Now You Feel Like Number None [Bleach Arrancar Quest]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
That's Nemo they're talking about now.
Well he's right, getting the wishing stone was a long hard task.
Thief of Words
Trans lesbian librarian
- Location
- Best book girl
- Pronouns
- She/Her
They're off the damn boat! *cheers in Berserk fandom*
lovely, as always.
- Location
- my house
I just want to say, I love that you included Zommari, and I love that he took from his time as an Arrancar the lesson of this work.
Its just, he was the Arrancar I most regretted not getting on our side because he was such a genuinely good person. I'm glad he got a good ending.
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
Huh. Where is Mashiro?
Also, Zommari becoming the new face of Rukongai and taking up the mantle from Madarame proves something about Soul Society: to truly inspire, you must be bald.
Suppose the last major group to check on will be the Fullbringers, mainly so Riruka can see Amity and just sort of implode into a singularity from cuteness.
Also, Zommari becoming the new face of Rukongai and taking up the mantle from Madarame proves something about Soul Society: to truly inspire, you must be bald.
Suppose the last major group to check on will be the Fullbringers, mainly so Riruka can see Amity and just sort of implode into a singularity from cuteness.
WolfKit
Pay no attention to the fox behind the keyboard.
- Location
- [█████]
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm a bit surprised that Amity's diaper needs changing; I would have thought that Nemo would solve that problem with la Maraña.
RoninSword
Sky God
- Location
- Canada
All that means is the shit slips around the diaper then.
Self cleaning clothes (diaper) means what its cleaning has to go somewhere.
Self cleaning clothes (diaper) means what its cleaning has to go somewhere.
Sinsystems
Patron Librarian
So is it bad that I sort of see Loly basically ending up freeloading at Ichigo's place (in his closet...assuming Rukia isn't in there again) when she isn't searching?
One word: Garganta.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Happy fourth anniversary of this Quest, everybody.
That said, I like that I got to use him as the face of one of the setting's lesser-used aspects - that those Espadas who died might have their higher soul (though stripped of its power and much of its memories) appear in Soul Society as just another ghost. I didn't want to do it with more than one Arrancar because it would diminish the fact that Arrancars who die mostly do die in a real sense, but Zommari's soul enduring as the preacher who believes in God-as-Love even when all else has gone away is, I think, a good way to do it.
Originally when the Visored were tricked into going to Hueco Mundo Mashiro and Hiyori were both left behind, but I ended up not finding a place for Mashiro in the story, and canonized omakes and updates made it unclear whether she was supposed to have stayed behind or be with the rest of the group, so I just sort of... left her in limbo. Another of the perils of serialized writing.
Sadly, the SV Server Incident means that I will have to post the final part of the epilogue on the day after the anniversary. Tragic stuff.
Zommari is one character I regret not developing more throughout the Quest, he has so much potential compared to how canon wastes his character.
That said, I like that I got to use him as the face of one of the setting's lesser-used aspects - that those Espadas who died might have their higher soul (though stripped of its power and much of its memories) appear in Soul Society as just another ghost. I didn't want to do it with more than one Arrancar because it would diminish the fact that Arrancars who die mostly do die in a real sense, but Zommari's soul enduring as the preacher who believes in God-as-Love even when all else has gone away is, I think, a good way to do it.
Mashiro is in the living world.
Originally when the Visored were tricked into going to Hueco Mundo Mashiro and Hiyori were both left behind, but I ended up not finding a place for Mashiro in the story, and canonized omakes and updates made it unclear whether she was supposed to have stayed behind or be with the rest of the group, so I just sort of... left her in limbo. Another of the perils of serialized writing.
RoninSword
Sky God
- Location
- Canada
So what happened with Wonderweiss? OMGs sword spirit joined him as his asuchi?
persivle
A mysterious and charasmatic banyanya
- Location
- Pargon Pargon Pargon
Getting in at least one more dig at mayuri was an absolute must
What's the level past "okay boomer"? Whatever it is, this is that.
Seeing jackleton trust the future made me really happy
These two just prove that starkk was the best dad in the story, Ichigo couldn't be allowed to interact with him more than twice otherwise all his personal baggage would be solved in 2 chapters and old man zangetsu as the ideal male role model would have been made irrelevant.
everything to do with zammari is just really good.
asdx
Superior Sword Fairy
- Location
- Texas.
I have but one question to ask.
Will Lisa get to learn the secret to making babies with girls?
- Location
- somewhere over there.
- Pronouns
- They/It
"Okay, so first you find a stupidly powerful blight upon reality. I've had good successes with gods, but in a pinch the spiritual echoes of a massive, mutagenic disaster might do. Next, what you want to do is kill it, but like, suuuper philosophically. Maybe even come into it with a new technique almost mastered, but lacking some needed insight; get two things done at once..."Will Lisa get to learn the secret to making babies with girls?
Epilogue, Final: And In All The Days To Come.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Epilogue, Final: And In All The Days To Come.
Words
The Princess Sovereign of Hueco Mundo, Regent of Heaven, Cirucci Thunderwitch stared into the eyes of her deadliest adversary so far.
Her daughter Amity Thunderwish clapped her chubby toddler hands with a giggle. "Foo! Foo!"
"Food," Cirucci said imperiously, raising the spoon full of purée to her child's face. "Food. With a d. Food."
"Foo!" Amity said cheerfully, clumsily grabbing at the spoon and shoving it into her mouth.
Cirucci clasped her hand and rested her forehead against the edge, sighing. "Getting there. We are. Getting there."
Her treacherous fiancée, the trickster queen of shadows, the malicious hussie Nemo was sitting nearby, completely indifferent to her struggle. She had taken to eating some of the jars of purée herself. According to her, it was perfectly delicious food.
"Yeah," Cirucci said scornfully, "you just sit there while I try to teach our daughter language, you… you little demon!"
Nemo shrugged, then snapped her fingers. Amity turned her head (spoon still firmly stuck inside her mouth) with immediate attention, and Nemo tilted her thumb up and down at her own mouth.
"Gah!" Amity said, pulling the spoon out of her mouth with a pop and waving it about, then making a jabbing motion of her fist up and down at her mouth.
Nemo gave her lover a smirk. Cirucci was trying to teach Amity to speak, which wasn't the same as 'language.' She and Amity understood each other perfectly well.
Cirucci furrowed her brow. "You're cheating!"
Nemo stuck out her tongue.
"No, you are! She made the gesture with the hand, but she didn't stick out her thumb! How is that any different from mangling 'food' into 'foo'?"
Nemo looked up at the ceiling, making a whistling motion with her lips and blithefully ignoring Cirucci's burning glare.
"Okay, well, jar's done anyway," she said dejectedly, pushing it aside. "Let's try something else. Amy darling?"
Amity turned back to her, clapping her little hands (it was adorable, which Cirucci did her best to ignore). Her mother took a deep breath, then pointed a finger at her chest.
"Mother," she said, enunciating precisely.
"Ma-ma!" Amity babbled cheerfully.
"Mo-ther."
"Ma! Ma!"
"Mo. Ther."
"Mama!"
Cirucci sighed wearily, then opted for a change of tactics. She pointed a finger at Nemo.
"Mommy," she said simply.
"Ma-ma?" Amity answered, puzzled.
"No, mommy."
"No-ma-ma!"
"Amity, pay attention," Cirucci said seriously, and then pointing to herself and Nemo in sequence: "Mother. Mommy. Mother. Mommy."
"Ma-ma-ma-ma!" the toddler cried happily, smacking her hands together and missing half the time.
"I am your mother, and she is your mommy," Cirucci said, patiently. "Do you understand?" She pointed at Nemo again: "Mommy…" And then to herself. "Mother?"
Amity looked at her, and this time there was a moment of studious silence. The child looked at her with something that looked almost like concentration, and her heart started beating faster. Finally Amity opened her mouth and:
"Pa-pa?"
"Absolutely not."
In the corner, Nemo was rolling over on her bench, her laughter all the more annoying for being completely silent.
"I'd like to see you try it," Cirucci said, crossing her arms and pouting.
After a while, she even got an answer: Nemo's laughter died down, and the shorter woman sat up, brushed her skirt, and walked over to sit down next to their daughter. Amity waved her tubby arms in her direction hoping it was hug time, but Nemo raised a finger to call for attention and Amity lowered her arms (the start of a pout on her lip reminding Nemo of her dearest fiancée's own expression, and she had to repress another burst of laughter).
Nemo tapped her plexus, cleared her throat, made a few inhales. The weird sounds and gestures quickly captured Amity's complete attention, and when Nemo started waving her hand around, two little eyes were tracking her attentively.
Nemo reached up, towards the shadow in the upper corner of the room where the sun didn't reach, and pulled down a figment of darkness. She cradled it in her hands, molded it like clay, and when she opened them, a gentle shadowy figure, artfully painted from black, grey and white, fluttered between them; Amity's mouth opened on a 'aaaw.' Nemo said, her voice deep:
"Moth."
"Moff," Amity whispered.
Then Nemo let the shadowy insect flutter over to Cirucci, whose expression had softened into curiosity; it circled around her head, and Nemo said:
"Mother."
Amity furrowed her little brows. "Mo...ffa?"
Nemo smiled warmly and nodded her head. She waved the moth back over, and it began to circle her, and Cirucci's eyes suddenly widened and she started:
"Don't you dare-"
Nemo pointed to her chest, leaning over towards her daughter, and in a conspiratorial tone said:
"Mothest."
"Moffast!"
The scream of indignation that followed struck ten birds out of the sky and turned the morning sky overcast.
But it was worth it.
In Memoriam
The Wolf-Captain sat on his folded knees, slowly going through the motions of some ritual Nemo had never seen before. Lighting incense and pouring libations before the empty grave which stood for Tousen's grave, in a grove at the heart of the dark woods.
It was a curious thing to see. The powers of the Shinigami were strange and abstract, but many of the Arrancars had such an organic hue to their powers that it was easy to think of themselves as animals - Grimmjow the panther, wild and ferocious; Luppi the octopus-anemone-squid thing, elusive and many-handed. Nemo, the moth drawn to the flame. And yet all of them ultimately bore human faces released from their old masks.
Captain Komamura was a wolf in the most literal sense. He stood over two meters tall of brown fur, with a mouth full of fangs and whiskers bristling in the wind. She wondered where he'd come from, why he had such a peculiar shape, one unlike any other she'd seen before.
Then he cleared his throat and she snapped to attention. She was standing straight, hands folded in her lap, wearing a dark dress and overcoat, a mourning attendant. But she'd barely heard him speak. It felt odd to be alone in his company.
"They tell me…" he said, and his voice was softer than she'd expected from such a mouth, "that you were the one who changed his mind."
She makes an awkward gesture. She doesn't like to think of it that way. Nothing she could have signed or said would have made a difference if, at heart, Tousen hadn't been willing to listen.
"He always was good at that, it is true," Komamura mused. After a while, he asks: "Can you tell me about him?"
Again, she makes that gesture of awkwardness, half a shrug, half a head-tilt. He's the one who knew Tousen for decades; he would know far more than she.
"I only knew him until the day of his be… of his escape. When all I thought I knew about him came crashing down. I never had a chance to see him again, until… Until."
She nods slowly, stepping a little closer to the grave. There, a simple slab of black stone, smooth but for the engraving of his name - Kaname Tousen. It is not carved, but embossed, and the stone dark enough that it is difficult to read with the eyes; it invites one to sit and touch the outline of the words with their hand.
She tells the tale of a man in a perpetual search for the meaning of justice. A man who doubted, who inquired, who fought to have more than the false, shallow answers doled out by others. A man who erred, a man who hurt others, a man who had many regrets, chief among which that he might never meet his old friend again and tell him he was sorry. A blind man who in the end had found his clarity, and died trying to open another's eyes.
Komamura stays silent for a moment, watching the gravestone.
"It is odd," he finally says. "The man I knew was one of perfect clarity, of utmost purpose, a naked blade set against injustice."
She is not sure what to say. Perhaps he changed in the dark, afraid to let his friend see his doubts. Perhaps he wanted to appear strong for those who relied upon him, until that strength turned sour. She does not know. There will always be a shadow in their understanding of a man whose existence seemed cut in two halves.
But she knows one thing: that she would like to hear the Captain's side of that story. To know the man Tousen was before he came to Las Noches a dark, lurking presence who might have killed her, before becoming an unlikely friend - for too short a time. She would like to get to know him as he had once been.
Komamura nods, thoughtful.
"If it is alright with you, I intend to ask to be made the ambassador to your world. I, too, should like to get to know those strange people we thought to be monsters and who in the end turned my friend back to the side of righteousness."
She hesitates, surprised by the suggestion, and then smiles.
