Winter War - Ensemble: Splitting The Party
Title: Winter War - Ensemble: Splitting The Party
Authors: incandescens, sophiap
Characters: Nanao, Hisagi, Ikkaku, Hanatarou, others
Rating/Warning: PG-13.
Notes: This is a dark AU co-plotted with sophiap and liralen. The war against Aizen's forces went very badly. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.
Summary: Luck, like so many other things, is finite.
Index of Links
[...]
28. Iba: Defense
29. Ensemble: Retaking Seireitei
30. Ensemble: Who Are You?
31. Orihime: Into First Gear
32. Ukitake: Sacrifices
ENSEMBLE: SPLITTING THE PARTY
“You are quite certain this is the only approach?” Nanao whispered. It was difficult to break the feeling that they were in enemy territory - well, they were in enemy territory - and the imperative to speak quietly.
Hisagi shrugged. “It’s the main approach. If there are other ones -“
“Yeah,” Grimmjow interrupted. “If he has got other doors in and out, he hasn’t told us about them.”
Lisa nodded. “I explored, but this was the only one I know about, and it was too risky to approach it openly.”
“I agree with everyone,” Hanatarou mumbled.
Inoue Orihime didn’t say anything. She gnawed on her knuckles thoughtfully, propped up against her brother. Nanao would have liked to give her more time to rest, but they simply couldn’t risk it. Pagally was quiet as well, hovering behind her master Hisagi, and Ayasegawa simply flipped his hair as though nothing was worth saying.
“Then we’ll do this as planned,” Nanao said. She turned to Ikkaku. “If you and Grimmjow - and Ayasegawa, perhaps - take the left corridor that leads to here, and Hisagi and everyone else take the right corridor, then you can all keep the watch while Inoue Orihime and Yadomaru-sempai and I try to get the lock open. That way there’s someone with each group who can claim local authority and try to smooth things over if you get any questions.”
“That’s not going to play if anyone actually notices that I haven’t got a fucking hole any more,” Grimmjow snarled.
Nanao glared at him.
“Nobody has so far,” Ikkaku said, with a smirk.
“I can handle it,” Ayasegawa said, finally deigning to speak. “I can say that Harribel -“ he visibly bit off the -sama - “that she went in to attack Aizen and told me not to let anyone else pass. That should stop people. And if it’s Ulquiorra, then you should hear me fighting him in time to run away.”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” Grimmjow said, cheering up. “I get first challenge, mind.”
“Which group do I go with?” Kurosaki Ichigo demanded.
“You stay with us,” Nanao said firmly. She noted the immediate upswing in Inoue Orihime’s mood, and decided it was worth ignoring the boy’s fretting for that alone. And there was, of course, the question of how long Inoue’s healing might last on him, and whether he might be prone to revert in moments of stress, or even if allowed to wander off on his own . . . yes, much better to keep him nearby. With an effort she modified her tone to one of polite request. “After all, if Aizen - or anyone else - walks out of his labs and right into us, we will need you on the spot there and then.”
Kurosaki thought it over. “All right,” he conceded. “Do you think it’ll take long?”
“I hope not,” Nanao said, with great sincerity.
Madarame was nodding, over to one side. She suspected that he was thinking along similar lines to hers. “That way there’s some good fighters with each group,” he said. “It’d be stupid to split ourselves up and risk the whole damn mission.”
Ayasegawa raised an eyebrow. “There was a time you wouldn’t have said that, Ikkaku.”
Madarame scowled, and his heavy-browed glare was furious enough that both Inoue siblings flinched, even if Ayasegawa only smiled at it. “Yeah, well. We all fucking change. Don’t we.”
“But sometimes it’s the best thing to do,” Kurosaki put in. His eyes were haunted, and he sounded more like someone trying to justify a past memory than someone seriously defending the position.
“Every situation is different,” Nanao said quickly, before they could get into another argument. “We’re wasting time. Let’s go.”
The group quickly split up. Yadomaru-sempai led the way down the corridor to the main laboratory door, as the two other groups retreated down their own passages.
“So what do you want me to do?” Inoue Orihime asked. Her voice was still shaky and tired. Her brother had his arm round her shoulder, partly steering her, partly supporting her.
“Yadomaru-sempai and I will take a look at the kidou locks first,” Nanao said. “Hopefully we can identify the crucial parts which actually cause a reaction. If you can block or undo them -“
“It’ll be like cutting the wire on an alarm so it can’t go off!” Kurosaki-kun said.
Nanao adjusted her glasses at him in a way that would have had most of the Eighth Division running for cover. “Yes,” she said frostily. “Along those lines.”
“Ooh,” Inoue Orihime said. “We’ll be like real carjackers.”
“’Fraid we can’t drive this one away,” Yadomaru-sempai said cheerfully. “It’s going to be a strictly up on jacks and take the wheels off, and then once we’re in it’s time to keep quiet and snatch the car stereo.”
Nanao looked at her. Meaningfully. Possibly a little plaintively.
“You never told me that the Vizards did that,” Kurosaki-kun said.
“That was more Hiyori-kun’s thing,” Yadomaru-sempai said reminiscently. “Shinji would just boost the whole car and then abandon it later.”
Kurosaki-kun looked somewhere between shocked and appalled. Perhaps it was just that simple things like robbery in the real world hit harder than death in a place like this, Nanao reflected. Maybe he was horrified by the illegal nature of Vizard activities. Perhaps they’d even sold the stolen cars on to Urahara Kisuke. It’d fit the man’s modus operandi.
“You never took me along,” he snivelled.
Nanao reconsidered her sympathy.
The door that they came to was large and white. It seemed to glow with a cold inner luminescence of its own, at the same time both inviting and warning, welcoming and threatening.
“Didn’t he have a skeleton hanging up here once?” Inoue Orihime asked. “Or was that just a rumour?”
“It was a rumour,” Kurosaki-kun said with authority. “Hollows don’t have skeletons, after all.”
Nanao ignored their babbling with the calm expertise she’d learned from years of having Kyouraku-taichou drivelling on in the background while she was trying to concentrate on something. As she peered closer, she thought that she recognised some of the typical kidou-locks that would have been used in Soul Society. It made sense, after all: Aizen wouldn’t expect any of the Hollows here to know about what was commonplace there. But she wasn’t going to be careless.
The situation was improved, for some small value of improvement, by the fact that there were only so many ways to use kidou to lock a door. Unless Aizen had come up with some completely new way of using existing techniques and modulations of energy - which he did not seem to have done - all that he could actually do would be to pile magical lock on top of magical lock, or somehow interlock them so that an unauthorised intruder would trigger a cascade reaction if he or she tried to open one without taking account of the others.
He seemed to have done both.
Nanao metaphorically cracked her fingers together. From what she’d seen of the Hollows and the Espada, brute force and unpleasant powers were well within their scope, but actual small-scale kidou-breaking wasn’t something that they specialised in. The scientist of the Espada was probably an exception, as was Kurotsuchi Mayuri, but the simplest way around that for Aizen would have been to include a particular lock-point (a part of the ignition, to borrow the car theft metaphor) which required his personal presence, or some sort of recognised token, if he had wanted to allow Gin or Tousen or even Hisagi to enter.
So, logically, if she could find that part of the kidou structure, and help Inoue Orihime to recognise it and temporarily negate it, then she should be able to unpick the rest of it enough to allow them through, and have it reset and snap shut behind them.
Good. She had a plan.
Somewhere in the distance, she could hear fighting, and for a moment she considered investigating. But that was why they’d split up, after all, so that each team could handle a different part of the job. She had to trust the other group to do their part. And she had to trust Yadomaru-sempai to keep an eye on Kurosaki-kun. And she had to trust herself to trust them.
She imagined a familiar generous presence at her back, just for a moment, just for the comfort of it, before bending her attention closer to the locks.
---
Shuuhei wasn't happy with the group he'd been assigned, but he also wasn't in any position to protest being saddled with them. Besides, what could he say even if he was? That they reminded him of everything he had--and hadn't--done?
Yeah, you're better off not saying anything, Kazeshini said. Just remember--I got us.
In terms of reliability, Hoshibana was his safest bet. Shuuhei didn't know him, but he certainly knew of him. Hoshibana had been the Sixth's third seat nearly twice as long as Kuchiki Byakuya had been captain, after all. He might be open in his distrust, but he was a capable shinigami and not likely to let personal agendas get in the way of the mission.
