Bleach Cfyow Read Online – CHAPTER THREE – Part 2

HUECO MUNDO, HALF A YEAR AFTER

THE GREAT SOUL KING PROTECTION WAR

Hueco Mundo, the world of the Arrancars and home to the Hollows, was undergoing a gradual change. After the Arrancar hunts of the Vandenreich Quincies had come to an end, the powerful Arrancars like Halibel and Grimmjow had temporarily disappeared, and Hueco Mundo had entered a new era of civil war.

But now that Nelliel, who been previously missing, had up till then, had returned with Halibel in tow, ambitious Arrancars and Vasto Lordes-level Menos Grandes had immediately been discouraged and gone back to their own colonies.

Several Arrancars had attempted to launch a surprise attack on Nelliel and Halibel in order to “get them while they’re tired,” but most had been beaten at their own game. And those who had run had the unlucky fate of bumping into an irritated Grimmjow.

The return of the king had gradually returned peace to Hueco Mundo, and so a man wearing a mask resembling a cow skull sighed. “It was a short-lived dream, wasn’t it?”

He was Rudobon Chelute, the former Arrancar leader of the Exequias who had once been under Aizen’s control and had single-handedly taken over running Las Noches after Aizen’s exit.

“It truly was presumptuous of a weakling like me to have dreamed so big in the first place.” He was one of the Arrancars who had attempted to unify Hueco Mundo after Halibel’s disappearance. Rudobon still felt indebted to Aizen and, to the best of his ability, had been attempting to protect the new order Aizen had created when he usurped Hueco Mundo from King Barragan.

There were many Arrancars who were stronger than him, including the Tres Bestias and the Espada, and from the start they had had little interest being ruled and had never attempted to participate in the fights for the right of succession. In a way, it could be said that Rudobon had been the only one who had put public order foremost and fought for hegemony.

It wasn’t like he didn’t have ambition. He couldn’t deny that his dream had been to develop Hueco Mundo someday and be recognized by Aizen as something superior, like an Espada.

He had heard that Aizen had been disappointed in the Espadas and had literally cut down Halibel, but when Aizen returned Rudobon wanted to tell the man that he had done something with the power he had been granted. He wanted to do that even if Aizen was disgusted by his clumsy results and killed him on the spot.

Right now, Rudobon was naturally fighting against the Quincies to protect Hueco Mundo’s order.

“My, to think that there are still Quincy survivors.”

After stealing Halibel’s throne half a year ago, a Quincy hunter unit called the Jagd Armee had spread across Hueco Mundo, pursuing Arrancars everywhere they went.

Most of the detached Quincy forces had been stranded in Hueco Mundo after Ichigo Kurosaki beat their general hunt commander Quilge, as well as Grimmjow and the other Arrancars. They had taken on all sorts of forms as they kept up their hopeless resistance with desperate suicide attacks and guerilla warfare, but most of the Quincies had been annihilated by Rudobon and his Exequias.

There had been no Quincy movement in the several months since then, and Rudobon had thought their exterminations complete when he received word of a Quincy sighting and prepared for attack.

“How utterly cowardly. The Picaro aren’t listening to me, as always, and I heard that they went off to the world of the living with Paramia Roka. And Master Grimmjow is still refusing to help repress anything in Hueco Mundo. How many days must we wait until proper order is reinstated?”

Rudobon shook his head at his own inadequacy and headed toward the area of the Quincy sighting, but someone spoke up to protest his statements. “Wait a sec! Don’t just go around sighing. You’ve got to fight occasionally too! You’re always shoving the work off onto us and the minions you created!”

“Don’t push it, Loly. It’s no use telling him that.” Menoly Mallia, an Arrancar with cropped hair, chided the pigtailed Loly Aivirrne, the Arrancar who had just told Rudobon off.

Rudobon had taken them in when they were brought to Las Noches on the verge of death after a fight with Quilge. They had been accepted into the Exequias immediately because of their combat abilities, with the aim of helping to dismantle the Quincies. But they had refused to fall into line, possibly because they weren’t under Rudobon’s direct control.

“No, I’m going to say it! You know what, Rudobon?! Where were you when

Lady Halibel was kidnapped? You weren’t even here when that Quilge guy came!”

“Since the invasion started everywhere simultaneously, we needed someone everywhere to stop them. If you really want to talk about it, not a single one of us was there when Ichigo Kurosaki defeated Lord Aizen. We, myself included, must take our incompetence to heart.”

