CIX. Death's Head
Your wings.
You missed flying for so long, but without questioning it, without ever asking yourself why you had lost it. It was simply the way things were. Now that you have reclaimed your memories, it seems… right. It is a final dot at the end of that sentence. It is the sublimation of what was lost. Your past has no power over you, but it does not mean you cannot choose to reclaim the parts of it which were good.
You will go into this last battle whole.
You gently take the cloak off the rack, smooth its folds with your hands, shake it to test its weight. At last you wrap it around your shoulders and clasp the bone brooch at your neck, and tendrils of reiatsu tentatively weave themselves into the black fabric, as if afraid to accept it and be let down. Not daring to trust your triumph - until you push gently on it, and it forgets its misgivings, fusing with the soft fabric. Its weight settles on you, before fading away. It is one with you, no heavier than your arms or your head.
You smile to Alphonse, tears in your eyes, and he smiles back, placing the two gold-black rings inside a small box. His Resurreccion is gone, faded to tattered paper-silk while you admired your cloak, shreds of it littering the ground. He is as human as he ever was.
"It becomes you," the tailor says, and you nod with fierce pride.
The box disappears into a large bag, which Alphonse closes by pulling a string then slings over his back; the large item looks odd on his lanky frame. His smile turns wistful.
"I will miss you, Nemo. I wish you the best of luck in all your endeavours."
You tilt your head, puzzled. All around you lays Alphonse's workshop in its customary disarray, all the reagents sitting on the shelves, the half-finished pieces, Kurosaki's uniform still hanging on the wall, a half-unspooled ball of yarn sitting in the corner where it rolled away and was not picked up. Surely your teacher cannot be leaving
this instant.
"I am afraid I must," Alphonse says sadly. "My masterwork is complete, and I must leave now, strong in that achievement. The more I linger, the more I risk being tied down by things unfinished, or new things to be done. Especially with what is brewing. I like you very much, Nemo, my apprentice, my friend; but I cannot fight your war."
But… You motion to the rest of the room, baffled. Surely Alphonse cannot simply leave the fruit of decades of labor behind like this.
"I can, and I will," he says firmly. "All that is in this bag are supplies for the journey, and the rings. This is one of the first lessons I taught you, Nemo, but I understand that it is a difficult one to internalize. If you spend all your career refining the first dress you ever made, you will never progress. Sometimes, you must move on. Sometimes, you must abandon things full of use or potential. This is the next step of my journey, and this workshop belongs to my old self. It would only hold me back."
You look dubiously at the room around you. To you it has always been a cave of wonders, full of treasures whose true value eluded you, of secrets for you one day uncover. To see Alphonse so casually dismiss it…
His hand clasps your shoulder and you start. His grip is strong, his eyes intense as he looks into yours.
"Nothing I do is 'casual,' Nemo. This is a very important gesture not only for me - but for you. Because in becoming a master, in going back to my own teacher… I leave this place to you, Nemo.
You are the tailor of Las Noches - or of whatever Las Noches will become when all of this has passed. This workshop is your workshop. Its treasures are your treasures."
You stare, wide-eyed and speechless. All of it, yours? You don't even know what half of these are for, or where they come from, or…
It would take you years to fully understand what he's leaving you. Not unlike Ren in Cirucci's vault of trophies. But…
"Would I be so unkind," Alphonse says with a smirk, "as to spoil the surprise for you?"
You smile, and thank him. He releases your shoulder.
"Now," he says with a sigh, "I have a long journey ahead of me. And…"
You actually would like to leave him a gift of your own. As thanks for all that he has done for you. It is a very small thing, but one which you believe he will appreciate.
"A gift? I assure you, there is no need-"
You raise your finger and shush him. Then, your smile turning mysterious, you wave through the air and open a Garganta, beckoning him forward. He follows, puzzled.
There is nothing remarkable about the place where you emerge: it is simply white dunes, surrounded by white dunes, with more white dunes crowning the horizon. Alphonse looks confused, but you just breathe sharply, close your eyes, clasp your hands, and
wish.
A few minutes later you sense the approaching reiatsu, and then see the black figure skittering against the stark white background. The spider moves with speed you don't think you could match even now that you are healed, merrily whistling a tune you've never heard before, until it spots you; its head perks up, its mandibles shift in what you believe is a grin, and he changes his course to reach you. Its presence is weak, but its body is massive, and Alphonse balks a little at its approach; chitinous legs engraved with decorative patterns by some Arrancar's hand plant themselves in the ground before you, and metal rings glitter in the moonlight.