Hanatarou was probably trustworthy, but he was unarmed and probably knew little offensive kidou. Then there was the matter of that collar. Hanatarou had less of a chance than any of them of making through a battle alive.
He really wished Ogidou had been assigned to go with Ikkaku. No doubt Ogidou wished the same. Nothing was said, but Shuuhei was aware of Ogidou's watchfulness the way he would be aware of a knife point between his shoulderblades.
As for Pagally, he had no good reason to rely on her. She was a Hollow, after all. Besides, given what he knew about her, she was likely to either freeze or bolt if things got rough. He also wished she would stop sniffling.
With any luck, all that would happen was they would have a dull hour while Ise's group worked on the locks. Still, Shuuhei couldn't help but think that they had burned too much luck already. The fights against Harribel and Kurosaki had gone almost too well, with generous victories and no casualties.
"Madarame's group headed back the way we came," Hoshibana pointed out once they left the others. "We know what's back there, but what's in this direction?"
The hallway had just broadened just enough at this point for them to fight two abreast if need be--that meant two lines of defense for something or someone to try to break through while Pagally ran back to alert Ise and Yadomaru. Futher along, however, the hallway began to curve to the left. It seemed as if the curve was close by, but the angles of the walls and ceiling kept shifting and skewing, destroying any reliable perspective cues.
"Kurotsuchi's and Szayel's laboratories," Shuuhei said, even though the question had been directed more to Hanatarou than to him. "We're not going to want to go too far down this way, although..."
"Although it may be that Kurotsuchi's betrayal will turn out to be another misunderstanding, and we should seek his help," Ogidou offered up helpfully, voice silky smooth in a way that had Kazeshini snarling. "Perhaps he only maimed Ukitake-taichou in order to maintain cover."
Pagally took a step towards him, but Shuuhei took hold of her shoulder and shook his head, telling her to leave it be. Ogidou was obviously trying to provoke him, and the best thing to do was ignore it.
Kazeshini disagreed.
"An amusing suggestion, but perhaps not, ah... one we should follow up on?" Hoshibana said, one eyebrow raised. He sounded very relaxed about the whole thing, but Ogidou went red and quiet as if Hoshibana had got into his face and yelled at him to stand down.
Hanatarou looked at Shuuhei as if wanting to ask if he was all right while Hoshibana looked at him as if waiting to see what he would do next.
Against all expectation, Shuuhei remained calm. Calm, but he couldn't help tossing a little bit of nastiness back Ogidou's way. "Based on his continued experimentation on other members of your squad, Ogidou-hachiseki, I think Hoshibana-sanseki has the right of it." He made sure to emphasize their respective ranks.
Ogidou said nothing, but in that silence, Shuuhei heard a dozen questions about why he had let things go on as he had.
You're the one who brought it up, pal, Kazeshini said. Are you trying to be a fucking martyr? You get your rocks off on that kind of thing, or something? Anyhow--
"It's too quiet," Shuuhei said at the same time as Kazeshini.
"Pardon?" Hoshibana had maneuvered himself between Ogidou and Shuuhei, and it wasn't clear who he was shielding from whom.
"He's right." Hanatarou looked nervously over his shoulder, down the hallway which curved into dimness and too-yellow light. "It's usually noiser around here."
"I see." Hoshibana looked down the tunnel, grim-faced. "How much further do you suggest we venture?" He addressed Shuuhei directly this time, but he very pointedly did not use any form of address where the presence or absence of honorific would be noticed.
"About twenty yards or so past that curve up ahead. There's some doorways up there--Kurotsuchi's labs. Szayel's are further down," Shuuhei said.
"He's right," Hanatarou confirmed. "I've been..." He cleared his throat. "I've been in there a few times. For... um, cleanup. And yes, it's usually noisier. Much noisier."
Ogidou looked stricken, but Hanatarou seemed reluctant to accept any sympathy from him.
Pagally, on the other hand, was pressing close to Shuuhei. "I don't like the labs." She tugged on her mask as if trying to get it to cover more of her face. "All those creepy, creepy shinigami women. They're not right."
"Experiments?" Ogidou demanded.
Hanatarou shook his head. "Worse."
About time you two dumbfucks realized you left out an important detail, Kazeshini said.
"Kurotsuchi Nemu," Hisagi said. "There's more than one of them, now. I'm not sure how many, but there's usually a couple kicking around the labs. She--they--aren't the same as the one we knew back home."
Of course, none of them were the same people they knew back home, but that was a different story.
"Yamada, you and Ogidou take point," Shuuhei said. "Healers aren't exactly an unusual sight around here. You could buy us some time, maybe even talk us out of a situation if we run into someone who starts asking question."
Ogidou looked like he was going to protest, but Hanatarou shook his head. Before Shuuhei could say anything, Hoshibana spoke up.
"In that case, I'd best take rear, hm? Of the lot of us, I'm the one who stands out most as not belonging.
Sounds like a plan, Kazeshini said.
"Sounds like a plan," Shuuhei echoed, but he did not echo Kazeshini's comment about who was or was not likely to stab him in the back. "Let's go. And remember, halt before we actually get to the lab entrances. If anything comes out at us, I want it to be in front of us, not maybe surrounding us."
Hoshibana nodded his approval, and for once didn't seem to be quietly questioning him. Ogidou scowled, but headed off down the hallway all the same.
"I don't like him," Pagally whispered. "The other shinigami didn't look like they wanted to kill me. He does."
"You don't need to worry," Shuuhei told her. He wished she hadn't said that just as Hanatarou was passing, and he really wished Hanatarou hadn't given him a meaningful, anxious look as he did.
They walked up towards the curve to wait. Pagally's heels clacked unnervingly loudly even though she was trying to walk quietly. Just before rounding the curve, Hanatarou held up a hand behind his back, signaling them to wait. Then, hand still behind his back, he waved frantically at Shuuhei, as if telling him to get up there already. Shuuhei looked over his shoulder and gave a sharp nod. Hoshibana nodded and faded back, dropping into ready position.
Shuuhei walked forward, Pagally clacking along behind him.
"We did not request a healer's presence," he heard Kurotsuchi Nemu say from just out of sight. "Nor are there any experiments to be run while Mayuri-sama is away."
Fuck. I think there's two of 'em, Kazeshini said.
Shuuhei thought the zanpakutou was right. Also, what was that about Mayuri being away? He took a deep breath and prepared what he hoped was a likely story.
Right. Like they'll just go along and not say a peep to anyone.
He told Kazeshini to shut up.
"They're with me," he said as he drew near to the group. As it turned out, Kazeshini was wrong about there being two Nemus. There were three. "Aizen-sama did not inform me that Kurotsuchi was leaving Las Noches. I don't suppose one of you three could tell me when he'll be back."
He hoped Hoshibana heard that last part and knew what it meant. Hanatarou was shaking and trying not to. Ogidou simply examined the Nemu trio with clinical curiosity.
As for the Nemus, they looked at each other as if having a silent conversation. They probably were. He could practically hear the whirring.
The Nemus turned to back to the group in unison, but only one of them spoke. "Mayuri-sama went to investigate an anomaly. He did not say when he would be back."
Hanatarou looked back at him pleadingly. It wasn't the first time Shuuhei had received that kind of look here, but it was the first time in a long time he felt he could actually help.
"Kurotsuchi not being here is a problem," he informed the Nemus. That was not a lie. The only question was how to get word to Ise about this. Kurotsuchi not being here should theoretically give them an advantage, but some instinct told him it did not.
Me, I'm wondering where the fuck he's gone if he's not here.
Inspiration struck. It was a gamble, but so was this whole venture. So far, he'd done nothing but tell the truth to the Nemus, so he'd just continue that mad couse of action as long as he could. "Pagally, please go inform Yadomaru Lisa that Kurotsuchi Mayuri is not where we were told he would be. She may need to adjust her plans for the day."
Instead of leaving, Pagally clung tighter, staring at the Nemus and shivering. One of them looked down at her consideringly. Another looked carefully at Shuuhei, frowning down at Kazeshini by his side in a way that made him very aware of his hand on the scabbard, thumb poised to release the blade.
The third was very interested in Ogidou, rising up on tip-toe then stooping down to look him over so closely she appeared to be smelling him. Ogidou smiled as winningly as he could, but Shuuhei could see that he'd gone pale and clammy.