She would very much like that.
The Spider
The Arrancars gathered in the gallery as soon as they heard the jingling of the bells. They lived in rough houses dug into the side of a cliff, and from this vantage point they could see it come from afar - the spider, enormous in size, its legs raising plumes of sand as it raced across the dunes. It would be a horrifying sight, were it not for the jovial expression of its mask.
They cheered and clapped as the vast beast slid to a stop with a flourish of its forelimbs, and the two dozen or so inhabitants of the small settlement came rushing down to meet him. There was much greeting and congratulating, as the spider had added bright new silver bells to its apparel, tied to a string that ran across its thorax and abdomen, making a delightful sound every time it moved. The Arrancars were already producing gifts of fermented nectar and supplies they were hoping to trade with another village, when a voice interrupted them.
"Enough! Enough, for God's sake, you prattling lot!"
The Arrancars took a step back, looking curiously at the Spider's passenger; the old man with the beard so long he'd tied it around his waist climbed down clumsily, dusting off his stained uniform, and gave everyone a dubious glare.
"What is this," he said dejectedly, kicking at the sand. "You haven't even swept the area!"
"We, uh, didn't know we would have to do this," muttered the eldest of the villagers.
"Yes, it is growing quite obvious that you don't know anything," Ren mumbled, scratching his beard.
"Show some patience," the Spider said, chuckling. "They are as new to this as you once were."
"Yes, well, at least I didn't have to put up with myself back then. Alright, someone younger and sprightlier fetch the burlap sacks above."
A couple of the villagers immediately rushed to take down the supplies as ordered, while others sheepishly started to sweep away the sand in an area below their home cliff; thankfully it was not very deep in this area, and soon they hit the hard ground beneath - not bedrock, but not hospitable by any means.
"This," Ren said, still sounding angry at no one and everyone at the same time, "is soil." He pulled a rope from around one of the sacks, and all the Arrancars gawked and marveled at the rich, moist, black earth within. "Without it, nothing grows. It is now your most valuable resource. And these," he added, opening a small pouch, "are seeds. I also have a couple of uprooted sprouts that will need quick planting… No, you damned child, do not touch it!"
A smaller Arrancar darted away in fright from the swatting hand of Ren, who scanned the crown, glowering at all in turn.
"No one. Touch. Anything. Until I am done explaining."
The entire village nodded frantically, too afraid to open their mouths to even say 'yes' when confronted with the deadly gaze of that old sage who held the key to life in the wastes.
It was the first time Ren ever felt like he had authority over anyone. And what was he getting out of it? He couldn't even revel in it anymore.
Truly hope was the most disgusting and irrational of emotions, and he was cursed to be feeling it.
Opera
The long-awaited day had finally come. The fabled ones had come from their distant world on a path of light, all their instruments gathered with them, and entered into Soul Society, and now the Shinigami awaited in disbelief and bated breaths.
The Coro Nocturno had come to perform for the Seireitei.
Half of the Great Noble Families had not shown up; they were staging a protest after what they saw as the latest in a long string of indignities, the Coro Nocturno's insistence that a full third of the seats in the prestigious Kuchiki Theatre be reserved for the downtrodden of the Rukongai to attend free of charge, with the other two third evenly split between the Noble Families (attending at their own expense) and the Gotei Thirteen (with poorer officers attending at the largesse of their Captains).
Unohana had made no remark that considering how many more souls still dwelt in the Rukongai compared to the Thirteen Squads and the Noble Families, a division by third still left the upper class of Soul Society represented in very favorable numbers. The precipitous fall of the nobility's prestige following the near-end of the world brought her no small amount of amusement. She'd overheard several of those nobles who did attend make snide comments as to the lower class's inability to appreciate such a fine and sophisticated art as opera, which made her laugh out loud when it turned out that the Coro's opening act was a rather bawdy, joke-a-sentence musical play entitled 'The Dispute of the Moth and the Squid' featuring an extended argument between two consorts about which of them was the better lover to their respective princely spouses, featuring veiled allusions to practices Unohana had only ever heard of in the kind of colorful illustrated books that were preserved in the 'reserved area' of any reputable house. (As Kenpachi was in attendance sitting next to her, she'd been concerned about young Yachiru being exposed to such rowdy topics; but as it turned out, Kenpachi was just as clueless about the topic as his lieutenant, and her insistent request for him to 'explain the joke' only returned his haphazard guesses as to how the music was probably referring to weird sports or exotic foods found only in Hueco Mundo).
And now finally came the moment she'd waited for. After an intermission and the darkening of the lights allowed the last of the uproarious laughter to die out and the crowd to settle in for the long haul, the curtains opened on the first line sung by a strange, caterpillar-like Arrancar, and when she heard her own name sung so beautifully, Unohana could not help but shiver.
The tale of Barragan's Chevauchée was every bit as powerful as she'd hoped. It was as if long-buried memories were pulled out of their souls and laid down onto the stage for her to revisit, and it was sung with such a poignant, epic tone than the reality of the moments she'd lived felt sublimated into something greater and more moving. Many details were wrong, some were embellished, some were understated compared to how much they'd mattered at the time, but too much, far too much of it rang true. How ever had they heard of poor, doomed Jirei?
Even the… interference didn't bother her. She'd asked Kenpachi if she was sure Yachiru would stand sitting in one place listening to music for this long, and he'd shrugged and said it was fine, but of course it took about ten minutes into the opera for the pink-haired girl to start whispering question after question, but it was charming to hear this child so vividly curious about things she didn't know the woman sitting next to her had lived.
It was strange seeing them as they were now. This lean, wiry old man, his collection of scars finally creased by wrinkles, his grey hair worn in several long braids topped by bells, sitting next to this hyperactive and precocious child. One would expect Yachiru's mile-a-minute attitude to bother him, but it did no more than before Kenpachi's preternatural ageing; only now he had more of a wistful, attentive affect to his patience.
Unohana had met enough thousand-year old fools and enough ten-year old sages to know that age did not bring wisdom. What it brought was something different - limits. The necessity of confronting how far the flesh will go, and where it will go no farther. After first encountering Barragan five hundred years ago, Yamamoto had grown more withdrawn, spending less and less time in the field and more training the people he'd begun to see as his replacements. After his own brush with death, Kenpachi had… mellowed out.
He'd finally met a foe he could not cut, a blow he could not withstand. Time itself. His thirst for blood had abated. His lust for battle had gone from a boil to a simmer.
Now that he had withdrawn from his position as Captain-Commander and finally abdicated his millennia-old struggle to keep the Gotei Thirteen united under one guidance and towards one purpose… Now that he'd finally admitted, as she'd had to, as the Royal Guard had had to, that they had erred and failed and the grim necessity of their duties had been setting them up for their fall… In that cave upon the mountains miles and miles from the Seireitei, did Shigekuni too, reflect on the past as she did? When he remembered the days recounted in that opera, the days of blood and glory, did he feel the same wistful fondness and squirming guilt as she did?
She would have to ask him, the next time she took the long walk there to bring him a bottle of sake.
But as she looked at Kenpachi bending an indulgent ear to the babbling of that other, younger Yachiru, heir to a name she had finally fully abandoned, and knew in his gentle demeanor that he was walking the long and winding road that led from the beast to the man…
Yes, she thought. The Arrancars were right.
There was hope for all of them.
The Hunter and the Hunted
Bonesider had been running for days now, anger in his heart, anger out of his heart, spreading through the seeds he had planted in his companions.
It wasn't fair. It had just been an accident of timing and place. When the Hidalguia had come to them in Hueco Mundo, they'd all been starving without hope of prey in sight. The bird-woman and her weak, so weak underlings (but the seeds of an army, he knew; soon there would be no safe place in the desert) had offered them respite from the hunger, safety in their ever-growing twilight city, the company of others of her kind. She had promised them a place among the soldiers, or the craftsmen, or the artists, as they wished it, just as the Dancers of the Salar de Luna had found before them. And his companions would have given in. They were ready to accept to her terms, to debase themselves and lose that gnawing, aching pain in the emptiness of one's heart that made them strong.
So he'd reached out with tendrils of wrath to the seeds he'd long ago planted in their bodies when they were asleep, and they had felt his fury and tried to tear the bird-woman apart. And that had been good.
Except of course they'd failed. She'd escaped, and now he and his companions, still mad with wrath, were on the run. Twice he'd left Hueco Mundo and come back to shake off pursuers. Now for the third time he entered the living world, knowing he had to stop and feed or else he would go mad: the hunger in his chest was like a yawning, freezing, screaming void.
Bonesider slithered into the human town, keeping his power low, snaking between alleyways. His companions skittered all around him, eyes burning bright red, tongues licking the air in search of the smell of a strong soul. He had to be careful; these days more and more humans could see his kind, and they now warned the others instead of just thinking they were mad. But with all his frenzied allies, no mere human could stop him…
And then the sky broke open a second time in one day, and he froze.
It wasn't the bird-woman. It wasn't even her master, the general of the Hidalguia. No, there in the sky stood a dozen men and women, some in black and some in white, sword-bearers all, and at their head one with a head of fiery red and one with electric blue hair.
No. It couldn't be. It wasn't fair. To think they would be working together, against him? It couldn't be real.
"So, capture or kill?" Abarai Renji said far above, scanning the city.
Grimmjow answered first by sniffing the air, then nodding to himself. "The leader has some kind of frenzy-inducing power. We take him down, the other Hollows will be all too happy to surrender and throw themselves at our mercy."
"And must we give it?" Renji said reluctantly.
"I guess so," Grimmjow said with a sigh. "But hey, bright side: we get the main prize."
"Hmph," Renji answered. "Alright, 6th Division, Sexta Squad, spread out and keep the secondary threats penned in. Grimmjow…"
"Race you to him," the Arrancar said with a wild grin, immediately diving with a kick towards the city below.
"You're on," Renji muttered, following suit as their soldiers scattered around.
This was about to be a very bad day for Bonesider the Hollow.
Field Archeology
"We are getting closer," warned the Hollow in hushed tones, casting glances left and right as they made their way through the caves.
"Hold on," Luppi said suddenly. He waved the lantern slowly in front of him, casting soft blue light on the ancient walls; where the light struck his face it illuminated a giddy expression, and the wide eyes of the very young child he kept cradled in his other arm.
"Do you see this?" he whispered. "Look at this script! This is older than the Ten Masked's - oh, right." He gave the toddler a dubious look. "You can't read."
His son returned to him a completely innocent expression.
"Well, at least there are pretty pictures. Look at them!" He moved the lantern about, directing the beam of light over ancient depictions of mountains, people underneath them, fish swimming underground.
"I must insist that we hurry," the Hollow guide said nervously, pushing his squamous shape through another tunnel entrance. "The caves are not safe."
"Fine, fine," Luppi said, hurrying along after him. The child giggled at the rocking motion, clutching tighter on his sleeve.
They passed into a greater room, one with many openings on tunnels running deeper into the rock, with a ceiling covered in stalactites. But it wasn't what drew Luppi's attention; that was the gigantic mural on the wall facing him, depicting what he was fairly sure would be the entire history of this place.
"Look!" he shouted excitedly. "Ren was correct! An entire underwater colony of Hollows was there centuries ago - this part depicts the flooding of the region, so the whole region must have been a lake, or perhaps even an inland sea! In Hueco Mundo!"
He turned to his toddler, grinning at him.
"I am going to copy the entire thing and make a study on it and I will dump it in Nemo's lap and watch her face as her theories regarding ancient water presence in the sand desert are proven completely and definitely wrong! Forever!"
"Agoo!" the child approved enthusiastically, trying his best to boop his father's nose with a clumsy finger.
"There is no time for this kind of tomfoolery," Luppi said seriously, "this is about real academic fighting."
He was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat, and turned towards the salamander-like Hollow who had guided them through, and who was now sitting on a prominent rock, the strange blue-glowing veins of his hide casting shadows throughout the room.
"Yes, yes, this is exactly what I was looking for," Luppi said impatiently, "you will have your reward, don't worry."
"Oh," the Hollow said in a low, cooing voice, "but I already do."
Sound in the upper galleries. Luppi looked up, and there - more Hollows, all of them in shape reminiscent of amphibians from the Living World, all of them bearing patterns of glowing veins. He paused, briefly surprised, and then exclaimed:
"Of course! Bioluminescence for dark environments! Semi-aquatic forms capable of surviving after the draught, unlike fish-like forms! You're the last survivor of the underwater settlement!"
"Yes," said the salamander, its cloying brackish reiatsu beginning to wax over the room, "and as I am sure you understand, the secret of our existence is paramount to the success of our hunts."
"Of course I under-" Luppi started, and then: "Wait. You mean this was a trap."