“That has nothing to do with what I was talking about.”

Rudobon sighed and shook his head at Loly as she grumbled complaints. “Though you are both immature, I allow you to stay in my unit because you respect Lord Aizen. Normally knaves like the two of you would have no place in Hueco Mundo because of the disruption you bring to the public order.”

“Oh? And what exactly are you saying gets disrupted by my just being here?” “I said quit it.”

“Let go, Menoly! He acts all high and mighty, but what do you think he was doing when the Soul Reapers attacked? They say he almost croaked when he got beat up while Yammy was passing through!”

“But that happened to us too.” Menoly pulled Loly away from Rudobon by the arm.

The girl, veins popping on her forehead, was still trying to have her say even as she was dragged away. But then a single ray of light passed in front of her eyes. The shot of light pierced a rock some distance from Rudobon and the girls. As though something had taken a gigantic bite out of the massive boulder, a piece of it went flying.

“What!?” Loly’s eyes opened wide and she turned toward the direction the light had come from. She found a woman holding a bow standing on the upper floor of a collapsed building. The woman’s clothes looked very similar to what the Quincies who had tried to capture them had worn.

There were other human-shaped figures stirring be-hind the woman, and it seemed like several people must be attacking them at once. Menoly saw that even more Quincy arrows had been sent flying toward them at a terrific speed.

Menoly and the others tried to dodge in a fluster. Rudobon’s skeleton soldier followers got caught up in the attack, and countless columns of sand sprayed up from the Hueco Mundo desert.

Loly looked fearfully at the crater of sand that had been left behind and yelled in a cold sweat, “Wait, these guys aren’t the usual nobodies! There’re still Quincies like that around?!”

“Those Arrancars have nothing if not numbers. Feels like they came to take

care of us,” said a girl with a poker face holding a short bow that made one think of a shark tooth.

A voice responded to her from the darkness of the building half-reduced to rubble. “Actually, looks like all you’ve dealt with are the underlings. Did you really miss from this distance? Wow, so pathetic. I bet it’s cuz you don’t practice.”

“Shuddup, Gigi. You could lift a finger every once in a while. This is a chance to get more pawns under your control, isn’t it?”

Giselle Gewelle, the Quincy called Gigi, had a mechanical smile on her face that revealed none of her thoughts to the other girl. “You already know that I can only turn Hollows into zombies temporarily, don’t you? I thought it was common sense that Hollow reishi and ours doesn’t get along. Did you forget?”

“Who cares if it’s only temporary? You pretty much treated everybody except Bambi like they were disposable anyway. The zombification ran its course over there, so it’ll be the same here, right?”

“It makes me tired, so I don’t want to. But if you’re so insistent, why don’t you become a zombie for me, Lil?” Gigi cocked her head at Liltotto Lamperd, but Lil remained expressionless as she turned her spite on her partner.

“You want me to eat you? No, I’d better not. You’d definitely give me the runs.”

“That’s so mean, Lil! Telling a girl she’d turn your stomach is such an insult. Hey, don’t you agree, Bambi?” Gigi kept smiling mechanically as she turned to the girl with clay-red skin who had been placed in a corner like a doll among the debris.

The thing that Gigi had called Bambi—a corpse doll seemingly lacking all warmth in its head, torso, and exposed limbs—replied, “Y-yes, e-exactly like you said, Gigi… So, so please, Gigi…please…blood…”

“Really, Bambi. You’re so greedy. If you’re going to be so demanding… Well, you know what you need to do, right? Because you’re so smart, aren’t you?

You’re clever.”

“…I-I got it…I’ll defeat…the enemy… I’ll…protect you…because I love…your blood…”

Bambietta Basterbine, the red corpse, staggered up. Lil seemed exasperated as she said, “It doesn’t look like she’s completely healed yet. And isn’t her ability to speak getting worse? She’s like Frankenstein’s monster or some kind of a horror that accidentally made its way out of the woods and into civilization.”

“She’s fine. She’ll fix up just fine once I give her my blood. But I think she

looks so much cuter when she’s hurt, so I’m going to keep her like this for a while, all right?”