Then, she took a step back. She stood ramrod straight, and her eyes were level with the base of Ogidou's throat.
"This one does not have a collar," she stated. "And he wears a sword. That is not permitted."
The Nemu studying Shuuhei turned sharply to study Ogidou. "He is not on our approved list of prisoners."
Shuuhei tried to think of how to explain their way out of this, but he couldn't think with Kazeshini shouting out his own suggestions. It was only a second's hesitation, but it was long enough for Ogidou to lunge at the Nemu closest to him, hands crackling with kidou as they closed around her throat.
The third Nemu opened her mouth. Her expression did not change even as her sister-self convulsed once and went still, but a high-pitched noise came out. It wasn't a scream. It grew steadily louder.
"Damn it! She's sounded the alarm! Pagally, run!"
Hoshibana charged around the corner. He blocked Pagally and shoved her back towards the group. "They'll hear the fighting well enough! If you can fight, young lady, stay here and fight!"
Good call, Kazeshini said. Shuuhei repeated the opinion, even if he didn't agree with it.
Ogidou was already in the thick of the fight, yelling for Shuuhei and Hanatarou to help him already. A door further up the hallway slid open and five more Nemus came running out.
Hoshibana removed one of the Nemu's heads with a clean stroke. Hanatarou was doing what he could with kidou, but most of that was defense.
Shuuhei hadn't even drawn his sword. He couldn't. Kurotsuchi Nemu had been a colleague.
Not any more she isn't, asshole!
Three more Nemus came from up the hall to replace the three Hoshibana and Ogidou had cut down. One of them literally pinned Ogidou to the corridor wall, arm shooting out to a grotesque length so that her hand pierced his shoulder.
From behind him, he heard a shaky, frightened cry of "Fly, Cernicalo!" and then a bird-like Hollow shot past him and darted between two of the Nemus almost faster than he could see. Pagally's wings appeared soft and fragile, but the Nemus were sliced open in dozens of places where those wings had brushed. It only slowed them down, though, and one of them leapt for him even though her forearm was only attached by a flap of skin.
He drew his sword and at once felt blood on his hand, dead weight slumping against him, but all he had done was evade the attack.
There was what sounded like an electrical jolt and he heard Pagally scream and then go quiet. Hoshibana was fighting off four Nemus. Hanatarou was on the ground, not moving.
Kill her! Kill her! She's not Iemura! Oh, fuck this...
Shuuhei ran forward, Kazeshini whipping out of its sheath and falling into its two parts with the release command. It all seemed very far away, even though he felt himself send one of the blades clattered out lightning fast straight towards the Nemu that was killing Ogidou. It would cut her in half if he didn't stop it in time.
No worries, pal.
Shuuhei didn't see the blade strike. He didn't see anything. Feel anything. Or hear anything in the darkness, except for three words that were whispered closer than he ever thought possible:
I got us.
---
The distant thumps and yells were sweetly familiar. A fight. A good one from the sound of it. Ikkaku gripped Hoozukimaru tight and looked down his assigned hallway at a fat lot of nothing.
"Do you hear that?" Yumichika asked. From the sound of it, he knew damn well that Ikkaku did hear the fight.
"I ain't deaf."
"Ah." Yumichika continued to stare down at the same batch of nothing Ikkaku was staring at. Ikkaku could hear the grin. "So why aren't you running towards it?"
Pounding footsteps that faded off real fast told him that Boy Blue had already taken off. No big loss.
Ikkaku glared at his friend. Yumichika still looked creepy as fuck in that white getup of his, but the smirk was familiar enough.
"Ah, ah, ahhh.... Before you ask me why I'm not running off--I asked you first, Ikkaku."
"Fuck, you know I hate it when you do that." There was now a lot of yelling from down the corridor. Then, a scream. "It ain't like I don't want to."
He did. Dammit, he did. But he wouldn't.
"Not gonna fuck up again like I did at the pillar," he muttered. Yumichika knew what he meant.
"I see."
They were silent again for a while, facing down that big, deadly, scary nothing-at-all that was coming at them.
"So, why ain't you running to fight, you pansy?"
Yumichika shrugged. "Well, you saw what happened the last time I ran off to a fight and left you behind," he said easily enough.
Ikkaku thought about that for a moment, then nodded.
"Fair enough, I guess."
Then, after a few more minutes:
"Fuck, I'm bored."
At least the company was good.
---
Hanatarou hit the ground hard. A flare of pain so intense it was cold said he'd either broken or sprained his wrist.
How many more of the Nemus were there? Hanatarou had seen as many as three dozen of them, but only eleven had come out to fight them. The others couldn't be far behind.
There was no way they could win, but still, Hanatarou needed to get up, needed to help. He got to his feet. That was the first step. The second step--he didn't know. There was too much that needed to be done.
Ogidou was about to be stabbed through the throat, Hoshibana had killed two of the enemy but was now losing ground to two more, the little Hollow girl was down and moaning quietly, and Hisagi-fukutaichou...
Hisagi-fukutaichou was just standing there, watching openmouthed. His zanpakutou was halfway out of its scabbard, and his eyes were wide. He sidestepped an attack, but otherwise, didn't appear to be aware of anything other than an invisible something that had his eyes wide with terror.
Before Hanatarou could shout at him and beg him to come to his senses, everything changed. The slack mouth sharpened to a grin. His eyes narrowed. Then, with a mocking command of Reap, Hisagi-fukutaichou released his shikai and cut two of the Nemus in half with one lazy strike.
Ogidou-san slumped to the floor, and Hanatarou finally had something to do. He only had the one hand to work with, but with Ogidou conscious enough to brace his own shoulder, Hanatarou was able to pull the arm piercing it free.
He tossed it aside and tried not to think too much about what it all meant. He had a patient to treat and right now that was all that mattered.
"I'll do yours if you do mine," Ogidou panted. He was smiling, but his eyes were unfocused with pain. "Just a fast patch, though. Gotta stuff I need to do."
Hanatarou nodded, and did a simple kidou that would stop the bleeding and would restore a degree of mobility. Ogidou would be able to use the shoulder without much pain, but it would inflict more damage.
"Thanks." Ogidou grabbed Hanatarou's wrist, and after a flash of pain that had him seeing white, the wrist stopped hurting. In fact, Hanatarou couldn't feel a thing below his elbow.
"Thank you?" he said quietly, but Ogidou was gone, shoving his way into the fight alongside Hoshibana. Only two more Nemus had come running, and now there were six. Five--Hisagi-fukutaichou cut down another one. He was still grinning.
Hanatarou was no good in this kind of fight. He could help the most by getting Hisagi-fukutaichou's Hollow-servant back into the fight. Her wings had vanished, and she was curled in on herself, shivering or maybe convulsing from the electric shock. She flinched away from him when he knelt down beside her. He would have to trust the others to keep the fight away from him while he worked.
"Shh... shh... it's okay. I'm here to help you."
Funny, but he was almost never scared when he was working on someone who was badly hurt. There just wasn't room for scared when someone needed him.
The little Hollow rolled her unmasked eye to look at him. She was terrified.
"Here. Let me see that burn."
He heard a wet double-thunk as Hisagi-fukutaichou took down another Nemu. Four. Then, the sound of a sword being pulled free from a body, and a single, heavier thump. Three.
Hanatarou held the little Hollow as firmly as he could and examined the electrical burn on her arm and shoulder. With his good hand, he let a mild healing kidou flow into her skin. She meeped in surprise, then scuttled away from him as fast as she could. She poked at her belly to see if it hurt, and when it didn't, glared at him as if he had just done something to trick her.
"This one wears a collar."
Hanatarou tried to turn around, but only ended up moving from his knees to his butt. He caught himself with his bad hand and felt something inside shift. The lack of pain made it worse.
A Nemu stood over him. "Remote collar access override," she said calmly. "Five-three-delta-four-epsilon-seven-theta..."
The numbers rattled out faster than he could follow. His hand went to his collar as if that could stop the blast. He'd known for months it would end like this, so why did it make him so angry when it finally did?
"...eight-zero-sigm...ah!"
Her face went slack. Everything went slack, shifting and sagging beneath the skin like liquid running out of a punctured bag. Blood streamed from her mouth, nose, and ears, and she collapsed wetly to the floor. Ogidou reached down to help him up. "That was close," he said cheerfully. "Good thing I was paying attention."
