiritual energy yourself, you could just break the cycle and run away.
“Hey!” She called out against the other prisoner’s breath began to slow down, “I can’t tell if you’re dying or falling asleep, but I’m not having either of them! I’ve waited ages to talk to someone, so we’re having a slumber party kiddo.” The prisoner girl groaned with a distinct effort, making her sigh deeply.
“Oh, come on! You seriously can’t talk right now?” She waited for a moment, but no reply came. “Fine! If you can give me your name, I’ll consider us good until you can talk more. I’ll even give you mine!”
She waited, keeping her eyes trained on the prisoner who was currently lying face down on the cell floor, her black hair splayed around her dramatically. She’d almost given up on receiving a reply, all too ready to shoot back a petulant response, but a rough and beaten voice sounded out in the darkness, the first non-hostile words she’d heard in years.
“Suzumi.” The prisoner said, her voice filled with a deep sadness and a terrible rage underneath the horribly broken voice. She waited for a moment, seeing if another name would follow, but it didn’t. She hummed for a while, wondering whether she should give a false name or her genuine one, though she shrugged in the end, making an effort to pull against her restrained arms for the frivolous action.
“I see. Nice to meet you, Suzumi.” She grinned, wondering what kind of response she’d get from this, “My name is Yoruichi Shihōin.”
…No response, huh? Seems that people really did forget about the Onmitsukidō Captains.