“You really are scum.” Although Lil was blunt in her disdain of Gigi’s notions, she didn’t try to stop Bambietta from heading toward the enemy. That was because Lil understood. Bambietta’s mental faculties were minimal, that while as long as her abilities were working, she wouldn’t have any trouble knocking around the average Arrancar or Hollow. And as though to prove that—

Innumerable clumps of reishi ejected from Bambietta and pierced the gathered enemy. The white desert was filled with brilliant explosions.

Liltotto Lamperd.

Giselle Gewelle.

Discounting Bambietta, who had been turned into a corpse doll, how were the women who should have died after rebelling against Yhwach in the Soul Society still alive and in Hueco Mundo?

To find out, we must journey back to the time immediately after the conclusion of the war between the Soul Reapers and the Quincies.

≡

HALF A YEAR AGO,

SOMEWHERE IN THE WORLD OF THE LIVING

When Lil woke, she was in an unfamiliar room. A bandage was wrapped around her torso, and a dull pain rushed through her when she touched it.

Someone must have used a specialized Quincy healing technique on her, but she hadn’t made a complete recovery.

Obviously I wouldn’t.

She could remember challenging Yhwach to a fight and being cut down before she could even use her abilities. Right before she had collapsed, Bazz-B’s spiritual pressure had vanished from the position where he had been battling further away.

My guts were gouged out and shredded. That should have been fatal if left untreated. Why am I alive?

Lil turned to her side and saw Gigi still unconscious and what looked like Bambietta in the back, prone and wrapped all over with bandages like a mummy. All three of them had been laid down on simple cots and given the bare

minimum first aid. Lil recognized that the pillow beneath her head was a provisional article from the Vandenreich and guessed that this was one of their bases in the world of the living.

I sense a lot of Quincies outside the room, but most of them probably just barely scraped by with their lives.

As Lil sat up and looked around her, the door opened and a woman poked her head in.

“Are you awake, Liltotto Lamperd?”

It was a female Quincy with dark eyes and a frigid expression. “You’re…” Lil was on her guard. “Aren’t you Yhwach’s lapdog? You

accidentally saving your enemies now?”

Lil was referring to Jugram Haschwalth, who was basically number two in the Vandenreich and carried the Stern Ritter B. The woman who had just walked into the room was one of Haschwalth’s attendants who had no Schrift, a prominent Quincy among the common soldat.

Though she was said to exceed some of the Stern Ritter in pure archery skills and battle ability, supposedly she hadn’t received a Schrift because she herself preferred to remain under Haschwalth’s command rather than become one of the Schrift holders who stood as equals, although not to Yhwach, of course.

Her superior, Haschwalth, had been Yhwach’s retainer. This woman should have had reason to help Lil and those who had started a rebellion against the Vandenreich. “What’s gotten into Haschwalth’s head? We ain’t givin’ you nothing if you interrogate us. The only reason we betrayed Yhwach was because we were annoyed.”

Haschwalth had a cautious personality, and he had probably assumed that traitors like themselves had bugs on them from the Soul Reapers or some other organization. That thought was going through Lil’s head, but the female Quincy shook her head slightly.

“Lord Haschwalth passed in battle after offering his power to his majesty.” “Huh?”

Lil scowled at the unexpected news. But the explanation that followed left Liltotto Lamperd, former member of the Stern Ritter, absolutely shocked.

“His majesty also passed away in the battle between Ichigo Kurosaki, who was particularly powerful, and Sosuke Aizen.”

“What!”

Unusually for Lil, her eyes grew wide and her mouth gaped open and closed several times. After a dozen or so seconds, her expression resumed its usual

composure. “You serious? I knew that Kurosaki was stupid strong, but I didn’t think he was that ballsy. I thought he was as naive as he was strong.”

Lil remembered the orange-haired Soul Reaper who had yelled “Get out of the way, idiot!” when he had released a gigantic slashing attack, and grinned somewhat derisively at herself.

“Hey, what happened to Candy and Meni?” She meant Candice Catnip and Meninas McAllon. They were part of the group she had been working with during the war, and though it was unusual for her, she had accepted them as her friends among the Stern Ritter.

Normally she spewed vitriol at them, but apparently her relationship with them was such that she could ask about them by name directly in this sort of situation. Lil was half resigned to that fact as she waited quietly for the other Quincy’s reply.

“We went to rescue them, but we didn’t make it in time. They were captured by the Twelfth Company right after his majesty used Auswählen to take their Voll Stern Dich. Lord Najahkoop’s status is unknown too, although we believe he was transferred as well.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about that lecher NaNaNa. But wait, you said Twelfth Company. Ahh, might’ve been better if they’d just straight up died.” Lil knew from previous information what kind of man Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi was and what kind of department the Twelfth Company ran.