Hanatarou shook his head. He did not take Ogidou's hand, and he tried to keep his own from trembling. "I'll be fine," he said faintly. "Go. Just... go."
"Okay," Ogidou said. How could he be smiling? "Just a few more things to take care of, and we're done here, Yamada-san."
He sounded very pleased with himself.
The Nemu who had nearly exploded his collar lay where she had fallen. Blood and more than blood still oozed from her mouth, and her skin was loose over muscle. What had he just seen? He knew that kidou. He recognized that energy. It was meant to re-knit torn connective tissue, but just now it had been turned upside-down and inside-out.
What had they become? Was survival worth turning into this?
He could hardly even bring himself to feel sorry for what had happened to Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou anymore.
The fight went on, but not for long. Only two Nemus were left. One of them screamed their alarm cry, but no more of them came from the labs.
The other's arms split and spun apart into thousands of sparking wires that wove into a net running from floor to ceiling in front of her. The electric current was loud enough to hear even over her sister's scream. Hisagi-fukutaichou was poised to strike, but he held back. No matter how fast his kusarigami cut through that net, the shock would kill him.
Ogidou grabbed the screamer from behind. It seemed to be his favorite tactic. She went quiet at once, but it was probably Hoshibana's blade that killed her. Hoshibana was badly wounded himself, and fell along with the Nemu. Hanatarou rushed to his side, even as Ogidou ran to help Hisagi finish off the last Nemu and her barrier.
"I think they mean to protect the labs," Hoshibana said, talking over Hanatarou’s pleas for him to be still and quiet. "See how she's digging in to stand her ground?"
He was right. Hanatarou saw the lab door just behind the thickening barrier. Maybe Ogidou could use his kidou to deflect the electricity long enough for Hisagi-fukutaichou to cut through it.
Hanatarou shivered at the memory of the kidou demonstration he had just seen. Ogidou had acted as if the whole thing had been fun. The callousness Hanatarou remembered (and had disliked) had changed to something else, just as Hisagi-fukutaichou had turned into something else. Hisagi-fukutaichou looked like he had enjoyed killing those Nemus, and now he stared at the electrified net with more hunger than frustration. Ogidou stood right behind him, just as hungry.
Hanatarou slapped himself hard--what was wrong with him? He needed to focus on the patient! But his gaze was fixed on the two men the way it would be on a poisonous snake poised to strike.
In the end, perhaps it was a good thing he could not stop watching. Perhaps it wasn't. Either way, Ogidou moved so quickly Hanatarou nearly missed it.
"Hisagi-fukutaichou! Behind you!"
His cry was almost too late. Hisagi-fukutaichou turned just as Ogidou's hands closed around his neck. Kazeshini's blade went right through Ogidou's spine, and Ogidou fell to the ground. He caught Hanatarou's eye just before he fell, and Hanatarou could never remember a look of such hatred directed at him before.
Hisagi-fukutaichou looked down at him and Hoshibana, narrow-eyed and half-amused. It was worse than Ogidou's hatred. The skin on his neck was raw and blistered where Ogidou had grabbed him, but he didn't seem to mind.
"Thanks for the warning," he drawled. "Now you--Hoshibana? Are you gonna pull a dumb stunt like that?"
Hoshibana coughed. Hanatarou was relieved to see there was no blood on his lips. "Please. If I had wanted you dead, I would have been far more subtle about it. I am also hardly in a position to judge you over what you did to Iemura." He looked at Ogidou's body, and Hanatarou could not judge his expression. "I do wish it had not come to this," he said, and the words sounded as resigned as they did bitter.
"I'm sorry," Hanatarou said. If he had not said something, Ogidou would be alive and Hisagi would be dead. He wondered if Hoshibana wished it were the other way around.
"Don't blame yourself," Hoshibana said in a dismissive manner that ensured Hanatarou would never stop wondering if he could have done something differently.
"Okay, so how are we gonna take her out?" Hisagi-fukutaichou asked as if none of this had just happened. He joggled his zanpakutou's chain impatiently, as if he might go ahead and throw the blades, electricity or no electricity. "Ah, hell. Here goes nothin'"
He whirled the blades over his head and released both at once. One clanged and sparked against the ceiling, pulling the other blade short. Hisagi lunged for his sword as if terrified to let it out of his hands for a more than a second, and barely stopped himself before the tip of one axeblade hit the net.
The net shorted out with explosive force, peppering them with fragments of white-hot wire. Hisagi-fukutaichou took off towards the labs.
A quick examination showed that Hoshibana had broken--not cracked-ribs. and a concussion. Hanatarou started the healing kidou, but Hoshibana pushed him away.
"Go after him. I am not about to murder him, but I am also not about to trust him. Go!"
Hanatarou nodded. He did pause for just a second to look at Ogidou, even though there was no hope; for that kind of wound, they would have needed Unohana-taichou. Still, he felt it was his duty to look. To see.
Ogidou was the rescue party's first loss, and that loss was in part Hanatarou's doing.
Hisagi-fukutaichou stopped short in the lab door, giving Hanatarou the seconds he needed to catch up.
"Is that it?" Hisagi demanded. "You mean that was all of them? And where the hell are Szayel’s goons?"
"They'd be here if they thought there was a chance to go through Kurotsuchi's labs. Maybe they didn't hear?" Hanatarou knew that wasn't true the moment he said it. The two scientists were always, always spying on each other.
Hisagi went back out into the hallway. Pagally was helping Hoshibana to his feet. "We got another problem!" he yelled. "Wherever Kurotsuchi's gone, Szayel's followed or the other way 'round. If they've gone to Soul Society, we're screwed! Go tell Ise!" Then he ducked into the lab again. Hoshibana waved at Hanatarou to follow Hisagi.
The first thing he noticed was that the doors to the holding chambers were open and the cages inside were empty. The covered cage he had seen the other day was still there, but the cover was gone and the cage door was open. He saw what looked like a few feathers on the cage floor.
Hisagi was over at one of the cabinets, searching through the bottles and jars. He took out a pill vial, tipped the contents into his hand, then dry-swallowed them all at once.
"Hisagi-fukutaichou!" Hanatarou caught the vial as Hisagi tossed it over his shoulder. "What are you doing?"
"Making sure I stay awake," he rasped. "No, it ain't smart, but if I don't stay awake, things are gonna get bad."
"What... I don't understand?"
"Nothing to understand, shorty." Hisagi was now pacing fitfully through the labs, checking every screen, every scrap of paper. "I know what I need to do to keep going, okay? Now we got to see if we can find out where the resident freakshow went."
Hanatarou nodded as Hisagi headed back to the innermost workrooms. "I'll gather some supplies for later." The labs were the closest thing they had to an infirmary. Unless Hisagi had swallowed the last of them, there should be some energy pills. He checked the bottle he had caught to see how they would be labeled.
Then he checked it again.
Did Hisagi-fukutaichou just swallow a handful of sleeping pills?
"Hisagi-fukutaichou! I think you may have--"
He was cut off by a gust of terrified swearing from back in the workroom. "Yamada! Get your ass in here! Now!"
Hanatarou dropped the pill vials and ran towards the noise. He'd never been back this far, and he'd always counted himself lucky in that regard. Workrooms opened off an L-shaped corridor, and it took him a moment to find the right one.
Hisagi-fukutaichou was standing over some sort of trough. The dim overhead lights reflected off something green in the trough, casting ripples of nauseating light over Hisagi's face.
"She's been fucking severed from her zanpakutou!" he said. He sounded like he was going to be sick.
"What? Who? And how can you tell?" Hanatarou hurried over to Hisagi's side. Who was it? One of the female medics? Kusajishi-fukutaichou? Had Unohana-taichou been recaptured?
"How can't you?" he said blankly. "Look at her."
At first, all Hanatarou felt was disappointment. It was just another one of the Nemus, half-submerged in some sort of green gel. She was gaunt and most of her hair had fallen out. Her eyes fluttered open.
"Yamada-san? Hisagi-fukutaichou?" Her voice was thin and reedy. "Please, can you tell me where I am, and why... it's gone, oh, it's gone..."
"Yeah. I know."
Hisagi-fukutaichou reached down and rested a hand on her forehead, and Kurotsuchi Nemu--the real one--started crying softly.