"Heya, little one," the spider says happily. "Fancy seeing you here. And at a most opportune time! I was looking for an oasis I'd heard was around here, but was getting bored with the search. What brings you out here, and is this a new friend?"
You join your hands again and bow in greetings, and inform it that Alphonse is in fact an old friend - well, old on the scale you measure your life these days, anyway, where all has happened in less than a year. You were hoping the spider might ferry him to his destination.
"Nemo?" Alphonse says dubiously. "My teacher's grove is very far, and…"
"Ah! All the better!" the spider chitters enthusiastically. "I was
waiting for an opportunity to stretch my legs with a proper journey!"
"Uh," Alphonse says, surprised. You turn to him and grin. As you said, it's only a small gift; but really, Adjuchas or not, it simply wouldn't do for a dusty tailor who spent the last howevermany years locked in his workshop to take off on a journey across the sands on his lonesome. Does he even remember how to hunt?
"You are being quite vexing," Alphonse grumbles while the spider laughs.
"It is no problem, no problem at all, I assure you! I live for the journey. And that way, we can keep each other company!"
Who knows? Maybe the spider will even know of him, once he mentions that he was a wandering tailor for so long, who even worked in Barragan's court. You'd be very surprised if there weren't at least a couple of heavily distorted stories about the Tailor of Las Noches floating around the desert.
"...thank you," your mentor says seriously. "This is a very nice gesture, Nemo."
You shrug. It's the least you could do. But as he approaches the spider, putting his hand on its flank, the tailor turns back to you with a strange look on his face.
"Are you sure you don't want to come with me?" he asks. "I told you, my teacher might well have the secrets of this Key. Perhaps with her knowledge, you could…"
You shake your head. You will not repeat the mistake of the Salar de Luna, going off on a legend and disappearing in your friends' time of need. Your place is in Las Noches, where you can help with the forming rebellion. If you left, and found that the fighting had broken out while you were gone…
Alphonse nods.
"I understand. Be safe, Nemo. Don't make all the time and effort I put into teaching you a waste."
You smile weakly. That's a bit harsh.
"War is harsh," he says softly. "But no. I trust your judgement and your skills. I know we will see each other again."
You nod bravely, and Alphonse hefts himself up onto the spider's back, which shrugs its great limbs to shake off the sand.
"Enough sad talks! Enough about the future!" the Hollow shouts joyfully. "Enjoy the present! Tonight - and in this place, all of time is 'tonight' - we ride."
You step back and wave to Alphonse, who waves back and opens his mouth to say one last thing - which turns into a yelp as the spider kicks off, legs blurring with speed as it races down the dune and already up the next one. You can't help but giggle to yourself at the sight.
When they are but a dot in the distance, you sigh and look up at the sky.
The wind blows in your hair. You can feel it on your face like you never could before. It is almost intoxicating.
And it makes the split folds of your cloak flutter like wings…
Ah…
You smile from one cheek to the other, and
jump.
***
What is there to say?
You can fly.
You can fly.
***
You're still laughing as the Garganta disgorges you into the open air above the Red Chamber, staring straight down the cylindrical tower at the grand hall below. The bracelet makes the entire chamber clear into your view even from far above; you can see Luppi, shirtless (and flabby) sun-bathing on one of the platforms, a Calavera with a broom hard at work sweeping the hall (sand always gets everywhere, it's infuriating), another heading into the kitchen (is that columbo you smell?) and there, at the center, Cirucci, sitting at the long table…
...reading a letter?!
You pull the wings around you to narrow your profile and drop like a stone, the air whistling around you. You turn at the last moment to land feet-first on the ground, cloak billowing and sending a gust of wind that knocks Cirucci's hair in front of her eyes. She lets out a startled yelp and you snatch the letter from her hand, eyes wide with panic.
"Who dares-" Cirucci says, stumbling off her chair in the confusion and brushing aside her purple hair, blinking around her. "Nemo? Is that- Nemo!" she says, her eyes settling on you and filling with anger. "I knew you were doing something stupid but I never imagined it would be
this stupid-" she begins to shout, raising up on her toes and looming dangerously, arms flailing.
"You have no idea how worried- how did you get in your head that- why would you not-"
She blinks. You blink.
"Would you not…"
You do your best to look very contrite, even clasp your hands and hunch a little and make an apologetic pout, but her expression doesn't change. In fact she isn't moving at all. She has an imperious finger stuck in the air.