"Quite," said the leader as the amphibians were slowly descending towards their surrounded prey.
"Glowy!" the child said brightly, pointing at each of them in turn.
"Yes, yes, they are very glowy," Luppi said. "God. A betrayal. You're betraying me. That feels…"
The salamander tilted his head. "Painful?"
Luppi grinned very wide, with teeth that shone so brightly in the dark. "Nostalgic."
There was, to the Hollows' credit, a moment where they hesitated and tried to reassess the situation. That moment was too late, of course, because the name was already being spoken.
Then the child squealed in joy and clapped his hands as the terrible tentacled beast unfolded, one long leathery arm depositing him safely in a nook of the stone, and all the Hollows stared in horror as they found the entire room filled with the breadth and length of the beast, which spoke:
"The first one to kill one of his friends gets to live."
There was an hesitation, then a choice, quick and bloody.
Then the screaming started, and the child clapped happily.
Inter-Disciplinary Disputes
So few had been the times when Nemo had allowed herself to think about her dream.
She'd talked about it once, to Luppi. And a few times, in whispers, to Cirucci. But always the shadow of doom hung over their lives. It seemed such a silly thing to hang onto as a source of hope, when so much was at stake, for everyone who ever had and ever would live.
But now, in the peace that had come, she could finally let her soul breathe. She could finally reach out.
"NEMO!" came an ear-splitting shriek of anger from outside the room. The tailor spun around to see Apacci stomp into her classroom, spiked mohawk brisling with fury.
Students peeked up from their works, started to murmur, but Nemo raised a hand that silenced the whole room. Behind her, twenty souls of just as many ages and origins had been working on basic stitch-work using needles made of Hollow-bone and thread of spider-silk, a task which they would have found daunting a week ago, but were now confidently applying themselves to, under the guidance of Nemo and a short-haired Shinigami, one of the students of her first year who had stayed behind as an assistant.
But at that moment none of that seemed to matter as much as the angry witch standing in front of her with her head and arms slumped like a bull about to charge. Apacci was small, but notoriously more of a brawler than either of her sisters. That was to her disadvantage in this arena, of course - Nemo straightened her back, one side of her coat folded in her arm, looking imperiously at the intruder.
"You took. My. Hair."
Nemo cocked an eyebrow and made a side-glance to the class, prompting some laughter.
"Not my actual hair, obviously!" Apacci said angrily. "I had hair from that lion Adjuchas who attacked last month! I was going to use it for a spell of- of-" she started blushing and crossed her arms. "It doesn't matter! Give it back! I know you stole it!"
Nemo imitated her posture, but instead of looking petulant, it made her look stern. She of course had not stolen anything, and could not give back anything she did not possess in the first place. This was unbecoming of Apacci, and she made it known quite clearly.
"Like hell! You know, just- just because there are inexplicably two dozen Arrancars and Shinigami and god knows what else who want to take the time to learn how to make a freaking skirt and only a handful who want to learn actual flippin' magic doesn't entitle you to take my stuff for your own lessons!"
From Nemo's unfazed reaction to the cuss words and outdoors voice, it was clear that in her opinion their relative popularity had much to do with their respective approaches to teaching and interpersonal skills.
(Which was a filthy lie. The actual reason the Tres Bestias had only managed to gather a handful of students to learn the Way of the Witch [all of whom were extremely dedicated and quite talented] was because Brujeria was scary, complicated, and involved a lot of blood and viscerae, whereas La Maraña was clean, tidy, and involved a lot of transferable skills if you'd ever had to stitch up your own uniform to avoid your officer's wrath.)
(And the part of La Maraña that involved blood and viscerae was an advanced class that Nemo hadn't told anyone about yet.)
"I know it's you," Apacci said, narrowing her eyes.
Nemo tilted her head, quite curious to find out where such alleged knowledge might come from.
"Because… because…" Apacci stammered.
Nemo's expression suggested that perhaps Apacci might have been assuming Nemo had stolen something valuable from her as an act of revenge for some past-wrongdoing. Several of the students (several of whom had greying hair or had been Shinigami for decades; there was no age too old to be involved in the first step of the grand work of La Maraña) just put down their work completely to drink in the drama.
"Yeah, well, you were going to make that snake leather into boots."
Very nice, very fancy boots, with magical properties, one might have added, but one did not.
"Oh come off it. Sung-Sun made a whole-ass chimera! That's better than any crummy boot!"
Nemo only shrugged. She would be delighted to discuss the comparative merits of snake leather use in various kinds of magic, but she was teaching a class, and she hadn't seen Apacci's lion hair, and so she was expecting her to leave now.
"Fine," the witch grumbled, glaring daggers at the entire room. "But you haven't heard the last of this."
Nemo simply smiled and waved her hand daintily, and Apacci had no choice but to turn her heels and stomp her way back out of the room. When she was gone, Nemo sighed theatrically, closed the door, making all the while an exaggerated expression of shaking her head at the nonsense she had to put up with. Her students made varying expressions of sympathy and noises of reassurance.
In any case, now that she was reassured of their competence with silk-thread, it was time for their next lesson with a coarser material, and so next they would all be working with lion's hair.
College
Jotaro had been having a normal day.
Well, as normal as things ever went for Jotaro. He was, after all, the head of the University's Paranormal Committee, which meant he had to manage campus hauntings, ghost sightings, and ESP manifestations among students. It was a very official job, although his committee was typically understaffed and underfunded because, as most students lacked spiritual senses, the only proof that he was doing his job well was that nothing was happening at all.
But as normally as things could go for him, they did. The first thing Jotaro had been doing after the new year directions and introductions was check in on the Librarian, one of the most well-known ghosts on campus. Ever since he'd gained his spiritual senses and been appointed to his position, Jotaro had been slowly working with the Librarian to repair his 'precious tome,' a 17th century European manuscript that had been severely damaged in the flood that had taken the Librarian's life, and which was the anchor holding him onto this world against his will. Jotaro had expected that the work would be continued by his successor, and their successor after that, until hopefully in ten years the Librarian could be freed.
Then the Soul Delinquents had arrived.
There was no evidence that they were delinquents. Only that two of them (a boy and a girl) had ginger hair, and that the third one, also a girl, was some kind of karate freak. At first they appeared to be looking through the bookshelves for some kind of math textbook for the redhead girl, when the Librarian had been drawn to them. Before Jotaro could make any sense of what had happened, the three freshmen students had engaged the Librarian in a chat, then the ginger girl had conjured fairies which had magically restored the waterlogged book to its pristine status. As he stared at the scene utterly stunned, the boy repeatedly asked the Librarian if he was sure he wanted to move on, the Librarian had insisted on it while expressing profuse thanks, and the karate girl had somehow palm-slapped him out of existence. Or into his next existence. It was unclear to Jotaro.
So yes. Soul Delinquents.
Now Jotaro had a new job, one he'd assigned to himself: keeping track of these dangerous individuals. Perhaps, in the distant future, he might consider them as potential recruits for the Paranormal Committee… But right now he was afraid of even approaching him and telling them about it. What if they decided he knew too much from having seen them?! What if they decided somehow that he needed to go to the afterlife as well?
And on top of that, from listening to their conversations, Jotaro was growing more and more certain that these people were all dating each other, which had to fail some kind of morality clause in the university charter. He wasn't sure which one, but he would check. That kind of non-standard romantic dynamics belonged in romance comics, not on the serious campus of a serious university.
By 3pm, the true scope of the danger had become clear. The campus was rather large, and home to a handful of haunted places, which the trio had now all visited, acquainting themselves with the local ghosts and offering to do some favors for them - the red-head girl was always the most enthusiastic but clueless, the boy kept pretending to not want to have to deal with any of this and to just want a 'normal school year' but was clearly lying, and the karate girl was the actually grounded one who figured out how to help each ghost and kept a map of the campus updated with the location and name of each spirit.
It was obvious they were hoping to muscle in on Jotaro's turf and take away his role in the university. They were not Soul Delinquents. They were Soul Yakuza.
Thankfully, Jotaro was not without some power of his own.
Well, he was. But the Committee wasn't. Anna was a powerful psychokinetic able to move up to one pound of matter through the air at great speeds. Kyoshiro could read minds, provided he didn't move. Jun was a pyrokinetic who could set people's clothes on fire. Takeshi had a loyal ghost dog that could fight. He would challenge the Soul Yakuza and defeat them, for the honor and safety of the Paranormal Committee!
It was when he came to this firm resolution while spying on the trio having an afternoon snack in the park that he saw the sky open into a mouth of darkness, and from it descended the shadows of the harbingers of a new apocalypse, a shard of the night itself in the shape of a young woman, a woman made of lightning, a yuki-onna bearing a sword, a snake-ape-demon-man, and more, and Jotaro managed to hold it together through the sheer fatalism of seeing his death coming.
Then the harbingers started making fun of the tall ginger boy and pushing gifts and snacks in the hands of the two girls and telling them they couldn't escape getting a visit on their first day of university so easily, and at that point Jotaro elected to pass out.
Girl Talk
The pink-haired girl wandered through the aisles, watching all the beautiful clothes on display, the chatting, laughing people sifting through them. Brushing the threads of an elegant scarlet dress, exchanging a greeting with a customer.
There was a time when she craved being in such a place - not just being, but belonging. When she felt she belonged nowhere, she dreamed of this place more than any other. Not this place specifically, of course, but so many like it. And she'd come here time and again, with money borrowed or stolen, but it never felt right. Like something was missing.
She'd thought when she'd finally had it, she'd realize such a dream had been empty and vain. What can nice clothes do to fulfill one's soul? But maybe it wasn't the clothes. Maybe it was-
"Excuse me, young lady?"
She started out of her reverie, turning on her heels, and before she could see who had addressed her in such a sharp tone of voice something was thrust roughly into her arms. She took a step back, confused, and looked down at a bundle of expensive lacy tights in serious disarray. She looked up at the woman who'd spoken - from the curt tone and the phrase 'young lady,' she'd expected some older woman, but no, this girl couldn't have been a couple years older than her - although, judging by the cut and thread of her stylish black skirt and lacy black-and-white blouse, along with the flowered hat tilted at an angle on her head, quite a bit wealthier.
"...may I help you, miss…?" Riruka started.
"Yes. Yes you may," the young woman seethed. "These tights. They ripped."
"They. Ripped?" Riruka asked, slowly blinking.
"You work here, don't you?"
"Well, yes. Was there any kind of issue with the-" Riruka started, trying to find her bearings.
"They ripped! I just told you!" the woman said, tapping her heel on the ground.
"How did that happen?"
"Who cares how it happened? It shouldn't have! This is your fault," the woman said, "for selling me a, a… defective product!"
Riruka thought that was blowing the matter rather out of proportion, and that she certainly couldn't be held responsible for it, but she'd faced annoying customers before and wasn't about to let that show.
"I see," she said, polite and contrite-looking. "If this is your first visit, I'm happy to inform you that we have a no-question-asked policy on your first return, and if not, I will be happy to guide you through our exchange pro-"
"No!" the woman said, crossing her arms around her torso. "I want to be fully reimbursed!"
"For, ah, the tights," Riruka said, already dreading the answer.
"No. For everything. If these tights ripped so easily then how can be sure the rest of your merchandise isn't just as… as… cheap! What if I put them on and then in the middle of the street-"
"And you brought the other items with you," Riruka said, slowly and carefully. The woman scowled.
"What?"
"The items that you wish to return. You brought them here to be reimbursed. Like these tights."
"Well obviously not. I should get to keep them. As compensation for my trouble."
"Compensation for your…" Riruka paused, closing her eyes and furrowing her brow as she prepared to wage valiant battle against the headache rising from the depths of her treacherous brain. Already, a few customers were turning their heads curious as to the commotion. If she allowed this woman to damage the store's reputation…
Which, of course, meant being as nice as possible and complying with the woman's wishes and discussing this somewhere out of sight, not defeating her in the arena of logic, not proving her a fool in front of everybody. That was just an idle fancy.
"How did these tights rip again?" Riruka asked, looking at the silken lace of the tights (It was silk! And so soft!) and running a finger along the long tear.
"What do you care! They just did!"
Riruka slowly raised her head, but not to the woman's face - to her folded arms, and the hands that flexed their long, painted nails about.
"You did that. You don't know how to put on fragile tights with nails that long!" she blurted out despite herself. "You screwed up your own tights and now you want to put the blame on us!"
"How dare you! Nothing would have happened if you didn't sell bad merchandise-" the woman said, straightening her back and curling her hands into fist, fury in her eyes, but when Riruka saw her finally angry all concerns about impropriety and customer relations faded from her mind. Her mouth fell agape.