---
Authors: incandescens, sophiap
Characters: Nanao, Hisagi, Ikkaku, Hanatarou, others
Rating/Warning: PG-13.
Notes: This is a dark AU co-plotted with sophiap and liralen. The war against Aizen's forces went very badly. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.
Summary: Luck, like so many other things, is finite.
Index of Links
[...]
28. Iba: Defense
29. Ensemble: Retaking Seireitei
30. Ensemble: Who Are You?
31. Orihime: Into First Gear
32. Ukitake: Sacrifices
ENSEMBLE: SPLITTING THE PARTY
“You are quite certain this is the only approach?” Nanao whispered. It was difficult to break the feeling that they were in enemy territory - well, they were in enemy territory - and the imperative to speak quietly.
Hisagi shrugged. “It’s the main approach. If there are other ones -“
“Yeah,” Grimmjow interrupted. “If he has got other doors in and out, he hasn’t told us about them.”
Lisa nodded. “I explored, but this was the only one I know about, and it was too risky to approach it openly.”
“I agree with everyone,” Hanatarou mumbled.
Inoue Orihime didn’t say anything. She gnawed on her knuckles thoughtfully, propped up against her brother. Nanao would have liked to give her more time to rest, but they simply couldn’t risk it. Pagally was quiet as well, hovering behind her master Hisagi, and Ayasegawa simply flipped his hair as though nothing was worth saying.
“Then we’ll do this as planned,” Nanao said. She turned to Ikkaku. “If you and Grimmjow - and Ayasegawa, perhaps - take the left corridor that leads to here, and Hisagi and everyone else take the right corridor, then you can all keep the watch while Inoue Orihime and Yadomaru-sempai and I try to get the lock open. That way there’s someone with each group who can claim local authority and try to smooth things over if you get any questions.”
“That’s not going to play if anyone actually notices that I haven’t got a fucking hole any more,” Grimmjow snarled.
Nanao glared at him.
“Nobody has so far,” Ikkaku said, with a smirk.
“I can handle it,” Ayasegawa said, finally deigning to speak. “I can say that Harribel -“ he visibly bit off the -sama - “that she went in to attack Aizen and told me not to let anyone else pass. That should stop people. And if it’s Ulquiorra, then you should hear me fighting him in time to run away.”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” Grimmjow said, cheering up. “I get first challenge, mind.”
“Which group do I go with?” Kurosaki Ichigo demanded.
“You stay with us,” Nanao said firmly. She noted the immediate upswing in Inoue Orihime’s mood, and decided it was worth ignoring the boy’s fretting for that alone. And there was, of course, the question of how long Inoue’s healing might last on him, and whether he might be prone to revert in moments of stress, or even if allowed to wander off on his own . . . yes, much better to keep him nearby. With an effort she modified her tone to one of polite request. “After all, if Aizen - or anyone else - walks out of his labs and right into us, we will need you on the spot there and then.”
Kurosaki thought it over. “All right,” he conceded. “Do you think it’ll take long?”
“I hope not,” Nanao said, with great sincerity.
Madarame was nodding, over to one side. She suspected that he was thinking along similar lines to hers. “That way there’s some good fighters with each group,” he said. “It’d be stupid to split ourselves up and risk the whole damn mission.”
Ayasegawa raised an eyebrow. “There was a time you wouldn’t have said that, Ikkaku.”
Madarame scowled, and his heavy-browed glare was furious enough that both Inoue siblings flinched, even if Ayasegawa only smiled at it. “Yeah, well. We all fucking change. Don’t we.”
“But sometimes it’s the best thing to do,” Kurosaki put in. His eyes were haunted, and he sounded more like someone trying to justify a past memory than someone seriously defending the position.
“Every situation is different,” Nanao said quickly, before they could get into another argument. “We’re wasting time. Let’s go.”
The group quickly split up. Yadomaru-sempai led the way down the corridor to the main laboratory door, as the two other groups retreated down their own passages.
“So what do you want me to do?” Inoue Orihime asked. Her voice was still shaky and tired. Her brother had his arm round her shoulder, partly steering her, partly supporting her.
“Yadomaru-sempai and I will take a look at the kidou locks first,” Nanao said. “Hopefully we can identify the crucial parts which actually cause a reaction. If you can block or undo them -“
“It’ll be like cutting the wire on an alarm so it can’t go off!” Kurosaki-kun said.
Nanao adjusted her glasses at him in a way that would have had most of the Eighth Division running for cover. “Yes,” she said frostily. “Along those lines.”
“Ooh,” Inoue Orihime said. “We’ll be like real carjackers.”
“’Fraid we can’t drive this one away,” Yadomaru-sempai said cheerfully. “It’s going to be a strictly up on jacks and take the wheels off, and then once we’re in it’s time to keep quiet and snatch the car stereo.”
Nanao looked at her. Meaningfully. Possibly a little plaintively.
“You never told me that the Vizards did that,” Kurosaki-kun said.
“That was more Hiyori-kun’s thing,” Yadomaru-sempai said reminiscently. “Shinji would just boost the whole car and then abandon it later.”
Kurosaki-kun looked somewhere between shocked and appalled. Perhaps it was just that simple things like robbery in the real world hit harder than death in a place like this, Nanao reflected. Maybe he was horrified by the illegal nature of Vizard activities. Perhaps they’d even sold the stolen cars on to Urahara Kisuke. It’d fit the man’s modus operandi.
“You never took me along,” he snivelled.
Nanao reconsidered her sympathy.
The door that they came to was large and white. It seemed to glow with a cold inner luminescence of its own, at the same time both inviting and warning, welcoming and threatening.
“Didn’t he have a skeleton hanging up here once?” Inoue Orihime asked. “Or was that just a rumour?”
“It was a rumour,” Kurosaki-kun said with authority. “Hollows don’t have skeletons, after all.”
Nanao ignored their babbling with the calm expertise she’d learned from years of having Kyouraku-taichou drivelling on in the background while she was trying to concentrate on something. As she peered closer, she thought that she recognised some of the typical kidou-locks that would have been used in Soul Society. It made sense, after all: Aizen wouldn’t expect any of the Hollows here to know about what was commonplace there. But she wasn’t going to be careless.
The situation was improved, for some small value of improvement, by the fact that there were only so many ways to use kidou to lock a door. Unless Aizen had come up with some completely new way of using existing techniques and modulations of energy - which he did not seem to have done - all that he could actually do would be to pile magical lock on top of magical lock, or somehow interlock them so that an unauthorised intruder would trigger a cascade reaction if he or she tried to open one without taking account of the others.
He seemed to have done both.
Nanao metaphorically cracked her fingers together. From what she’d seen of the Hollows and the Espada, brute force and unpleasant powers were well within their scope, but actual small-scale kidou-breaking wasn’t something that they specialised in. The scientist of the Espada was probably an exception, as was Kurotsuchi Mayuri, but the simplest way around that for Aizen would have been to include a particular lock-point (a part of the ignition, to borrow the car theft metaphor) which required his personal presence, or some sort of recognised token, if he had wanted to allow Gin or Tousen or even Hisagi to enter.
So, logically, if she could find that part of the kidou structure, and help Inoue Orihime to recognise it and temporarily negate it, then she should be able to unpick the rest of it enough to allow them through, and have it reset and snap shut behind them.
Good. She had a plan.
Somewhere in the distance, she could hear fighting, and for a moment she considered investigating. But that was why they’d split up, after all, so that each team could handle a different part of the job. She had to trust the other group to do their part. And she had to trust Yadomaru-sempai to keep an eye on Kurosaki-kun. And she had to trust herself to trust them.
She imagined a familiar generous presence at her back, just for a moment, just for the comfort of it, before bending her attention closer to the locks.
---
Shuuhei wasn't happy with the group he'd been assigned, but he also wasn't in any position to protest being saddled with them. Besides, what could he say even if he was? That they reminded him of everything he had--and hadn't--done?
Yeah, you're better off not saying anything, Kazeshini said. Just remember--I got us.
In terms of reliability, Hoshibana was his safest bet. Shuuhei didn't know him, but he certainly knew of him. Hoshibana had been the Sixth's third seat nearly twice as long as Kuchiki Byakuya had been captain, after all. He might be open in his distrust, but he was a capable shinigami and not likely to let personal agendas get in the way of the mission.