"Not…" she trails off.
Then she falls silent.
You raise a hand and wave it front of her eyes.
Above, Luppi is rolling on his platform in laughter.
"She froze!" he yelps out between ugly barks of hilarity. "I knew she'd freeze! You need to thaw her out!"
"Nemo," Cirucci whispers blankly, "you- how- why-"
Oh. Right.
You smile, continental plates of muscles you'd never thought about before shifting skin, eyes, cheekbones, nose, a thousand subtle details of the self that were
missing. Cirucci's eyes widen.
You reach up on the tip of your toes and kiss her.
"I'm home," you whisper.
Frustratingly, Luppi was right. She was frozen. And then she melts.
***
"I can't believe you hid this from me all this time," Cirucci says playfully, brushing your face with her fingers from the temple to the chin. That simple touch enflames your face and sends shivers down to your spine. It is something you've never felt before, not even in your most distant Hollow memories. You lazily stretch, nudging your head in her lap, and she chuckles.
She can't blame you. After all, you hid it so well it was hidden from yourself as well.
"You're so beautiful," she whispers, and you crack open an eye, looking up at her face. You make a look of mock of mock betrayal. Were you not beautiful before?
But this is Cirucci, and her reaction is a haughty scoff.
"Of course you were beautiful. Why else would I have taken you as my lover? Are you accusing the merciless thunder-witch of
pity? No, you are just
more beautiful now."
You break into a fit of giggling and push yourself up, mussing your own hair. You can't let her keep touching your face like that, it makes you all limp and tingly. You need to accustom yourself to having more skin than you used to.
You're thinking of more changes, now that this first has opened the gate.
"More?" Cirucci asks, pulling her legs up into the half-couch as you walk up to the center of the bedroom, looking at the mirror. You pass a hand between your stringy hair, watching your eyes move as you scrutinize your own, unfamiliar face. The small nose, the soft contours of bone, strangely narrow now that you don't have this big mask rounding it out, the curl of bones under your eyes, the dots of color…
Your hair. You were thinking of dyeing it.
"Dyeing it?" Cirucci exclaims, her eyes boggling. "But I love your hair!"
You make a small grimace. You don't. Sometimes you think of it as 'green,' but you don't think about it much, because in truth it's only green under the right lighting and when you've had enough sleep and eaten well for a few days. Mostly it just looks… grey. A kind of faded gray with the barest hint of green. You'd like it to be more vivid, more colorful. Mostly you'd like it to commit one way or another. A bright, verdant green, or a cool dark grey. You're not sure which yet.
Cirucci looks doubtful, but you turn back to her and smile. It's nothing permanent; you can always change it later.
"Then grey, I think," she says seriously. "It would go better with your lipstick."
You could always change the lipstick-
"But then what would people think of
me?" Cirucci says dramatically, pressing the back of her hand to her brow and tilting her head at the ceiling. You're not sure what she means-
Oh.
You blush and avoid looking at the blue smudges around her lips and on her neck.
"No, blue lipstick with gray hair. That is what I will allow you as your Espada," she says loftily. You bow in grateful thanks.
"Come here," Cirucci says, beckoning you with a finger, and you daintily come back to the couch, sitting across her, your legs intertwined. "So," she says seriously, counting on her fingers, "you finally got yourself healed of your old wounds, you broke your mask, you came to some understanding of yourself you would rather not talk about that made you much more powerful,
and you have a cloak that lets you fly. And all that cost you was an unsanctioned duel with a Shinigami which was difficult as fights go but out of which you came out perfectly fine. Is that right?"
You
might have glossed over the duel a little. Cirucci gives you a flat look.
"You don't say."
You might have been forced to use her Caja Negacion.
"You what." She stares at you in blank surprise. "How. Why.
How."
The important thing is that you came out of it better than you entered it, isn't it?
"Hmph." She folds her arms, scowling. "I can only be distracted by beauty for so long, dear."
You shift your posture, separating your legs and instead lying down on hers, your head on her knees, stretching out your body and fluttering your eyelashes. She flushes visibly.
"Okay, fine, that was a lie, but
morally you shouldn't be hiding what happened from me!"
You nod, very wisely. This is a deep truth she is speaking, and you would be a poor lover if you did so.
Will she do the honors by telling you why there is a black box on one of the shelves that you are fairly certain is one of Szayel's electronic notebook-things?
She goes even more red, and quickly looks away.
"...fine," she mumbles, and you smile.