"It's you," she said. The woman frowned.
"What?"
"It's you! You're Ritsuko Nene! The Legendary Evil Witch! The Demon Lord of Convention Floors!"
There was a pause, then the woman's expression hardened into cold contempt.
"Well, I suppose if nothing else, it's nice to be recognized. Even if by such unseemly-"
"You threw a soda can at Aoi Yuuki at a cosplay convention!"
The Evil Witch's eyes widened, and she blurted out: "She copied my style!"
"Aoi Yuuki copied your style?" Riruka guffawed. "Get a grip, lady!"
A dead silence fell over the aisle, and the next two aisles around them, and the air laid heavy and trembling as if thick with static. Riruka knew what was coming next.
"I want to see your manager," the woman said cold as ice.
"You what?" Riruka said, eyes just as hard, standing ramrod-straight.
"I want. To see. Your manager."
Wind picked up in the aisle. The lightest of clothes on the racks were beginning to stir. A ceiling lamp flickered, then another. Slowly, Riruka's lips parted in a smile.
"My manager?"
"Your manager!" Ritsuko Nene bellowed, eyes wide, as strands of pink light began congealing out of the ground and coiling around the display mannequins in the nearby window.
A low, low chuckle rose in Riruka's throat. Nene, baffled and beginning to grow mildly concerned, took a step back. Flitting sparrows of rose-tinged energy danced above Riruka's shoulder as the girl slumped forward, a hearty cackle pouring out of her lips, and she cooed:
"Wouldn't you know? I got promoted yesterday."
She stood up, eyes gleaming, and every single clothing rack snapped to stare at Ritsuko Nene with non-existent faces, every mannequin creaked as they reached out with skinless fingers towards her, and Riruka's clothes billowed in the means of her own power.
"I AM THE MANAGER!"
The Witch screamed in terror.
…
"So anyway," Riruka said, popping open the cork of the bottle and pouring Esmeralda a glass of wine, "that's how I got fired. Turns out even a manager has limits to her powers."
Across the table, the Arrancar medic let out a long-suffering groan as she rubbed her forehead with both hands. Nemo, on the other hand, clearly found this absolutely hilarious.
"The day after you got promoted?" Esme asked. "Really?"
"Yeah…" Riruka sighed. "I was already planning how to spend my raise, too."
"Maybe if you go back and apologize and-"
"Never," Riruka said firmly. Esmeralda glared from behind her fingers.
Nemo nodded in approval. Life was too short to spend it apologizing it to people who destroyed good clothes.
"You know it, babe," Riruka said, pointing finger-guns at her friend.
"Don't encourage her," Esme said. "'Rika, don't you have any regrets?"
"As a matter of fact, this was the greatest day of my life. I sent the Devil of Clothing Stores running for her life. I am already a legend. My name is whispered with awe among the rabble of the fashion world."
"I can't believe it. How are you going to make rent?"
Riruka scanned her small, but cozy flat while sipping from her own glass of wine. Then she grinned.
"Won't be a problem. The owner of the store across the street has been trying to poach me for weeks. I already have an offer."
"There's no justice," Esmeralda said mournfully while Nemo clapped in approval.
"Aw, c'mon," Riruka said. "See, that's the thing you gotta understand, Esme. It took me a long time to appreciate that you were right, that I should stop just living off robbed ATMs and Yukio's family fortune. But for that I had to see that a mundane job, normie friends, that didn't have to be the end of everything good and a life sentence of boredom. Dokugamine Riruka might live a mundane life, but she will live it awesomely. And it will still involve magic now and then."
"You know what?" Esme said, shrugging and downing the bottom half of her wine glass, "That's honestly fair. I would be doing the same in your place. I suppose we can't all be," she gave a sidelong glance at Nemo, "princesses to the netherworld and mothers to a deity."
"Yeah, but a cute deity. She called me 'Rika'!"
Nemo beamed in obvious smug self-satisfaction.
"I call you 'Rika!" Esme said. "All the time!"
"Yeah but you're not an adorable toddler. Speaking of which, what are you doing lately? You were pretty busy for a while but things have… quieted down, yeah?"
Esmeralda nodded seriously. "It was hectic. Which is why I've been trying to convince Ryuken that if he really wants to take a break from all these wild shenanigans that keep happening around him, he shouldn't rely on emotional distance like he's been doing all these years - it's unhealthy and it doesn't work. He needs physical distance."
"Wait," Riruka said in sudden panic, "you aren't moving out, are you?"
"As if I could live without you," Esme said with a smirk. "No, I'm just trying to get Ryuken to buy a vacation house in Southern France. I've always wanted to visit there."
Nemo believed she'd been to France before. Ort it could have been Spain or Greece. One of these places with dry, sunny coasts and sugary pastries.
But Riruka wasn't paying attention to her. She was staring. Esme poured herself another glass and sipped it, humming to herself and looking carefully away from her friend.
"All these months of pestering me to learn to live a normal life, to get a real job, to stop relying on magic and my friend's wealth for everything, and you just go and get your sugar daddy boy toy-"
"(I don't think those two things are compatible,)" Esme mumbled behind her glass.
"-to buy you a house in France!" Riruka finished, wild-eyed and waving her arms about to signify the immensity of her outrage.
"...you can visit?" Esmeralda said tentatively, looking to Nemo for support, who raised her hands in a gesture of fearful neutrality. This appeared to mollify her slightly, but only slightly.
"That's just so unfair," Riruka said, pouting now.
Esme relaxed and swirled her glass, taking another sip. Then a mischievous glint flashed in her eyes. "Yes, well, you see, 'Rika…" She slowly leaned across the table, staring her friend in the eye. "The difference between you and me is, you gotta make a living..." She grinned like a hateful goblin. "...while I'm already dead."
There was a noise of outrage, and then a scream of panic as Riruka decided the only appropriate answer was to spill her glass of wine on her friend's dress.
The Bride
And at last. At last the day was there.
It was so simple and yet so complex. The culmination of so much effort, of so much patience waiting for the right day, when there was no longer a fire to put out immediately, a flood to stem, a rend to mend in the world around them. Waiting for the stars to align for everyone who mattered to be there.
Nemo Elcorbuzier watched herself in the mirror, and she had never been so proud of her work. She twirled in her white dress, adjusted the coiffe that fit perfectly behind her horns, and sighed in contentment.
"This is so not how it's supposed to work," Esmeralda said ruefully.
Nemo turned around to give her a quizzical look.
"You are supposed to be anxious. Wedding days are where you're all fussy and nervous and afraid something will go wrong and your friends reassure you and help take care of things for you! You're not supposed to be looking yourself in the mirror and nod and think 'yeah, I did a bang-up job!'"
Nemo pouted. Hadn't she done a bang-up job?
"Well obviously yes." Esme said sighed. "It's perfect. Your dress is perfect. And I checked with Jackelton, the food will be perfect. And I peeked over Antenor's notes and talked to the Coro, the entertainment will be perfect. This will be the greatest day in Hueco Mundo since the one when you saved the world."
Nemo cocked an eyebrow. 'Since'?
"Alright, Princess Beautiful, let's not get ahead of ourselves. You getting married is great, but it does not top cancelling the apocalypse."
Nemo made a reluctant expression.
"You're turning into your fiancée," Esme warned. "I bet if I was over there I'd find that she is stressing the hell out the way I expected you would be."
Nemo looked at herself in the mirror again, patted her dress, and turned to look at Esmeralda. For a moment, that facade of single-minded competence dropped - not replaced by fear or anxiety, exactly, but by… vulnerability.
"'You'll knock it out of the park," Esmeralda said, catching her white-gloved hand and squeezing it gently. "Do you remember that day?"
Nemo tilted her head. The first day they'd met hadn't been anything remarkable at the time.
"No, not that one…" Esmeralda held her hand, thoughtful. "The one I gave you what I thought would be some unimportant errand, and sent you to Barragan. Do you ever think about how everything could have been different, if I hadn't-"
emo smiled and squeezed back, lifting Esmeralda's hand to her chest. It wasn't Esme who had chosen to go to Barragan that day. There were so many little tasks, all of them seemingly of so little importance, and it was her who'd picked one. Sometimes… yes… she did wonder. But wondering wouldn't change anything. Nor even would peering into the infinite possibilities of other worlds and lives, as she once had done.
This was reality. This was their world. And there was no one Nemo could be more thankful towards than Esmeralda, for being her first friend, and for innocently and unknowingly nudging her onto the path that would be hers.
It was she, after all, who had told her the Privaron Cirucci needed a Numero to fetch something for her one bright morning.
Esme smiled, and let go off her hand.
"You're welcome, Princess," she said with a smile. "Now go and knock them dead."
Nemo turned around - then at the last moment changed her mind, turned back, and squeezed Esme into a hug.
Then Esme shoved her while laughing, opened the door of the dressing room, and Nemo walked into the light.
There, before that altar, dressed in such beautiful black and purple, a dress she had never seen before because it was Alphonse's work and not her own, a surprise for her, she was waiting, her face as bright and beautiful as the sun.
Nemo took her first step towards the woman she loved and the rest of her life.
God
God stood at the peak of the world, and watched over the breadth of Her domain.
God in this case being a very young child, and the peak of her world being the highest floor of her mothers' palace, the breadth of her domain stretched out a little further out than the farming fields outside and into a bit of the Midnight Woods, but still. She was a child, and to her, such a vista seemed to encompass the ends of the Earth itself.
Not that she'd ever been to Earth proper. Mommy had promised it would be her next birthday gift, and she was very very eager to get there. She tried scrunching her eyebrows very hard to make time pass faster, but mother had told her it didn't work that way and that the last person who had made time go very fast had turned into a skeleton. That seemed very scary to Amity, who considered with deep horror that a skeleton did not have a tongue and so could not taste delicious pastries. Pastries were a very important divine concern in these early days.
Nonetheless, Amity had taken a moment away from culinary concerns to contemplate the world from the vantage point of the throne room. The Half-Sun, sibling to the Laughing Moon, was shining in its fullness high in the sky, and delightful rays of light and warmth tickled Amity's skin. She basked in it, even as she wondered just how far the Midnight Woods reached, and whether there were still great deserts of white sand beyond them. There was so much to discover in the world, as soon as she could run properly so she could cross the forest very fast like all the grown-ups did. She could walk just fine, thank you very much, but when she tried running she usually tripped on her feet and bumped her face into the ground.
I could show you.
"Iss no fun," Amity said authoritatively to the empty room. She didn't want to be shown the places like in a picture book, picture books were things for bedtime and for her mothers to do (or sometimes Uncle Luppi, who had the really good stories).
All of this is yours. This world. These people. The very notion of existence itself.
"Iss not!" Amity protested loudly. "Iss for erryone!"
Because you let it be. They live by your kindness. They could die by your wrath. I could show you how to claim it all.
"Can you make me a cupcake?" Amity asked, suddenly curious.
...
I cannot.
"See?" she said with a triumphantly smug smile, crossing her arms in front of her torso. "Thass because you're just a rock in my belly!"
But I could show you how to make a cupcake.
Suddenly everything was thrown into disarray; Amity's eyes went wide, and she craned her neck to look down at her belly button. "You could?!"
That power, as with all power in existence, could be yours. You only have to make it yourself.
"You're much nicer 'an I thought!" God exclaimed, and clapped Her hands.
Then God turned around, took off at a running pace, tripped, faceplanted into the ground, powered through the very mild pain, got up, ran off again, and turned the corner of the door to shout into the inside of the palace:
"Mommy! Mommy! Me and my belly-rock are gonna make a cupcake!"
And thus began the first age of kitchen wonders.
...
Nobody
The beach was nice and quiet. The sun shined down with all its warmth. It was a weather where you could barely wear a shirt if it was unbuttoned. A weather to just dive into the clear blue waves, come out all covered in salt, and recline in your chair with a drink in hand. And that was exactly what he was doing.
The man raised a hand, waving it about in the air. There was no response.
"Aw, c'mon!" he exclaimed, firmly refusing to get up from his long chair where he basked in the sun like some kind of reptile. "I'm dying here!"
"You can use words!" the woman exclaimed from the counter. Her bar was a small thing - not an actual building, just enough of a roof to cover the wares and counter. It usually served a few clients during this season, although never more than a handful at a time; the remote beach was one she'd picked for its balance of tranquility and still-making-enough-money-to-live. Right now, though, the only guy around was This Asshole.
"You know exactly what I want!" This Asshole exclaimed. He actually sounded pained.
"Yeah, but you're a big boy, and I'm the owner, not some barmaid!" Alice shouted back, refusing to move from her counter just like he did from his chair. "You can get off your ass and get your Long Island here at the bar!"
"This is unbelievably poor customer service, you know. Especially considering."