Hanatarou was probably trustworthy, but he was unarmed and probably knew little offensive kidou. Then there was the matter of that collar. Hanatarou had less of a chance than any of them of making through a battle alive.
He really wished Ogidou had been assigned to go with Ikkaku. No doubt Ogidou wished the same. Nothing was said, but Shuuhei was aware of Ogidou's watchfulness the way he would be aware of a knife point between his shoulderblades.
As for Pagally, he had no good reason to rely on her. She was a Hollow, after all. Besides, given what he knew about her, she was likely to either freeze or bolt if things got rough. He also wished she would stop sniffling.
With any luck, all that would happen was they would have a dull hour while Ise's group worked on the locks. Still, Shuuhei couldn't help but think that they had burned too much luck already. The fights against Harribel and Kurosaki had gone almost too well, with generous victories and no casualties.
"Madarame's group headed back the way we came," Hoshibana pointed out once they left the others. "We know what's back there, but what's in this direction?"
The hallway had just broadened just enough at this point for them to fight two abreast if need be--that meant two lines of defense for something or someone to try to break through while Pagally ran back to alert Ise and Yadomaru. Futher along, however, the hallway began to curve to the left. It seemed as if the curve was close by, but the angles of the walls and ceiling kept shifting and skewing, destroying any reliable perspective cues.
"Kurotsuchi's and Szayel's laboratories," Shuuhei said, even though the question had been directed more to Hanatarou than to him. "We're not going to want to go too far down this way, although..."
"Although it may be that Kurotsuchi's betrayal will turn out to be another misunderstanding, and we should seek his help," Ogidou offered up helpfully, voice silky smooth in a way that had Kazeshini snarling. "Perhaps he only maimed Ukitake-taichou in order to maintain cover."
Pagally took a step towards him, but Shuuhei took hold of her shoulder and shook his head, telling her to leave it be. Ogidou was obviously trying to provoke him, and the best thing to do was ignore it.
Kazeshini disagreed.
"An amusing suggestion, but perhaps not, ah... one we should follow up on?" Hoshibana said, one eyebrow raised. He sounded very relaxed about the whole thing, but Ogidou went red and quiet as if Hoshibana had got into his face and yelled at him to stand down.
Hanatarou looked at Shuuhei as if wanting to ask if he was all right while Hoshibana looked at him as if waiting to see what he would do next.
Against all expectation, Shuuhei remained calm. Calm, but he couldn't help tossing a little bit of nastiness back Ogidou's way. "Based on his continued experimentation on other members of your squad, Ogidou-hachiseki, I think Hoshibana-sanseki has the right of it." He made sure to emphasize their respective ranks.
Ogidou said nothing, but in that silence, Shuuhei heard a dozen questions about why he had let things go on as he had.
You're the one who brought it up, pal, Kazeshini said. Are you trying to be a fucking martyr? You get your rocks off on that kind of thing, or something? Anyhow--
"It's too quiet," Shuuhei said at the same time as Kazeshini.
"Pardon?" Hoshibana had maneuvered himself between Ogidou and Shuuhei, and it wasn't clear who he was shielding from whom.
"He's right." Hanatarou looked nervously over his shoulder, down the hallway which curved into dimness and too-yellow light. "It's usually noiser around here."
"I see." Hoshibana looked down the tunnel, grim-faced. "How much further do you suggest we venture?" He addressed Shuuhei directly this time, but he very pointedly did not use any form of address where the presence or absence of honorific would be noticed.
"About twenty yards or so past that curve up ahead. There's some doorways up there--Kurotsuchi's labs. Szayel's are further down," Shuuhei said.
"He's right," Hanatarou confirmed. "I've been..." He cleared his throat. "I've been in there a few times. For... um, cleanup. And yes, it's usually noisier. Much noisier."
Ogidou looked stricken, but Hanatarou seemed reluctant to accept any sympathy from him.
Pagally, on the other hand, was pressing close to Shuuhei. "I don't like the labs." She tugged on her mask as if trying to get it to cover more of her face. "All those creepy, creepy shinigami women. They're not right."
"Experiments?" Ogidou demanded.
Hanatarou shook his head. "Worse."
About time you two dumbfucks realized you left out an important detail, Kazeshini said.
"Kurotsuchi Nemu," Hisagi said. "There's more than one of them, now. I'm not sure how many, but there's usually a couple kicking around the labs. She--they--aren't the same as the one we knew back home."
Of course, none of them were the same people they knew back home, but that was a different story.
"Yamada, you and Ogidou take point," Shuuhei said. "Healers aren't exactly an unusual sight around here. You could buy us some time, maybe even talk us out of a situation if we run into someone who starts asking question."
Ogidou looked like he was going to protest, but Hanatarou shook his head. Before Shuuhei could say anything, Hoshibana spoke up.
"In that case, I'd best take rear, hm? Of the lot of us, I'm the one who stands out most as not belonging.
Sounds like a plan, Kazeshini said.
"Sounds like a plan," Shuuhei echoed, but he did not echo Kazeshini's comment about who was or was not likely to stab him in the back. "Let's go. And remember, halt before we actually get to the lab entrances. If anything comes out at us, I want it to be in front of us, not maybe surrounding us."
Hoshibana nodded his approval, and for once didn't seem to be quietly questioning him. Ogidou scowled, but headed off down the hallway all the same.
"I don't like him," Pagally whispered. "The other shinigami didn't look like they wanted to kill me. He does."
"You don't need to worry," Shuuhei told her. He wished she hadn't said that just as Hanatarou was passing, and he really wished Hanatarou hadn't given him a meaningful, anxious look as he did.
They walked up towards the curve to wait. Pagally's heels clacked unnervingly loudly even though she was trying to walk quietly. Just before rounding the curve, Hanatarou held up a hand behind his back, signaling them to wait. Then, hand still behind his back, he waved frantically at Shuuhei, as if telling him to get up there already. Shuuhei looked over his shoulder and gave a sharp nod. Hoshibana nodded and faded back, dropping into ready position.
Shuuhei walked forward, Pagally clacking along behind him.
"We did not request a healer's presence," he heard Kurotsuchi Nemu say from just out of sight. "Nor are there any experiments to be run while Mayuri-sama is away."
Fuck. I think there's two of 'em, Kazeshini said.
Shuuhei thought the zanpakutou was right. Also, what was that about Mayuri being away? He took a deep breath and prepared what he hoped was a likely story.
Right. Like they'll just go along and not say a peep to anyone.
He told Kazeshini to shut up.
"They're with me," he said as he drew near to the group. As it turned out, Kazeshini was wrong about there being two Nemus. There were three. "Aizen-sama did not inform me that Kurotsuchi was leaving Las Noches. I don't suppose one of you three could tell me when he'll be back."
He hoped Hoshibana heard that last part and knew what it meant. Hanatarou was shaking and trying not to. Ogidou simply examined the Nemu trio with clinical curiosity.
As for the Nemus, they looked at each other as if having a silent conversation. They probably were. He could practically hear the whirring.
The Nemus turned to back to the group in unison, but only one of them spoke. "Mayuri-sama went to investigate an anomaly. He did not say when he would be back."
Hanatarou looked back at him pleadingly. It wasn't the first time Shuuhei had received that kind of look here, but it was the first time in a long time he felt he could actually help.
"Kurotsuchi not being here is a problem," he informed the Nemus. That was not a lie. The only question was how to get word to Ise about this. Kurotsuchi not being here should theoretically give them an advantage, but some instinct told him it did not.
Me, I'm wondering where the fuck he's gone if he's not here.
Inspiration struck. It was a gamble, but so was this whole venture. So far, he'd done nothing but tell the truth to the Nemus, so he'd just continue that mad couse of action as long as he could. "Pagally, please go inform Yadomaru Lisa that Kurotsuchi Mayuri is not where we were told he would be. She may need to adjust her plans for the day."
Instead of leaving, Pagally clung tighter, staring at the Nemus and shivering. One of them looked down at her consideringly. Another looked carefully at Shuuhei, frowning down at Kazeshini by his side in a way that made him very aware of his hand on the scabbard, thumb poised to release the blade.
The third was very interested in Ogidou, rising up on tip-toe then stooping down to look him over so closely she appeared to be smelling him. Ogidou smiled as winningly as he could, but Shuuhei could see that he'd gone pale and clammy.