It is not the easiest of discussions, for either of you. But at the end of it you both understand why you did what you did, and you do not hold it against each other, but have come to a deeper understanding, and satisfaction at nothing being held between you.
And when the weight of that conversation seems to bring a silence, you remember what you came here with, and leap off the couch, hurriedly motioning to Cirucci to follow you into one of the lower rooms which had sat empty and unused in so long. It takes you a bit of work to find one of the blocky contraptions used in Las Noches to power the rare electronic device, and a little more time figuring out how to connect everything, and Cirucci looks at you puzzled all the while; but finally you both sit down in the couch, and the projector flares its white light on the empty wall.
She does not really understand the movies at first, but you enjoy them, and that makes her enjoy them in turn, until she is as lost in them as you are. You gape at the giant monsters, laugh at children's antics, and even Luppi and Ren come see what all the fuss is about and neither say anything, staring at the moving pictures. By the time you put on the third film, they've brought their own chairs, and the Calaveras are busy bringing tables for dinner, then tea and biscuits afterwards.
Midway through the movie about the boy with the cane and the princess with the purple hair you understand what you're watching and burst into a fit of giggling in the middle of a dramatic scene, drawing curious look, but you can't really explain it. You just make a note to call Kurosaki Ichigo and bring him here to rewatch it, and then relax again and huddle back against Cirucci.
You fall asleep before the climax, and do not wake when she gently takes you in her arms and brings you to bed.
You dream of shadows, and for once they are peaceful.
***
"...and he hadn't even figured out the spinning trick," Cirucci says with exasperation, her fork midway to her mouth - a proper lady, she never speaks with her mouth full. "Can you believe it?"
You look at her, baffled. Spinning throws might be a complex technique, but Ichigo has a sword with a ribbon attached to it and he had never thought to at least use it to throw and retrieve the weapon?
"Apparently, it was a technique of his inner Hollow," Cirucci says with a shrug, filling both your cups with tea. For once you have opted to take breakfast not in the shadow of the platforms, but at the long table in the center of the sun-well; the way you experience its light and heat without your mask is different, and much more comfortable - no longer do you feel trapped by cloying heat, your skin trying to sweat but unable to. The warmth is a gentle caress against your skin, a soft gust of wind refreshing you each time it might feel like too much. "So he didn't use it because he disliked copying him, which seems profoundly silly - what's the point of having extra souls if you can't use their advice? Anyway, after a few throws of Golondrina, he saw the error of his ways."
She looks very smug as she finishes her sentence and takes her cup, which in a way you find adorable. You will never not enjoy hearing about Cirucci showing up that weird boy, even if you have some fondness for him after all.
He could be a tremendous asset for your rebellion, or he could get himself killed blindly rushing at Ulquiorra without his sword. You will need to think about this.
It's one of the many things you have to think about. At least Grimmjow is on your side, according to Luppi. Cirucci should probably talk to him to make sure; you will have to approach the Tres Bestias, since you were interrupted before broaching the subject in your last meeting.
"Hmm," Cirucci muses, spreading butter on a piece of toast. "I don't know what to make of Harribel. She doesn't think much of me, nor did she like my little showing at the Contest either, but she still allowed the Tres Bestias to aid me. Perhaps…"
There is a soft sound of something falling, and Luppi wriggles his limbs as he stands up, squirming his way to the table. You pause as he sits down and fills his own cup.
"Hey," he says. "Why don't you guys have any coffee, honestly? Always tea, it gets boring."
Cirucci cocks an eyebrow, her eyes cold.
"If you bring coffee into my house-" she begins, and he waves his sleeve.
"Forget that," he says with a whole-body shrug. "Why's the old skelebones here?"
At first you don't understand, looking at the attending dog-headed Calavera; they're a known presence in the tower now, he shouldn't be surprised-
Then you catch Cirucci's eyes, staring over your shoulder, frozen mid-butter-spreading. You turn in your chair.
One of the old model Calaveras, with its human-like skull, is standing in the middle of your hall, staring at you with black, lifeless eye-pits.
"...so I take it he wasn't invited or anything," Luppi says incredulously. Neither of you answer.
There is a moment of stillness and quiet as you try to figure out what could bring the empty doll here. Your mind flashes with a memory of the depths, of a skull-headed soldier kneeling in worship, and you shake it off. The Calaveras have been moving around for reasons no one could explain, but reports of these eerie behaviors had stopped; you haven't heard of them in-
Then the Calavera opens its mouth. In the depths of its empty skeletal throat you hear the rumbling of the deepest river, a torrent trapped beneath the earth. Black water spills out from its mouth, between the teeth of its lipless face, down its jawbone into the ground, pooling at its feet. And when it speaks, it is with the voice of the multitude.