"Considering what," Alice said, leaning over the counter dangerously, even though he couldn't see her with his head turned. Well, he couldn't have seen her regardless.
"I seem to recall I saved your life, and business, from a rampaging monster the other day," he said with what sounded like mild offense.
"Mmhm," Alice said, "and that monster was a ghost, so nobody would know that I owe you anything if I decided to cut you off."
"You slay my heart," he said pitifully, putting a hand on the long, wide scar running down his chest. "Frankly, you remind me of a woman I know."
"Yeah? Did she also kick you out of her place when you were being a dick until you came back begging with puppy eyes?"
"I mean, yes, that is absolutely a thing that she did, all the time."
"Sounds like she didn't have any better sense than me," Alice said, shaking her head as she wiped the counter.
"Alright, how about this," This Asshole said. "You bring me that drink - which I will pay for, obviously, we're only negotiating who of us has to walk five yards for that bit of barter, you harpy, and I'll tell you a story."
"A story, uh?" Alice tapped her cheek thoughtfully. "I mean, your stories are pretty good, but they're also all obviously fake."
"I assure you this one is one hundo percent true. I was there for it. I lived it, even."
"Alright," she said with a sigh, beginning to mix the expensive cocktail, "I'll bite."
After a moment, she poured the mixture into a tall glass, added the flourishes and the straw, and walked over to the sole occupied chair. She'd have minded the grin he gave her when she arrived and held out the drink for him, but obviously it had nothing to do with the rather sparse outfit she wore to mitigate the heat: when he tilted down his shades and opened his ever-closed eyes, they were just the same as the first time she'd sawn them - milky-white but for faint shadows of a darkness that was the last thing he'd ever seen.
"This better be good," she said, holding onto the drink for just a moment before letting him pull it to his chest and sit up.
"Babe," said the silver-haired man, "it's the story of how I helped save the universe."
Words
The Princess Sovereign of Hueco Mundo, Regent of Heaven, Cirucci Thunderwitch stared into the eyes of her deadliest adversary so far.
Her daughter Amity Thunderwish clapped her chubby toddler hands with a giggle. "Foo! Foo!"
"Food," Cirucci said imperiously, raising the spoon full of purée to her child's face. "Food. With a d. Food."
"Foo!" Amity said cheerfully, clumsily grabbing at the spoon and shoving it into her mouth.
Cirucci clasped her hand and rested her forehead against the edge, sighing. "Getting there. We are. Getting there."
Her treacherous fiancée, the trickster queen of shadows, the malicious hussie Nemo was sitting nearby, completely indifferent to her struggle. She had taken to eating some of the jars of purée herself. According to her, it was perfectly delicious food.
"Yeah," Cirucci said scornfully, "you just sit there while I try to teach our daughter language, you… you little demon!"
Nemo shrugged, then snapped her fingers. Amity turned her head (spoon still firmly stuck inside her mouth) with immediate attention, and Nemo tilted her thumb up and down at her own mouth.
"Gah!" Amity said, pulling the spoon out of her mouth with a pop and waving it about, then making a jabbing motion of her fist up and down at her mouth.
Nemo gave her lover a smirk. Cirucci was trying to teach Amity to speak, which wasn't the same as 'language.' She and Amity understood each other perfectly well.
Cirucci furrowed her brow. "You're cheating!"
Nemo stuck out her tongue.
"No, you are! She made the gesture with the hand, but she didn't stick out her thumb! How is that any different from mangling 'food' into 'foo'?"
Nemo looked up at the ceiling, making a whistling motion with her lips and blithefully ignoring Cirucci's burning glare.
"Okay, well, jar's done anyway," she said dejectedly, pushing it aside. "Let's try something else. Amy darling?"
Amity turned back to her, clapping her little hands (it was adorable, which Cirucci did her best to ignore). Her mother took a deep breath, then pointed a finger at her chest.
"Mother," she said, enunciating precisely.
"Ma-ma!" Amity babbled cheerfully.
"Mo-ther."
"Ma! Ma!"
"Mo. Ther."
"Mama!"
Cirucci sighed wearily, then opted for a change of tactics. She pointed a finger at Nemo.
"Mommy," she said simply.
"Ma-ma?" Amity answered, puzzled.
"No, mommy."
"No-ma-ma!"
"Amity, pay attention," Cirucci said seriously, and then pointing to herself and Nemo in sequence: "Mother. Mommy. Mother. Mommy."
"Ma-ma-ma-ma!" the toddler cried happily, smacking her hands together and missing half the time.
"I am your mother, and she is your mommy," Cirucci said, patiently. "Do you understand?" She pointed at Nemo again: "Mommy…" And then to herself. "Mother?"
Amity looked at her, and this time there was a moment of studious silence. The child looked at her with something that looked almost like concentration, and her heart started beating faster. Finally Amity opened her mouth and:
"Pa-pa?"
"Absolutely not."
In the corner, Nemo was rolling over on her bench, her laughter all the more annoying for being completely silent.
"I'd like to see you try it," Cirucci said, crossing her arms and pouting.
After a while, she even got an answer: Nemo's laughter died down, and the shorter woman sat up, brushed her skirt, and walked over to sit down next to their daughter. Amity waved her tubby arms in her direction hoping it was hug time, but Nemo raised a finger to call for attention and Amity lowered her arms (the start of a pout on her lip reminding Nemo of her dearest fiancée's own expression, and she had to repress another burst of laughter).
Nemo tapped her plexus, cleared her throat, made a few inhales. The weird sounds and gestures quickly captured Amity's complete attention, and when Nemo started waving her hand around, two little eyes were tracking her attentively.
Nemo reached up, towards the shadow in the upper corner of the room where the sun didn't reach, and pulled down a figment of darkness. She cradled it in her hands, molded it like clay, and when she opened them, a gentle shadowy figure, artfully painted from black, grey and white, fluttered between them; Amity's mouth opened on a 'aaaw.' Nemo said, her voice deep:
"Moth."
"Moff," Amity whispered.
Then Nemo let the shadowy insect flutter over to Cirucci, whose expression had softened into curiosity; it circled around her head, and Nemo said:
"Mother."
Amity furrowed her little brows. "Mo...ffa?"
Nemo smiled warmly and nodded her head. She waved the moth back over, and it began to circle her, and Cirucci's eyes suddenly widened and she started:
"Don't you dare-"
Nemo pointed to her chest, leaning over towards her daughter, and in a conspiratorial tone said:
"Mothest."
"Moffast!"
The scream of indignation that followed struck ten birds out of the sky and turned the morning sky overcast.
But it was worth it.
***
In Memoriam
The Wolf-Captain sat on his folded knees, slowly going through the motions of some ritual Nemo had never seen before. Lighting incense and pouring libations before the empty grave which stood for Tousen's grave, in a grove at the heart of the dark woods.
It was a curious thing to see. The powers of the Shinigami were strange and abstract, but many of the Arrancars had such an organic hue to their powers that it was easy to think of themselves as animals - Grimmjow the panther, wild and ferocious; Luppi the octopus-anemone-squid thing, elusive and many-handed. Nemo, the moth drawn to the flame. And yet all of them ultimately bore human faces released from their old masks.
Captain Komamura was a wolf in the most literal sense. He stood over two meters tall of brown fur, with a mouth full of fangs and whiskers bristling in the wind. She wondered where he'd come from, why he had such a peculiar shape, one unlike any other she'd seen before.
Then he cleared his throat and she snapped to attention. She was standing straight, hands folded in her lap, wearing a dark dress and overcoat, a mourning attendant. But she'd barely heard him speak. It felt odd to be alone in his company.
"They tell me…" he said, and his voice was softer than she'd expected from such a mouth, "that you were the one who changed his mind."
She makes an awkward gesture. She doesn't like to think of it that way. Nothing she could have signed or said would have made a difference if, at heart, Tousen hadn't been willing to listen.
"He always was good at that, it is true," Komamura mused. After a while, he asks: "Can you tell me about him?"
Again, she makes that gesture of awkwardness, half a shrug, half a head-tilt. He's the one who knew Tousen for decades; he would know far more than she.
"I only knew him until the day of his be… of his escape. When all I thought I knew about him came crashing down. I never had a chance to see him again, until… Until."
She nods slowly, stepping a little closer to the grave. There, a simple slab of black stone, smooth but for the engraving of his name - Kaname Tousen. It is not carved, but embossed, and the stone dark enough that it is difficult to read with the eyes; it invites one to sit and touch the outline of the words with their hand.
She tells the tale of a man in a perpetual search for the meaning of justice. A man who doubted, who inquired, who fought to have more than the false, shallow answers doled out by others. A man who erred, a man who hurt others, a man who had many regrets, chief among which that he might never meet his old friend again and tell him he was sorry. A blind man who in the end had found his clarity, and died trying to open another's eyes.
Komamura stays silent for a moment, watching the gravestone.
"It is odd," he finally says. "The man I knew was one of perfect clarity, of utmost purpose, a naked blade set against injustice."
She is not sure what to say. Perhaps he changed in the dark, afraid to let his friend see his doubts. Perhaps he wanted to appear strong for those who relied upon him, until that strength turned sour. She does not know. There will always be a shadow in their understanding of a man whose existence seemed cut in two halves.
But she knows one thing: that she would like to hear the Captain's side of that story. To know the man Tousen was before he came to Las Noches a dark, lurking presence who might have killed her, before becoming an unlikely friend - for too short a time. She would like to get to know him as he had once been.
Komamura nods, thoughtful.
"If it is alright with you, I intend to ask to be made the ambassador to your world. I, too, should like to get to know those strange people we thought to be monsters and who in the end turned my friend back to the side of righteousness."
She hesitates, surprised by the suggestion, and then smiles.
She would very much like that.
***
The Spider
The Arrancars gathered in the gallery as soon as they heard the jingling of the bells. They lived in rough houses dug into the side of a cliff, and from this vantage point they could see it come from afar - the spider, enormous in size, its legs raising plumes of sand as it raced across the dunes. It would be a horrifying sight, were it not for the jovial expression of its mask.
They cheered and clapped as the vast beast slid to a stop with a flourish of its forelimbs, and the two dozen or so inhabitants of the small settlement came rushing down to meet him. There was much greeting and congratulating, as the spider had added bright new silver bells to its apparel, tied to a string that ran across its thorax and abdomen, making a delightful sound every time it moved. The Arrancars were already producing gifts of fermented nectar and supplies they were hoping to trade with another village, when a voice interrupted them.
"Enough! Enough, for God's sake, you prattling lot!"
The Arrancars took a step back, looking curiously at the Spider's passenger; the old man with the beard so long he'd tied it around his waist climbed down clumsily, dusting off his stained uniform, and gave everyone a dubious glare.
"What is this," he said dejectedly, kicking at the sand. "You haven't even swept the area!"
"We, uh, didn't know we would have to do this," muttered the eldest of the villagers.
"Yes, it is growing quite obvious that you don't know anything," Ren mumbled, scratching his beard.
"Show some patience," the Spider said, chuckling. "They are as new to this as you once were."
"Yes, well, at least I didn't have to put up with myself back then. Alright, someone younger and sprightlier fetch the burlap sacks above."
A couple of the villagers immediately rushed to take down the supplies as ordered, while others sheepishly started to sweep away the sand in an area below their home cliff; thankfully it was not very deep in this area, and soon they hit the hard ground beneath - not bedrock, but not hospitable by any means.
"This," Ren said, still sounding angry at no one and everyone at the same time, "is soil." He pulled a rope from around one of the sacks, and all the Arrancars gawked and marveled at the rich, moist, black earth within. "Without it, nothing grows. It is now your most valuable resource. And these," he added, opening a small pouch, "are seeds. I also have a couple of uprooted sprouts that will need quick planting… No, you damned child, do not touch it!"
A smaller Arrancar darted away in fright from the swatting hand of Ren, who scanned the crown, glowering at all in turn.
"No one. Touch. Anything. Until I am done explaining."
The entire village nodded frantically, too afraid to open their mouths to even say 'yes' when confronted with the deadly gaze of that old sage who held the key to life in the wastes.
It was the first time Ren ever felt like he had authority over anyone. And what was he getting out of it? He couldn't even revel in it anymore.
Truly hope was the most disgusting and irrational of emotions, and he was cursed to be feeling it.
***
Opera
The long-awaited day had finally come. The fabled ones had come from their distant world on a path of light, all their instruments gathered with them, and entered into Soul Society, and now the Shinigami awaited in disbelief and bated breaths.
The Coro Nocturno had come to perform for the Seireitei.