Then, she took a step back. She stood ramrod straight, and her eyes were level with the base of Ogidou's throat.
"This one does not have a collar," she stated. "And he wears a sword. That is not permitted."
The Nemu studying Shuuhei turned sharply to study Ogidou. "He is not on our approved list of prisoners."
Shuuhei tried to think of how to explain their way out of this, but he couldn't think with Kazeshini shouting out his own suggestions. It was only a second's hesitation, but it was long enough for Ogidou to lunge at the Nemu closest to him, hands crackling with kidou as they closed around her throat.
The third Nemu opened her mouth. Her expression did not change even as her sister-self convulsed once and went still, but a high-pitched noise came out. It wasn't a scream. It grew steadily louder.
"Damn it! She's sounded the alarm! Pagally, run!"
Hoshibana charged around the corner. He blocked Pagally and shoved her back towards the group. "They'll hear the fighting well enough! If you can fight, young lady, stay here and fight!"
Good call, Kazeshini said. Shuuhei repeated the opinion, even if he didn't agree with it.
Ogidou was already in the thick of the fight, yelling for Shuuhei and Hanatarou to help him already. A door further up the hallway slid open and five more Nemus came running out.
Hoshibana removed one of the Nemu's heads with a clean stroke. Hanatarou was doing what he could with kidou, but most of that was defense.
Shuuhei hadn't even drawn his sword. He couldn't. Kurotsuchi Nemu had been a colleague.
Not any more she isn't, asshole!
Three more Nemus came from up the hall to replace the three Hoshibana and Ogidou had cut down. One of them literally pinned Ogidou to the corridor wall, arm shooting out to a grotesque length so that her hand pierced his shoulder.
From behind him, he heard a shaky, frightened cry of "Fly, Cernicalo!" and then a bird-like Hollow shot past him and darted between two of the Nemus almost faster than he could see. Pagally's wings appeared soft and fragile, but the Nemus were sliced open in dozens of places where those wings had brushed. It only slowed them down, though, and one of them leapt for him even though her forearm was only attached by a flap of skin.
He drew his sword and at once felt blood on his hand, dead weight slumping against him, but all he had done was evade the attack.
There was what sounded like an electrical jolt and he heard Pagally scream and then go quiet. Hoshibana was fighting off four Nemus. Hanatarou was on the ground, not moving.
Kill her! Kill her! She's not Iemura! Oh, fuck this...
Shuuhei ran forward, Kazeshini whipping out of its sheath and falling into its two parts with the release command. It all seemed very far away, even though he felt himself send one of the blades clattered out lightning fast straight towards the Nemu that was killing Ogidou. It would cut her in half if he didn't stop it in time.
No worries, pal.
Shuuhei didn't see the blade strike. He didn't see anything. Feel anything. Or hear anything in the darkness, except for three words that were whispered closer than he ever thought possible:
I got us.
---
The distant thumps and yells were sweetly familiar. A fight. A good one from the sound of it. Ikkaku gripped Hoozukimaru tight and looked down his assigned hallway at a fat lot of nothing.
"Do you hear that?" Yumichika asked. From the sound of it, he knew damn well that Ikkaku did hear the fight.
"I ain't deaf."
"Ah." Yumichika continued to stare down at the same batch of nothing Ikkaku was staring at. Ikkaku could hear the grin. "So why aren't you running towards it?"
Pounding footsteps that faded off real fast told him that Boy Blue had already taken off. No big loss.
Ikkaku glared at his friend. Yumichika still looked creepy as fuck in that white getup of his, but the smirk was familiar enough.
"Ah, ah, ahhh.... Before you ask me why I'm not running off--I asked you first, Ikkaku."
"Fuck, you know I hate it when you do that." There was now a lot of yelling from down the corridor. Then, a scream. "It ain't like I don't want to."
He did. Dammit, he did. But he wouldn't.
"Not gonna fuck up again like I did at the pillar," he muttered. Yumichika knew what he meant.
"I see."
They were silent again for a while, facing down that big, deadly, scary nothing-at-all that was coming at them.
"So, why ain't you running to fight, you pansy?"
Yumichika shrugged. "Well, you saw what happened the last time I ran off to a fight and left you behind," he said easily enough.
Ikkaku thought about that for a moment, then nodded.
"Fair enough, I guess."
Then, after a few more minutes:
"Fuck, I'm bored."
At least the company was good.
---
Hanatarou hit the ground hard. A flare of pain so intense it was cold said he'd either broken or sprained his wrist.
How many more of the Nemus were there? Hanatarou had seen as many as three dozen of them, but only eleven had come out to fight them. The others couldn't be far behind.
There was no way they could win, but still, Hanatarou needed to get up, needed to help. He got to his feet. That was the first step. The second step--he didn't know. There was too much that needed to be done.
Ogidou was about to be stabbed through the throat, Hoshibana had killed two of the enemy but was now losing ground to two more, the little Hollow girl was down and moaning quietly, and Hisagi-fukutaichou...
Hisagi-fukutaichou was just standing there, watching openmouthed. His zanpakutou was halfway out of its scabbard, and his eyes were wide. He sidestepped an attack, but otherwise, didn't appear to be aware of anything other than an invisible something that had his eyes wide with terror.
Before Hanatarou could shout at him and beg him to come to his senses, everything changed. The slack mouth sharpened to a grin. His eyes narrowed. Then, with a mocking command of Reap, Hisagi-fukutaichou released his shikai and cut two of the Nemus in half with one lazy strike.
Ogidou-san slumped to the floor, and Hanatarou finally had something to do. He only had the one hand to work with, but with Ogidou conscious enough to brace his own shoulder, Hanatarou was able to pull the arm piercing it free.
He tossed it aside and tried not to think too much about what it all meant. He had a patient to treat and right now that was all that mattered.
"I'll do yours if you do mine," Ogidou panted. He was smiling, but his eyes were unfocused with pain. "Just a fast patch, though. Gotta stuff I need to do."
Hanatarou nodded, and did a simple kidou that would stop the bleeding and would restore a degree of mobility. Ogidou would be able to use the shoulder without much pain, but it would inflict more damage.
"Thanks." Ogidou grabbed Hanatarou's wrist, and after a flash of pain that had him seeing white, the wrist stopped hurting. In fact, Hanatarou couldn't feel a thing below his elbow.
"Thank you?" he said quietly, but Ogidou was gone, shoving his way into the fight alongside Hoshibana. Only two more Nemus had come running, and now there were six. Five--Hisagi-fukutaichou cut down another one. He was still grinning.
Hanatarou was no good in this kind of fight. He could help the most by getting Hisagi-fukutaichou's Hollow-servant back into the fight. Her wings had vanished, and she was curled in on herself, shivering or maybe convulsing from the electric shock. She flinched away from him when he knelt down beside her. He would have to trust the others to keep the fight away from him while he worked.
"Shh... shh... it's okay. I'm here to help you."
Funny, but he was almost never scared when he was working on someone who was badly hurt. There just wasn't room for scared when someone needed him.
The little Hollow rolled her unmasked eye to look at him. She was terrified.
"Here. Let me see that burn."
He heard a wet double-thunk as Hisagi-fukutaichou took down another Nemu. Four. Then, the sound of a sword being pulled free from a body, and a single, heavier thump. Three.
Hanatarou held the little Hollow as firmly as he could and examined the electrical burn on her arm and shoulder. With his good hand, he let a mild healing kidou flow into her skin. She meeped in surprise, then scuttled away from him as fast as she could. She poked at her belly to see if it hurt, and when it didn't, glared at him as if he had just done something to trick her.
"This one wears a collar."
Hanatarou tried to turn around, but only ended up moving from his knees to his butt. He caught himself with his bad hand and felt something inside shift. The lack of pain made it worse.
A Nemu stood over him. "Remote collar access override," she said calmly. "Five-three-delta-four-epsilon-seven-theta..."
The numbers rattled out faster than he could follow. His hand went to his collar as if that could stop the blast. He'd known for months it would end like this, so why did it make him so angry when it finally did?
"...eight-zero-sigm...ah!"
Her face went slack. Everything went slack, shifting and sagging beneath the skin like liquid running out of a punctured bag. Blood streamed from her mouth, nose, and ears, and she collapsed wetly to the floor. Ogidou reached down to help him up. "That was close," he said cheerfully. "Good thing I was paying attention."