“Actually, I guess that means there’s a chance they’re still alive.”

Lil glanced at Gigi, who slept next to her. As long as they had Gigi’s Schrift Z, The Zombie, the others could be revived even if they lost some flesh to the Twelfth Company’s experiments and dissections. And at worst even if they were dead, as long as their bodies and brains remained intact, they could be revived into zombies like Bambietta.

But there was nothing that could be done about the wounds to their psyches.

After thinking that far, Lil asked the Quincy woman in an indifferent tone, “Back to the main point, why’d you save me?”

“It was Lord Haschwalth’s will. When his majesty had his final slumber, Lord Haschwalth ordered us to collect and treat the soldats under direct command, such as you and the other wounded.”

“I don’t get it. What happened to the direct guard?” Though she scowled in her confusion, Lil continued seeking to gather more facts.

Lil’s question was met with the female Quincy mournfully shaking her head as she said, “They all passed in battle. According to reports from the scouts,

Lord Gerard’s powers were fully absorbed by his majesty and disappeared.” “So even Nakk Le Vaar got done in. That’d definitely be lethal then.” Guess

we just underestimated those Soul Reapers.

Lil looked like she went about things at her own pace, but she was cool- headed enough to gather information in advance. She knew the direct guard’s capabilities to a certain extent, so if those unrivaled men had been removed from the equation, she could certainly believe that Yhwach and Haschwalth had died in battle.

If they crushed even Gerard, a trusted retainer who took the Reio’s heart, does that mean Yhwach really was driven into a corner? He was going on and on about being able to see the future when he got Gigi and me, but what kind of future did he see with those creepy-ass eyes?

Wait a sec…

“You said Haschwalth told you to save us when Yhwach was sleeping, right?” “Yes. It was immediately after his majesty fell asleep.”

Haschwalth was only only given the Mask of the Ruler at night while Yhwach slept, and was then able to fully exercise power in Yhwach’s stead.

“So, did that Haschwalth see the future too?”

Lil asked the question almost as though speaking to herself, but the female Quincy dropped her eyes as she went on. “When he conveyed his orders to me, he mumbled, almost as though to himself, that the ability to see the future was unfair.”

“What’d that jerk see? Are you saying that he saw a future where he and Yhwach were dead?”

“I cannot know.” The features of the female Quincy who had been Haschwalth’s most trusted retainer appeared overcome with sadness. She continued speaking with faint grief tinging her shamed voice. “Lord Haschwalth did not make clear what was on his mind. Not to we Stern Ritter, and I believe not even to his majesty. He simply said at the very end, ‘No matter what happens, keep the Quincies’ futures connected.’”

“So you were naive enough to save traitors like us? I’ll tell you this for free: don’t expect Gigi or me to feel like we’re in your debt.”

“I do not mind. We weren’t expecting compensation. I was simply following Lord Haschwalth’s orders.”

Lil lightly clucked her tongue at the woman’s dispassionate response and said, “Well, we survived because of you. I’ll at least thank you for that. But don’t expect Gigi to thank you. She might even turn you into a zombie when she

wakes and try to use your flesh to heal her wounds.” “…”

“Don’t look at me like that. At least I know how to take responsibility for things. I’ll keep Gigi in check, and we’ll leave as soon as we can move.”

Haschwalth’s trusted adviser left the infirmary as Lil checked on Gigi. The female Quincy had told Lil one lie. Before going into his last battle, Haschwalth had left behind other words.

“Perhaps Uryu Ishida was his majesty’s last trial for me. I do not know the reason why, but he is the only one who can leave me shaken. If I am ever swayed by my emotions and forget my role as balancer, then on that occasion I will likely need to return the power I have been entrusted with and my life to his majesty.” He had said it almost as though he had seen that future himself.

But if he had seen it, why hadn’t he been able to avoid it? If he hadn’t been able to hold back his emotions even though he knew the future, then what did Uryu Ishida say, or perhaps what had he done to Haschwalth?

At this point she just didn’t know anything, and as his trusted retainer she could only be proud of her master. Even if he had seen his own future, he had been fully prepared for it, and she believed he had chosen that path for himself.

Liltotto, Giselle, and Bambietta disappeared the following day from the base hidden in the world of the living.