Half of the Great Noble Families had not shown up; they were staging a protest after what they saw as the latest in a long string of indignities, the Coro Nocturno's insistence that a full third of the seats in the prestigious Kuchiki Theatre be reserved for the downtrodden of the Rukongai to attend free of charge, with the other two third evenly split between the Noble Families (attending at their own expense) and the Gotei Thirteen (with poorer officers attending at the largesse of their Captains).
Unohana had made no remark that considering how many more souls still dwelt in the Rukongai compared to the Thirteen Squads and the Noble Families, a division by third still left the upper class of Soul Society represented in very favorable numbers. The precipitous fall of the nobility's prestige following the near-end of the world brought her no small amount of amusement. She'd overheard several of those nobles who did attend make snide comments as to the lower class's inability to appreciate such a fine and sophisticated art as opera, which made her laugh out loud when it turned out that the Coro's opening act was a rather bawdy, joke-a-sentence musical play entitled 'The Dispute of the Moth and the Squid' featuring an extended argument between two consorts about which of them was the better lover to their respective princely spouses, featuring veiled allusions to practices Unohana had only ever heard of in the kind of colorful illustrated books that were preserved in the 'reserved area' of any reputable house. (As Kenpachi was in attendance sitting next to her, she'd been concerned about young Yachiru being exposed to such rowdy topics; but as it turned out, Kenpachi was just as clueless about the topic as his lieutenant, and her insistent request for him to 'explain the joke' only returned his haphazard guesses as to how the music was probably referring to weird sports or exotic foods found only in Hueco Mundo).
And now finally came the moment she'd waited for. After an intermission and the darkening of the lights allowed the last of the uproarious laughter to die out and the crowd to settle in for the long haul, the curtains opened on the first line sung by a strange, caterpillar-like Arrancar, and when she heard her own name sung so beautifully, Unohana could not help but shiver.
The tale of Barragan's Chevauchée was every bit as powerful as she'd hoped. It was as if long-buried memories were pulled out of their souls and laid down onto the stage for her to revisit, and it was sung with such a poignant, epic tone than the reality of the moments she'd lived felt sublimated into something greater and more moving. Many details were wrong, some were embellished, some were understated compared to how much they'd mattered at the time, but too much, far too much of it rang true. How ever had they heard of poor, doomed Jirei?
Even the… interference didn't bother her. She'd asked Kenpachi if she was sure Yachiru would stand sitting in one place listening to music for this long, and he'd shrugged and said it was fine, but of course it took about ten minutes into the opera for the pink-haired girl to start whispering question after question, but it was charming to hear this child so vividly curious about things she didn't know the woman sitting next to her had lived.
It was strange seeing them as they were now. This lean, wiry old man, his collection of scars finally creased by wrinkles, his grey hair worn in several long braids topped by bells, sitting next to this hyperactive and precocious child. One would expect Yachiru's mile-a-minute attitude to bother him, but it did no more than before Kenpachi's preternatural ageing; only now he had more of a wistful, attentive affect to his patience.
Unohana had met enough thousand-year old fools and enough ten-year old sages to know that age did not bring wisdom. What it brought was something different - limits. The necessity of confronting how far the flesh will go, and where it will go no farther. After first encountering Barragan five hundred years ago, Yamamoto had grown more withdrawn, spending less and less time in the field and more training the people he'd begun to see as his replacements. After his own brush with death, Kenpachi had… mellowed out.
He'd finally met a foe he could not cut, a blow he could not withstand. Time itself. His thirst for blood had abated. His lust for battle had gone from a boil to a simmer.
Now that he had withdrawn from his position as Captain-Commander and finally abdicated his millennia-old struggle to keep the Gotei Thirteen united under one guidance and towards one purpose… Now that he'd finally admitted, as she'd had to, as the Royal Guard had had to, that they had erred and failed and the grim necessity of their duties had been setting them up for their fall… In that cave upon the mountains miles and miles from the Seireitei, did Shigekuni too, reflect on the past as she did? When he remembered the days recounted in that opera, the days of blood and glory, did he feel the same wistful fondness and squirming guilt as she did?
She would have to ask him, the next time she took the long walk there to bring him a bottle of sake.
But as she looked at Kenpachi bending an indulgent ear to the babbling of that other, younger Yachiru, heir to a name she had finally fully abandoned, and knew in his gentle demeanor that he was walking the long and winding road that led from the beast to the man…
Yes, she thought. The Arrancars were right.
There was hope for all of them.
***
The Hunter and the Hunted
Bonesider had been running for days now, anger in his heart, anger out of his heart, spreading through the seeds he had planted in his companions.
It wasn't fair. It had just been an accident of timing and place. When the Hidalguia had come to them in Hueco Mundo, they'd all been starving without hope of prey in sight. The bird-woman and her weak, so weak underlings (but the seeds of an army, he knew; soon there would be no safe place in the desert) had offered them respite from the hunger, safety in their ever-growing twilight city, the company of others of her kind. She had promised them a place among the soldiers, or the craftsmen, or the artists, as they wished it, just as the Dancers of the Salar de Luna had found before them. And his companions would have given in. They were ready to accept to her terms, to debase themselves and lose that gnawing, aching pain in the emptiness of one's heart that made them strong.
So he'd reached out with tendrils of wrath to the seeds he'd long ago planted in their bodies when they were asleep, and they had felt his fury and tried to tear the bird-woman apart. And that had been good.
Except of course they'd failed. She'd escaped, and now he and his companions, still mad with wrath, were on the run. Twice he'd left Hueco Mundo and come back to shake off pursuers. Now for the third time he entered the living world, knowing he had to stop and feed or else he would go mad: the hunger in his chest was like a yawning, freezing, screaming void.
Bonesider slithered into the human town, keeping his power low, snaking between alleyways. His companions skittered all around him, eyes burning bright red, tongues licking the air in search of the smell of a strong soul. He had to be careful; these days more and more humans could see his kind, and they now warned the others instead of just thinking they were mad. But with all his frenzied allies, no mere human could stop him…
And then the sky broke open a second time in one day, and he froze.
It wasn't the bird-woman. It wasn't even her master, the general of the Hidalguia. No, there in the sky stood a dozen men and women, some in black and some in white, sword-bearers all, and at their head one with a head of fiery red and one with electric blue hair.
No. It couldn't be. It wasn't fair. To think they would be working together, against him? It couldn't be real.
"So, capture or kill?" Abarai Renji said far above, scanning the city.
Grimmjow answered first by sniffing the air, then nodding to himself. "The leader has some kind of frenzy-inducing power. We take him down, the other Hollows will be all too happy to surrender and throw themselves at our mercy."
"And must we give it?" Renji said reluctantly.
"I guess so," Grimmjow said with a sigh. "But hey, bright side: we get the main prize."
"Hmph," Renji answered. "Alright, 6th Division, Sexta Squad, spread out and keep the secondary threats penned in. Grimmjow…"
"Race you to him," the Arrancar said with a wild grin, immediately diving with a kick towards the city below.
"You're on," Renji muttered, following suit as their soldiers scattered around.
This was about to be a very bad day for Bonesider the Hollow.
***
Field Archeology
"We are getting closer," warned the Hollow in hushed tones, casting glances left and right as they made their way through the caves.
"Hold on," Luppi said suddenly. He waved the lantern slowly in front of him, casting soft blue light on the ancient walls; where the light struck his face it illuminated a giddy expression, and the wide eyes of the very young child he kept cradled in his other arm.
"Do you see this?" he whispered. "Look at this script! This is older than the Ten Masked's - oh, right." He gave the toddler a dubious look. "You can't read."
His son returned to him a completely innocent expression.
"Well, at least there are pretty pictures. Look at them!" He moved the lantern about, directing the beam of light over ancient depictions of mountains, people underneath them, fish swimming underground.
"I must insist that we hurry," the Hollow guide said nervously, pushing his squamous shape through another tunnel entrance. "The caves are not safe."
"Fine, fine," Luppi said, hurrying along after him. The child giggled at the rocking motion, clutching tighter on his sleeve.
They passed into a greater room, one with many openings on tunnels running deeper into the rock, with a ceiling covered in stalactites. But it wasn't what drew Luppi's attention; that was the gigantic mural on the wall facing him, depicting what he was fairly sure would be the entire history of this place.
"Look!" he shouted excitedly. "Ren was correct! An entire underwater colony of Hollows was there centuries ago - this part depicts the flooding of the region, so the whole region must have been a lake, or perhaps even an inland sea! In Hueco Mundo!"
He turned to his toddler, grinning at him.
"I am going to copy the entire thing and make a study on it and I will dump it in Nemo's lap and watch her face as her theories regarding ancient water presence in the sand desert are proven completely and definitely wrong! Forever!"
"Agoo!" the child approved enthusiastically, trying his best to boop his father's nose with a clumsy finger.
"There is no time for this kind of tomfoolery," Luppi said seriously, "this is about real academic fighting."
He was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat, and turned towards the salamander-like Hollow who had guided them through, and who was now sitting on a prominent rock, the strange blue-glowing veins of his hide casting shadows throughout the room.
"Yes, yes, this is exactly what I was looking for," Luppi said impatiently, "you will have your reward, don't worry."
"Oh," the Hollow said in a low, cooing voice, "but I already do."
Sound in the upper galleries. Luppi looked up, and there - more Hollows, all of them in shape reminiscent of amphibians from the Living World, all of them bearing patterns of glowing veins. He paused, briefly surprised, and then exclaimed:
"Of course! Bioluminescence for dark environments! Semi-aquatic forms capable of surviving after the draught, unlike fish-like forms! You're the last survivor of the underwater settlement!"
"Yes," said the salamander, its cloying brackish reiatsu beginning to wax over the room, "and as I am sure you understand, the secret of our existence is paramount to the success of our hunts."
"Of course I under-" Luppi started, and then: "Wait. You mean this was a trap."
"Quite," said the leader as the amphibians were slowly descending towards their surrounded prey.
"Glowy!" the child said brightly, pointing at each of them in turn.
"Yes, yes, they are very glowy," Luppi said. "God. A betrayal. You're betraying me. That feels…"
The salamander tilted his head. "Painful?"
Luppi grinned very wide, with teeth that shone so brightly in the dark. "Nostalgic."
There was, to the Hollows' credit, a moment where they hesitated and tried to reassess the situation. That moment was too late, of course, because the name was already being spoken.
Then the child squealed in joy and clapped his hands as the terrible tentacled beast unfolded, one long leathery arm depositing him safely in a nook of the stone, and all the Hollows stared in horror as they found the entire room filled with the breadth and length of the beast, which spoke:
"The first one to kill one of his friends gets to live."
There was an hesitation, then a choice, quick and bloody.
Then the screaming started, and the child clapped happily.
***
Inter-Disciplinary Disputes
So few had been the times when Nemo had allowed herself to think about her dream.
She'd talked about it once, to Luppi. And a few times, in whispers, to Cirucci. But always the shadow of doom hung over their lives. It seemed such a silly thing to hang onto as a source of hope, when so much was at stake, for everyone who ever had and ever would live.
But now, in the peace that had come, she could finally let her soul breathe. She could finally reach out.
"NEMO!" came an ear-splitting shriek of anger from outside the room. The tailor spun around to see Apacci stomp into her classroom, spiked mohawk brisling with fury.
Students peeked up from their works, started to murmur, but Nemo raised a hand that silenced the whole room. Behind her, twenty souls of just as many ages and origins had been working on basic stitch-work using needles made of Hollow-bone and thread of spider-silk, a task which they would have found daunting a week ago, but were now confidently applying themselves to, under the guidance of Nemo and a short-haired Shinigami, one of the students of her first year who had stayed behind as an assistant.
But at that moment none of that seemed to matter as much as the angry witch standing in front of her with her head and arms slumped like a bull about to charge. Apacci was small, but notoriously more of a brawler than either of her sisters. That was to her disadvantage in this arena, of course - Nemo straightened her back, one side of her coat folded in her arm, looking imperiously at the intruder.
"You took. My. Hair."
Nemo cocked an eyebrow and made a side-glance to the class, prompting some laughter.
"Not my actual hair, obviously!" Apacci said angrily. "I had hair from that lion Adjuchas who attacked last month! I was going to use it for a spell of- of-" she started blushing and crossed her arms. "It doesn't matter! Give it back! I know you stole it!"
Nemo imitated her posture, but instead of looking petulant, it made her look stern. She of course had not stolen anything, and could not give back anything she did not possess in the first place. This was unbecoming of Apacci, and she made it known quite clearly.
"Like hell! You know, just- just because there are inexplicably two dozen Arrancars and Shinigami and god knows what else who want to take the time to learn how to make a freaking skirt and only a handful who want to learn actual flippin' magic doesn't entitle you to take my stuff for your own lessons!"