"Speech," the Calavera utters, "is Being. What was mute will have a voice. What was not-"
Then its words fail it. It falls silent. The water at its feet is now a perfect disk of darkness in which it stands alone, its jaws open, wordless.
It reaches up to the crown of its head, bony fingers grasping at the solid bone, and
digging. There is a sickening crunch as the skull parts, a crack spreading all across its face, until it pries open its own head.
From within the empty cavity spill more black waters, seeming not to end, and its blind hand reaches into it.
It withdraws something shining and beautiful, of gold or silver perhaps, and holds it out before you; but you cannot see it clearly for the tar that covers it. Then it closes its hand.
The air around the Calavera opens like a horrible, gaping wound, and begins to bleed the blackest of bloods. It drenches the Calavera's shoulders, its uniforms, and as it takes one step back it disappears into this dark curtain, and the wound heals, and the blackness dries up and soaks into the ground and is gone in an instant.
"Was that a
Garganta, Cirucci says baffled. You blink. You do think it was.
"How about we never speak of this again," Luppi says, a nervous tic of his lip showing the empty joke for what it is. You whirl in your seat, staring at him with wide-eyed intensity. He wanted to tell the story of He Who Leers at the gala. It was his favorite. How can he not
see it?
But he does. You see it in the shadow of his eyes.
"This thing is chained up at the bottom of the Las Noches underground," he tries half-heartedly. "It's just another weapon in Aizen's arsenal. I don't see…"
You do. You have been down there. You've seen one of them worship the river. You've seen Aaroniero rouse a Gillian from it, and command it, and delve deeper into the tunnels.
"Aaroniero?" Cirucci says, frowning. "I don't know what he could have to do with this, but…"
Right. Her scheme against Szayel. If Aaroniero was doing
something with the thing below, could this have forced him to act sooner?
It feels wrong. The timing is off, it has only been a day since the attack on Szayel's laboratory. And how do the Calaveras connect to this?
"I don't know," she says uncomfortably.
"This is going to cut into my Grimmjow time, isn't it," Luppi asks sulking.
You have no idea what's happening here. But you need to figure it out before it grows out of hand.
"I am not touching anything that has to do with Las Noches's underground with a ten-foot pole," Cirucci says, setting aside her toast. "But we probably should avoid being blindsided. If this turns out to be something Aizen can use against us…"
You shudder. From all the stories, his betrayal of Soul Society made excellent use of unpredicted disruptors. And that's assuming he doesn't already know more about what's going on than you do.
"At least let me finish my breakfast," Luppi says with a sigh. You wave him off. It's not like you are setting out this instant.
You need to figure out how to approach this first.
Investigate the re-emerging Calaveras and Hooleer with Luppi's help. Pick two options:
[ ] While the Tres Bestias are wise in all sorts of magical mysteries, their knowledge may be too general to be of use here. They came to Las Noches after you, which is to say long after Ruddborne and Hooleer. is a straightforward man, but at times oddly insightful. More importantly, he was one of the very first people to join Aizen's army, and saw both the birth of the Exequias and the capture of Hooleer. He might know more than one would suspect.
[ ] Barragan claimed kingship over all of Hueco Mundo, including its strangest monsters. He is also certain to have had his own thoughts on the mindless enforcers casting a shadow over his last shreds of authority. While the Old King himself is unlikely to be interested in answering questions, the
Royal Fraccions are nearly as old, and may prove more amenable.
[ ] You would normally never think to look up 'official records' in Las Noches. By all accounts, no one would bother to keep them. However, Luppi made an ill-advised comment in
Loly and Menoly's earshot, which prompted an even more ill-advised confrontation, and it turns out Aizen's personal aides do have something of value.
[ ] Jackelton did not seem like he knew much about what was going on with the Calaveras previously - but now that his own progeny haunt the corridors of Las Noches and that the old models' strange development has gone further, he may have new insight, or newly relevant memories, to bring you.
[ ] The Numeros that throng about Las Noches may have no idea as to the history and nature of the creatures you're investigating, but that does not make them useless. While time-consuming and perhaps dull, interrogating a number of them might allow you to gain a better understanding of the broader pictures of the reactivated Calaveras's numbers, movements, and actions.