Hanatarou shook his head. He did not take Ogidou's hand, and he tried to keep his own from trembling. "I'll be fine," he said faintly. "Go. Just... go."
"Okay," Ogidou said. How could he be smiling? "Just a few more things to take care of, and we're done here, Yamada-san."
He sounded very pleased with himself.
The Nemu who had nearly exploded his collar lay where she had fallen. Blood and more than blood still oozed from her mouth, and her skin was loose over muscle. What had he just seen? He knew that kidou. He recognized that energy. It was meant to re-knit torn connective tissue, but just now it had been turned upside-down and inside-out.
What had they become? Was survival worth turning into this?
He could hardly even bring himself to feel sorry for what had happened to Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou anymore.
The fight went on, but not for long. Only two Nemus were left. One of them screamed their alarm cry, but no more of them came from the labs.
The other's arms split and spun apart into thousands of sparking wires that wove into a net running from floor to ceiling in front of her. The electric current was loud enough to hear even over her sister's scream. Hisagi-fukutaichou was poised to strike, but he held back. No matter how fast his kusarigami cut through that net, the shock would kill him.
Ogidou grabbed the screamer from behind. It seemed to be his favorite tactic. She went quiet at once, but it was probably Hoshibana's blade that killed her. Hoshibana was badly wounded himself, and fell along with the Nemu. Hanatarou rushed to his side, even as Ogidou ran to help Hisagi finish off the last Nemu and her barrier.
"I think they mean to protect the labs," Hoshibana said, talking over Hanatarou’s pleas for him to be still and quiet. "See how she's digging in to stand her ground?"
He was right. Hanatarou saw the lab door just behind the thickening barrier. Maybe Ogidou could use his kidou to deflect the electricity long enough for Hisagi-fukutaichou to cut through it.
Hanatarou shivered at the memory of the kidou demonstration he had just seen. Ogidou had acted as if the whole thing had been fun. The callousness Hanatarou remembered (and had disliked) had changed to something else, just as Hisagi-fukutaichou had turned into something else. Hisagi-fukutaichou looked like he had enjoyed killing those Nemus, and now he stared at the electrified net with more hunger than frustration. Ogidou stood right behind him, just as hungry.
Hanatarou slapped himself hard--what was wrong with him? He needed to focus on the patient! But his gaze was fixed on the two men the way it would be on a poisonous snake poised to strike.
In the end, perhaps it was a good thing he could not stop watching. Perhaps it wasn't. Either way, Ogidou moved so quickly Hanatarou nearly missed it.
"Hisagi-fukutaichou! Behind you!"
His cry was almost too late. Hisagi-fukutaichou turned just as Ogidou's hands closed around his neck. Kazeshini's blade went right through Ogidou's spine, and Ogidou fell to the ground. He caught Hanatarou's eye just before he fell, and Hanatarou could never remember a look of such hatred directed at him before.
Hisagi-fukutaichou looked down at him and Hoshibana, narrow-eyed and half-amused. It was worse than Ogidou's hatred. The skin on his neck was raw and blistered where Ogidou had grabbed him, but he didn't seem to mind.
"Thanks for the warning," he drawled. "Now you--Hoshibana? Are you gonna pull a dumb stunt like that?"
Hoshibana coughed. Hanatarou was relieved to see there was no blood on his lips. "Please. If I had wanted you dead, I would have been far more subtle about it. I am also hardly in a position to judge you over what you did to Iemura." He looked at Ogidou's body, and Hanatarou could not judge his expression. "I do wish it had not come to this," he said, and the words sounded as resigned as they did bitter.
"I'm sorry," Hanatarou said. If he had not said something, Ogidou would be alive and Hisagi would be dead. He wondered if Hoshibana wished it were the other way around.
"Don't blame yourself," Hoshibana said in a dismissive manner that ensured Hanatarou would never stop wondering if he could have done something differently.
"Okay, so how are we gonna take her out?" Hisagi-fukutaichou asked as if none of this had just happened. He joggled his zanpakutou's chain impatiently, as if he might go ahead and throw the blades, electricity or no electricity. "Ah, hell. Here goes nothin'"
He whirled the blades over his head and released both at once. One clanged and sparked against the ceiling, pulling the other blade short. Hisagi lunged for his sword as if terrified to let it out of his hands for a more than a second, and barely stopped himself before the tip of one axeblade hit the net.
The net shorted out with explosive force, peppering them with fragments of white-hot wire. Hisagi-fukutaichou took off towards the labs.
A quick examination showed that Hoshibana had broken--not cracked-ribs. and a concussion. Hanatarou started the healing kidou, but Hoshibana pushed him away.
"Go after him. I am not about to murder him, but I am also not about to trust him. Go!"
Hanatarou nodded. He did pause for just a second to look at Ogidou, even though there was no hope; for that kind of wound, they would have needed Unohana-taichou. Still, he felt it was his duty to look. To see.
Ogidou was the rescue party's first loss, and that loss was in part Hanatarou's doing.
Hisagi-fukutaichou stopped short in the lab door, giving Hanatarou the seconds he needed to catch up.
"Is that it?" Hisagi demanded. "You mean that was all of them? And where the hell are Szayel’s goons?"
"They'd be here if they thought there was a chance to go through Kurotsuchi's labs. Maybe they didn't hear?" Hanatarou knew that wasn't true the moment he said it. The two scientists were always, always spying on each other.
Hisagi went back out into the hallway. Pagally was helping Hoshibana to his feet. "We got another problem!" he yelled. "Wherever Kurotsuchi's gone, Szayel's followed or the other way 'round. If they've gone to Soul Society, we're screwed! Go tell Ise!" Then he ducked into the lab again. Hoshibana waved at Hanatarou to follow Hisagi.
The first thing he noticed was that the doors to the holding chambers were open and the cages inside were empty. The covered cage he had seen the other day was still there, but the cover was gone and the cage door was open. He saw what looked like a few feathers on the cage floor.
Hisagi was over at one of the cabinets, searching through the bottles and jars. He took out a pill vial, tipped the contents into his hand, then dry-swallowed them all at once.
"Hisagi-fukutaichou!" Hanatarou caught the vial as Hisagi tossed it over his shoulder. "What are you doing?"
"Making sure I stay awake," he rasped. "No, it ain't smart, but if I don't stay awake, things are gonna get bad."
"What... I don't understand?"
"Nothing to understand, shorty." Hisagi was now pacing fitfully through the labs, checking every screen, every scrap of paper. "I know what I need to do to keep going, okay? Now we got to see if we can find out where the resident freakshow went."
Hanatarou nodded as Hisagi headed back to the innermost workrooms. "I'll gather some supplies for later." The labs were the closest thing they had to an infirmary. Unless Hisagi had swallowed the last of them, there should be some energy pills. He checked the bottle he had caught to see how they would be labeled.
Then he checked it again.
Did Hisagi-fukutaichou just swallow a handful of sleeping pills?
"Hisagi-fukutaichou! I think you may have--"
He was cut off by a gust of terrified swearing from back in the workroom. "Yamada! Get your ass in here! Now!"
Hanatarou dropped the pill vials and ran towards the noise. He'd never been back this far, and he'd always counted himself lucky in that regard. Workrooms opened off an L-shaped corridor, and it took him a moment to find the right one.
Hisagi-fukutaichou was standing over some sort of trough. The dim overhead lights reflected off something green in the trough, casting ripples of nauseating light over Hisagi's face.
"She's been fucking severed from her zanpakutou!" he said. He sounded like he was going to be sick.
"What? Who? And how can you tell?" Hanatarou hurried over to Hisagi's side. Who was it? One of the female medics? Kusajishi-fukutaichou? Had Unohana-taichou been recaptured?
"How can't you?" he said blankly. "Look at her."
At first, all Hanatarou felt was disappointment. It was just another one of the Nemus, half-submerged in some sort of green gel. She was gaunt and most of her hair had fallen out. Her eyes fluttered open.
"Yamada-san? Hisagi-fukutaichou?" Her voice was thin and reedy. "Please, can you tell me where I am, and why... it's gone, oh, it's gone..."
"Yeah. I know."
Hisagi-fukutaichou reached down and rested a hand on her forehead, and Kurotsuchi Nemu--the real one--started crying softly.
---