From Nemo's unfazed reaction to the cuss words and outdoors voice, it was clear that in her opinion their relative popularity had much to do with their respective approaches to teaching and interpersonal skills.
(Which was a filthy lie. The actual reason the Tres Bestias had only managed to gather a handful of students to learn the Way of the Witch [all of whom were extremely dedicated and quite talented] was because Brujeria was scary, complicated, and involved a lot of blood and viscerae, whereas La Maraña was clean, tidy, and involved a lot of transferable skills if you'd ever had to stitch up your own uniform to avoid your officer's wrath.)
(And the part of La Maraña that involved blood and viscerae was an advanced class that Nemo hadn't told anyone about yet.)
"I know it's you," Apacci said, narrowing her eyes.
Nemo tilted her head, quite curious to find out where such alleged knowledge might come from.
"Because… because…" Apacci stammered.
Nemo's expression suggested that perhaps Apacci might have been assuming Nemo had stolen something valuable from her as an act of revenge for some past-wrongdoing. Several of the students (several of whom had greying hair or had been Shinigami for decades; there was no age too old to be involved in the first step of the grand work of La Maraña) just put down their work completely to drink in the drama.
"Yeah, well, you were going to make that snake leather into boots."
Very nice, very fancy boots, with magical properties, one might have added, but one did not.
"Oh come off it. Sung-Sun made a whole-ass chimera! That's better than any crummy boot!"
Nemo only shrugged. She would be delighted to discuss the comparative merits of snake leather use in various kinds of magic, but she was teaching a class, and she hadn't seen Apacci's lion hair, and so she was expecting her to leave now.
"Fine," the witch grumbled, glaring daggers at the entire room. "But you haven't heard the last of this."
Nemo simply smiled and waved her hand daintily, and Apacci had no choice but to turn her heels and stomp her way back out of the room. When she was gone, Nemo sighed theatrically, closed the door, making all the while an exaggerated expression of shaking her head at the nonsense she had to put up with. Her students made varying expressions of sympathy and noises of reassurance.
In any case, now that she was reassured of their competence with silk-thread, it was time for their next lesson with a coarser material, and so next they would all be working with lion's hair.
***
College
Jotaro had been having a normal day.
Well, as normal as things ever went for Jotaro. He was, after all, the head of the University's Paranormal Committee, which meant he had to manage campus hauntings, ghost sightings, and ESP manifestations among students. It was a very official job, although his committee was typically understaffed and underfunded because, as most students lacked spiritual senses, the only proof that he was doing his job well was that nothing was happening at all.
But as normally as things could go for him, they did. The first thing Jotaro had been doing after the new year directions and introductions was check in on the Librarian, one of the most well-known ghosts on campus. Ever since he'd gained his spiritual senses and been appointed to his position, Jotaro had been slowly working with the Librarian to repair his 'precious tome,' a 17th century European manuscript that had been severely damaged in the flood that had taken the Librarian's life, and which was the anchor holding him onto this world against his will. Jotaro had expected that the work would be continued by his successor, and their successor after that, until hopefully in ten years the Librarian could be freed.
Then the Soul Delinquents had arrived.
There was no evidence that they were delinquents. Only that two of them (a boy and a girl) had ginger hair, and that the third one, also a girl, was some kind of karate freak. At first they appeared to be looking through the bookshelves for some kind of math textbook for the redhead girl, when the Librarian had been drawn to them. Before Jotaro could make any sense of what had happened, the three freshmen students had engaged the Librarian in a chat, then the ginger girl had conjured fairies which had magically restored the waterlogged book to its pristine status. As he stared at the scene utterly stunned, the boy repeatedly asked the Librarian if he was sure he wanted to move on, the Librarian had insisted on it while expressing profuse thanks, and the karate girl had somehow palm-slapped him out of existence. Or into his next existence. It was unclear to Jotaro.
So yes. Soul Delinquents.
Now Jotaro had a new job, one he'd assigned to himself: keeping track of these dangerous individuals. Perhaps, in the distant future, he might consider them as potential recruits for the Paranormal Committee… But right now he was afraid of even approaching him and telling them about it. What if they decided he knew too much from having seen them?! What if they decided somehow that he needed to go to the afterlife as well?
And on top of that, from listening to their conversations, Jotaro was growing more and more certain that these people were all dating each other, which had to fail some kind of morality clause in the university charter. He wasn't sure which one, but he would check. That kind of non-standard romantic dynamics belonged in romance comics, not on the serious campus of a serious university.
By 3pm, the true scope of the danger had become clear. The campus was rather large, and home to a handful of haunted places, which the trio had now all visited, acquainting themselves with the local ghosts and offering to do some favors for them - the red-head girl was always the most enthusiastic but clueless, the boy kept pretending to not want to have to deal with any of this and to just want a 'normal school year' but was clearly lying, and the karate girl was the actually grounded one who figured out how to help each ghost and kept a map of the campus updated with the location and name of each spirit.
It was obvious they were hoping to muscle in on Jotaro's turf and take away his role in the university. They were not Soul Delinquents. They were Soul Yakuza.
Thankfully, Jotaro was not without some power of his own.
Well, he was. But the Committee wasn't. Anna was a powerful psychokinetic able to move up to one pound of matter through the air at great speeds. Kyoshiro could read minds, provided he didn't move. Jun was a pyrokinetic who could set people's clothes on fire. Takeshi had a loyal ghost dog that could fight. He would challenge the Soul Yakuza and defeat them, for the honor and safety of the Paranormal Committee!
It was when he came to this firm resolution while spying on the trio having an afternoon snack in the park that he saw the sky open into a mouth of darkness, and from it descended the shadows of the harbingers of a new apocalypse, a shard of the night itself in the shape of a young woman, a woman made of lightning, a yuki-onna bearing a sword, a snake-ape-demon-man, and more, and Jotaro managed to hold it together through the sheer fatalism of seeing his death coming.
Then the harbingers started making fun of the tall ginger boy and pushing gifts and snacks in the hands of the two girls and telling them they couldn't escape getting a visit on their first day of university so easily, and at that point Jotaro elected to pass out.
***
Girl Talk
The pink-haired girl wandered through the aisles, watching all the beautiful clothes on display, the chatting, laughing people sifting through them. Brushing the threads of an elegant scarlet dress, exchanging a greeting with a customer.
There was a time when she craved being in such a place - not just being, but belonging. When she felt she belonged nowhere, she dreamed of this place more than any other. Not this place specifically, of course, but so many like it. And she'd come here time and again, with money borrowed or stolen, but it never felt right. Like something was missing.
She'd thought when she'd finally had it, she'd realize such a dream had been empty and vain. What can nice clothes do to fulfill one's soul? But maybe it wasn't the clothes. Maybe it was-
"Excuse me, young lady?"
She started out of her reverie, turning on her heels, and before she could see who had addressed her in such a sharp tone of voice something was thrust roughly into her arms. She took a step back, confused, and looked down at a bundle of expensive lacy tights in serious disarray. She looked up at the woman who'd spoken - from the curt tone and the phrase 'young lady,' she'd expected some older woman, but no, this girl couldn't have been a couple years older than her - although, judging by the cut and thread of her stylish black skirt and lacy black-and-white blouse, along with the flowered hat tilted at an angle on her head, quite a bit wealthier.
"...may I help you, miss…?" Riruka started.
"Yes. Yes you may," the young woman seethed. "These tights. They ripped."
"They. Ripped?" Riruka asked, slowly blinking.
"You work here, don't you?"
"Well, yes. Was there any kind of issue with the-" Riruka started, trying to find her bearings.
"They ripped! I just told you!" the woman said, tapping her heel on the ground.
"How did that happen?"
"Who cares how it happened? It shouldn't have! This is your fault," the woman said, "for selling me a, a… defective product!"
Riruka thought that was blowing the matter rather out of proportion, and that she certainly couldn't be held responsible for it, but she'd faced annoying customers before and wasn't about to let that show.
"I see," she said, polite and contrite-looking. "If this is your first visit, I'm happy to inform you that we have a no-question-asked policy on your first return, and if not, I will be happy to guide you through our exchange pro-"
"No!" the woman said, crossing her arms around her torso. "I want to be fully reimbursed!"
"For, ah, the tights," Riruka said, already dreading the answer.
"No. For everything. If these tights ripped so easily then how can be sure the rest of your merchandise isn't just as… as… cheap! What if I put them on and then in the middle of the street-"
"And you brought the other items with you," Riruka said, slowly and carefully. The woman scowled.
"What?"
"The items that you wish to return. You brought them here to be reimbursed. Like these tights."
"Well obviously not. I should get to keep them. As compensation for my trouble."
"Compensation for your…" Riruka paused, closing her eyes and furrowing her brow as she prepared to wage valiant battle against the headache rising from the depths of her treacherous brain. Already, a few customers were turning their heads curious as to the commotion. If she allowed this woman to damage the store's reputation…
Which, of course, meant being as nice as possible and complying with the woman's wishes and discussing this somewhere out of sight, not defeating her in the arena of logic, not proving her a fool in front of everybody. That was just an idle fancy.
"How did these tights rip again?" Riruka asked, looking at the silken lace of the tights (It was silk! And so soft!) and running a finger along the long tear.
"What do you care! They just did!"
Riruka slowly raised her head, but not to the woman's face - to her folded arms, and the hands that flexed their long, painted nails about.
"You did that. You don't know how to put on fragile tights with nails that long!" she blurted out despite herself. "You screwed up your own tights and now you want to put the blame on us!"
"How dare you! Nothing would have happened if you didn't sell bad merchandise-" the woman said, straightening her back and curling her hands into fist, fury in her eyes, but when Riruka saw her finally angry all concerns about impropriety and customer relations faded from her mind. Her mouth fell agape.
"It's you," she said. The woman frowned.
"What?"
"It's you! You're Ritsuko Nene! The Legendary Evil Witch! The Demon Lord of Convention Floors!"
There was a pause, then the woman's expression hardened into cold contempt.
"Well, I suppose if nothing else, it's nice to be recognized. Even if by such unseemly-"
"You threw a soda can at Aoi Yuuki at a cosplay convention!"
The Evil Witch's eyes widened, and she blurted out: "She copied my style!"
"Aoi Yuuki copied your style?" Riruka guffawed. "Get a grip, lady!"
A dead silence fell over the aisle, and the next two aisles around them, and the air laid heavy and trembling as if thick with static. Riruka knew what was coming next.
"I want to see your manager," the woman said cold as ice.
"You what?" Riruka said, eyes just as hard, standing ramrod-straight.
"I want. To see. Your manager."
Wind picked up in the aisle. The lightest of clothes on the racks were beginning to stir. A ceiling lamp flickered, then another. Slowly, Riruka's lips parted in a smile.
"My manager?"
"Your manager!" Ritsuko Nene bellowed, eyes wide, as strands of pink light began congealing out of the ground and coiling around the display mannequins in the nearby window.
A low, low chuckle rose in Riruka's throat. Nene, baffled and beginning to grow mildly concerned, took a step back. Flitting sparrows of rose-tinged energy danced above Riruka's shoulder as the girl slumped forward, a hearty cackle pouring out of her lips, and she cooed:
"Wouldn't you know? I got promoted yesterday."
She stood up, eyes gleaming, and every single clothing rack snapped to stare at Ritsuko Nene with non-existent faces, every mannequin creaked as they reached out with skinless fingers towards her, and Riruka's clothes billowed in the means of her own power.
"I AM THE MANAGER!"
The Witch screamed in terror.
…
"So anyway," Riruka said, popping open the cork of the bottle and pouring Esmeralda a glass of wine, "that's how I got fired. Turns out even a manager has limits to her powers."
Across the table, the Arrancar medic let out a long-suffering groan as she rubbed her forehead with both hands. Nemo, on the other hand, clearly found this absolutely hilarious.
"The day after you got promoted?" Esme asked. "Really?"
"Yeah…" Riruka sighed. "I was already planning how to spend my raise, too."
"Maybe if you go back and apologize and-"
"Never," Riruka said firmly. Esmeralda glared from behind her fingers.
Nemo nodded in approval. Life was too short to spend it apologizing it to people who destroyed good clothes.
"You know it, babe," Riruka said, pointing finger-guns at her friend.
"Don't encourage her," Esme said. "'Rika, don't you have any regrets?"
"As a matter of fact, this was the greatest day of my life. I sent the Devil of Clothing Stores running for her life. I am already a legend. My name is whispered with awe among the rabble of the fashion world."
"I can't believe it. How are you going to make rent?"
Riruka scanned her small, but cozy flat while sipping from her own glass of wine. Then she grinned.
"Won't be a problem. The owner of the store across the street has been trying to poach me for weeks. I already have an offer."
"There's no justice," Esmeralda said mournfully while Nemo clapped in approval.
"Aw, c'mon," Riruka said. "See, that's the thing you gotta understand, Esme. It took me a long time to appreciate that you were right, that I should stop just living off robbed ATMs and Yukio's family fortune. But for that I had to see that a mundane job, normie friends, that didn't have to be the end of everything good and a life sentence of boredom. Dokugamine Riruka might live a mundane life, but she will live it awesomely. And it will still involve magic now and then."
"You know what?" Esme said, shrugging and downing the bottom half of her wine glass, "That's honestly fair. I would be doing the same in your place. I suppose we can't all be," she gave a sidelong glance at Nemo, "princesses to the netherworld and mothers to a deity."
"Yeah, but a cute deity. She called me 'Rika'!"
Nemo beamed in obvious smug self-satisfaction.
"I call you 'Rika!" Esme said. "All the time!"
"Yeah but you're not an adorable toddler. Speaking of which, what are you doing lately? You were pretty busy for a while but things have… quieted down, yeah?"
Esmeralda nodded seriously. "It was hectic. Which is why I've been trying to convince Ryuken that if he really wants to take a break from all these wild shenanigans that keep happening around him, he shouldn't rely on emotional distance like he's been doing all these years - it's unhealthy and it doesn't work. He needs physical distance."
"Wait," Riruka said in sudden panic, "you aren't moving out, are you?"
"As if I could live without you," Esme said with a smirk. "No, I'm just trying to get Ryuken to buy a vacation house in Southern France. I've always wanted to visit there."
Nemo believed she'd been to France before. Ort it could have been Spain or Greece. One of these places with dry, sunny coasts and sugary pastries.
But Riruka wasn't paying attention to her. She was staring. Esme poured herself another glass and sipped it, humming to herself and looking carefully away from her friend.
"All these months of pestering me to learn to live a normal life, to get a real job, to stop relying on magic and my friend's wealth for everything, and you just go and get your sugar daddy boy toy-"
"(I don't think those two things are compatible,)" Esme mumbled behind her glass.
"-to buy you a house in France!" Riruka finished, wild-eyed and waving her arms about to signify the immensity of her outrage.
"...you can visit?" Esmeralda said tentatively, looking to Nemo for support, who raised her hands in a gesture of fearful neutrality. This appeared to mollify her slightly, but only slightly.
"That's just so unfair," Riruka said, pouting now.
Esme relaxed and swirled her glass, taking another sip. Then a mischievous glint flashed in her eyes. "Yes, well, you see, 'Rika…" She slowly leaned across the table, staring her friend in the eye. "The difference between you and me is, you gotta make a living..." She grinned like a hateful goblin. "...while I'm already dead."
There was a noise of outrage, and then a scream of panic as Riruka decided the only appropriate answer was to spill her glass of wine on her friend's dress.
***
The Bride
And at last. At last the day was there.
It was so simple and yet so complex. The culmination of so much effort, of so much patience waiting for the right day, when there was no longer a fire to put out immediately, a flood to stem, a rend to mend in the world around them. Waiting for the stars to align for everyone who mattered to be there.
Nemo Elcorbuzier watched herself in the mirror, and she had never been so proud of her work. She twirled in her white dress, adjusted the coiffe that fit perfectly behind her horns, and sighed in contentment.
"This is so not how it's supposed to work," Esmeralda said ruefully.
Nemo turned around to give her a quizzical look.
"You are supposed to be anxious. Wedding days are where you're all fussy and nervous and afraid something will go wrong and your friends reassure you and help take care of things for you! You're not supposed to be looking yourself in the mirror and nod and think 'yeah, I did a bang-up job!'"
Nemo pouted. Hadn't she done a bang-up job?
"Well obviously yes." Esme said sighed. "It's perfect. Your dress is perfect. And I checked with Jackelton, the food will be perfect. And I peeked over Antenor's notes and talked to the Coro, the entertainment will be perfect. This will be the greatest day in Hueco Mundo since the one when you saved the world."
Nemo cocked an eyebrow. 'Since'?
"Alright, Princess Beautiful, let's not get ahead of ourselves. You getting married is great, but it does not top cancelling the apocalypse."
Nemo made a reluctant expression.
"You're turning into your fiancée," Esme warned. "I bet if I was over there I'd find that she is stressing the hell out the way I expected you would be."
Nemo looked at herself in the mirror again, patted her dress, and turned to look at Esmeralda. For a moment, that facade of single-minded competence dropped - not replaced by fear or anxiety, exactly, but by… vulnerability.
"'You'll knock it out of the park," Esmeralda said, catching her white-gloved hand and squeezing it gently. "Do you remember that day?"
Nemo tilted her head. The first day they'd met hadn't been anything remarkable at the time.
"No, not that one…" Esmeralda held her hand, thoughtful. "The one I gave you what I thought would be some unimportant errand, and sent you to Barragan. Do you ever think about how everything could have been different, if I hadn't-"
emo smiled and squeezed back, lifting Esmeralda's hand to her chest. It wasn't Esme who had chosen to go to Barragan that day. There were so many little tasks, all of them seemingly of so little importance, and it was her who'd picked one. Sometimes… yes… she did wonder. But wondering wouldn't change anything. Nor even would peering into the infinite possibilities of other worlds and lives, as she once had done.
This was reality. This was their world. And there was no one Nemo could be more thankful towards than Esmeralda, for being her first friend, and for innocently and unknowingly nudging her onto the path that would be hers.
It was she, after all, who had told her the Privaron Cirucci needed a Numero to fetch something for her one bright morning.
Esme smiled, and let go off her hand.
"You're welcome, Princess," she said with a smile. "Now go and knock them dead."
Nemo turned around - then at the last moment changed her mind, turned back, and squeezed Esme into a hug.
Then Esme shoved her while laughing, opened the door of the dressing room, and Nemo walked into the light.
There, before that altar, dressed in such beautiful black and purple, a dress she had never seen before because it was Alphonse's work and not her own, a surprise for her, she was waiting, her face as bright and beautiful as the sun.
Nemo took her first step towards the woman she loved and the rest of her life.
***
God
God stood at the peak of the world, and watched over the breadth of Her domain.
God in this case being a very young child, and the peak of her world being the highest floor of her mothers' palace, the breadth of her domain stretched out a little further out than the farming fields outside and into a bit of the Midnight Woods, but still. She was a child, and to her, such a vista seemed to encompass the ends of the Earth itself.
Not that she'd ever been to Earth proper. Mommy had promised it would be her next birthday gift, and she was very very eager to get there. She tried scrunching her eyebrows very hard to make time pass faster, but mother had told her it didn't work that way and that the last person who had made time go very fast had turned into a skeleton. That seemed very scary to Amity, who considered with deep horror that a skeleton did not have a tongue and so could not taste delicious pastries. Pastries were a very important divine concern in these early days.
Nonetheless, Amity had taken a moment away from culinary concerns to contemplate the world from the vantage point of the throne room. The Half-Sun, sibling to the Laughing Moon, was shining in its fullness high in the sky, and delightful rays of light and warmth tickled Amity's skin. She basked in it, even as she wondered just how far the Midnight Woods reached, and whether there were still great deserts of white sand beyond them. There was so much to discover in the world, as soon as she could run properly so she could cross the forest very fast like all the grown-ups did. She could walk just fine, thank you very much, but when she tried running she usually tripped on her feet and bumped her face into the ground.
I could show you.
"Iss no fun," Amity said authoritatively to the empty room. She didn't want to be shown the places like in a picture book, picture books were things for bedtime and for her mothers to do (or sometimes Uncle Luppi, who had the really good stories).
All of this is yours. This world. These people. The very notion of existence itself.
"Iss not!" Amity protested loudly. "Iss for erryone!"
Because you let it be. They live by your kindness. They could die by your wrath. I could show you how to claim it all.
"Can you make me a cupcake?" Amity asked, suddenly curious.
...
I cannot.
"See?" she said with a triumphantly smug smile, crossing her arms in front of her torso. "Thass because you're just a rock in my belly!"
But I could show you how to make a cupcake.
Suddenly everything was thrown into disarray; Amity's eyes went wide, and she craned her neck to look down at her belly button. "You could?!"
That power, as with all power in existence, could be yours. You only have to make it yourself.
"You're much nicer 'an I thought!" God exclaimed, and clapped Her hands.
Then God turned around, took off at a running pace, tripped, faceplanted into the ground, powered through the very mild pain, got up, ran off again, and turned the corner of the door to shout into the inside of the palace:
"Mommy! Mommy! Me and my belly-rock are gonna make a cupcake!"
And thus began the first age of kitchen wonders.
*****
***
*
***
*
...
Nobody
The beach was nice and quiet. The sun shined down with all its warmth. It was a weather where you could barely wear a shirt if it was unbuttoned. A weather to just dive into the clear blue waves, come out all covered in salt, and recline in your chair with a drink in hand. And that was exactly what he was doing.
The man raised a hand, waving it about in the air. There was no response.
"Aw, c'mon!" he exclaimed, firmly refusing to get up from his long chair where he basked in the sun like some kind of reptile. "I'm dying here!"
"You can use words!" the woman exclaimed from the counter. Her bar was a small thing - not an actual building, just enough of a roof to cover the wares and counter. It usually served a few clients during this season, although never more than a handful at a time; the remote beach was one she'd picked for its balance of tranquility and still-making-enough-money-to-live. Right now, though, the only guy around was This Asshole.
"You know exactly what I want!" This Asshole exclaimed. He actually sounded pained.
"Yeah, but you're a big boy, and I'm the owner, not some barmaid!" Alice shouted back, refusing to move from her counter just like he did from his chair. "You can get off your ass and get your Long Island here at the bar!"
"This is unbelievably poor customer service, you know. Especially considering."
"Considering what," Alice said, leaning over the counter dangerously, even though he couldn't see her with his head turned. Well, he couldn't have seen her regardless.
"I seem to recall I saved your life, and business, from a rampaging monster the other day," he said with what sounded like mild offense.
"Mmhm," Alice said, "and that monster was a ghost, so nobody would know that I owe you anything if I decided to cut you off."
"You slay my heart," he said pitifully, putting a hand on the long, wide scar running down his chest. "Frankly, you remind me of a woman I know."
"Yeah? Did she also kick you out of her place when you were being a dick until you came back begging with puppy eyes?"
"I mean, yes, that is absolutely a thing that she did, all the time."
"Sounds like she didn't have any better sense than me," Alice said, shaking her head as she wiped the counter.
"Alright, how about this," This Asshole said. "You bring me that drink - which I will pay for, obviously, we're only negotiating who of us has to walk five yards for that bit of barter, you harpy, and I'll tell you a story."
"A story, uh?" Alice tapped her cheek thoughtfully. "I mean, your stories are pretty good, but they're also all obviously fake."
"I assure you this one is one hundo percent true. I was there for it. I lived it, even."
"Alright," she said with a sigh, beginning to mix the expensive cocktail, "I'll bite."
After a moment, she poured the mixture into a tall glass, added the flourishes and the straw, and walked over to the sole occupied chair. She'd have minded the grin he gave her when she arrived and held out the drink for him, but obviously it had nothing to do with the rather sparse outfit she wore to mitigate the heat: when he tilted down his shades and opened his ever-closed eyes, they were just the same as the first time she'd sawn them - milky-white but for faint shadows of a darkness that was the last thing he'd ever seen.
"This better be good," she said, holding onto the drink for just a moment before letting him pull it to his chest and sit up.
"Babe," said the silver-haired man, "it's the story of how I helped save the universe."
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- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think I can speak for everyone when I say: well done. Four years, and you produced something incredible. Kudos.
(Also, poor Jotaro. That's just hilarious. I wish I could see his experience of college alongside the Soul Yakuza.
)- Location
- Explosion!
... I'll be honest, for a moment there, my mind went places.
Glorious, wishful places.
But, it seems, it was not to be.
Thank you, truly, for all... This!
"And thus the curtain falls. And what a brilliant encore it was.
You were splendid, Omicron!
Farewell, until the next time.
And to your efforts, a thunderous applause!"
-Nero (Extella)
Gin, you bastard, you survived just to be the stinger.
Congratulations, Omi. This is an incredible accomplishment and you should be very proud of yourself.
Congratulations, Omi. This is an incredible accomplishment and you should be very proud of yourself.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I love to hate when stories end.
Good on you Gin.
Damn, almost 4 years on the dot...
Thank you for this grand experience @Omicron
Minor grammatical error.
Good on you Gin.
Damn, almost 4 years on the dot...
Thank you for this grand experience @Omicron
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- Location
- A Computer
I also noticed a small typo
Nemo