≡

And now Liltotto and her two companions were fighting the Arrancars in Hueco Mundo.

Although it had taken several months for them to regain their strength, they had finally recovered all their abilities, other than the Voll Stern Dichs that Yhwach had stolen from them.

“If we could just go into Voll Stern Dich, we could absorb all their reishi.” A Voll Stern Dich was a Quincy’s final form. As long as they had the Sklave

Rai ability from their heiligenschein halo, they could decompose all the reishi around them and force the particles to submit to them. Even Hollow reishi, which was naturally poisonous to Quincies, could be fully decomposed and therefore absorbed by Quincies without harm. But there were no longer any Quincies with that power.

Uryu Ishida and his father, who had escaped from Yhwach’s Auswählen,

might have been able to do it. But when Lil thought about how much use it was to her if her enemies had that power, she just shrugged.

Gigi spoke up from behind her. “Huh? But can’t you practically do the same thing, Lil? You could just swallow all those guys whole. Or are you on a diet?”

“It’s not like I can’t eat them, but poison is still poison. I’d get horrible heartburn, so no thanks,” Lil answered without interest as she watched Bambietta overrun them.

Gigi kept speaking. “In the end most of them got done in, didn’t they? The survivors of the Jagd Armee, I mean.”

“Every single one of them was pitiful. Even after marching through this boring desert for two whole months, we haven’t found a single one worth anything in a fight.”

The girls were presently taking it upon themselves to rescue independent units of Quincies to find people they could force into being their pawns. Their ultimate goal was to launch a surprise attack on the Soul Society’s Twelve Company and rescue Candy and Meni.

“You could just leave them there, but you sure do value friendship sometimes, don’t you, Lil? Plus I bet part of why you’re rescuing the dregs of the Jagd Armee is to repay that infirmary for their kindness instead of making them into your pawns, right?”

“Who knows. I’m just forcing those guys to deal with ones who’ll slow me down.”

“It’s really gross when your chilly features look all passionate like that, but I also totally like it.”

“Could you just choose between praising me or badmouthing me, you dirty tramp?” Lil spoke dispassionately and without expression.

For some reason Gigi smiled as though she were kind of happy about being called a tramp. She answered as though enjoying herself, “Oh you got me, it’s all a lie. You’re so cute when you’re embarrassed, Lil. It’s not like we can just leave them there like that. And if Candy and Meni are dead, I can make them my zombies.”

Gigi’s happy expression disappeared as a certain man’s face came to mind, and her voice filled with resentment. “And I just won’t feel right until I give that bedazzled pervert hell.”

“Don’t. That guy completely outclasses us.”

Gigi continued even though Lil had scolded her. “We’ll be fine as long as we’re using our heads. Like, what if we turn Ichigo Kurosaki into a zombie?”

“I’d really rather you not do that, specifically. I’m not going to commit suicide with you.” Honestly, it wasn’t like Lil hadn’t thought of that plan herself. He’d be the strongest thing they could get if they turned him into their pawn using Gigi’s abilities. But when Lil had looked into it, she realized that Ichigo was always surrounded by his father (who had experience as a captain in the Thirteen Court Guards), Uryu Ishida (who had defeated Haschwalth), Uryu’s father, Ryuken Ishida (who was a pureblood Quincy), and Kisuke Urahara (who was particularly strong in battle). Lil wasn’t the kind of fool to step a foot into that den of thieves, even if she was impatient.

“So if we keep just crushing Arrancars like this…” The way the Quincies were destroying the Arrancars was a taboo that would cause the balance of the world to collapse. If they overdid things and got too flashy about it, the Soul Reapers would probably notice and send an assassin after them.

Lil had joined Bazz-B and some others to lend the Soul Reapers a hand, so it wasn’t impossible for her to negotiate with them. But she didn’t think it would result in the Twelfth Company captain releasing Candy and the others. More to the point, as soon as they realized that Gigi was the person who had turned so many Soul Reapers into zombies and made them kill each other, any kind of formal parley would be difficult.

“Well, for now we’ll go back to the world of the living once we clean up these guys and make a plan to—”Lil stopped muttering abruptly.

Bambietta was running down the Arrancars with The Explode. And that’s when Lil realized there was something wrong.

“She isn’t done yet?”

It wasn’t like Bambietta was being leisurely about it. She might even have been bombing more recklessly because her ability to reason had been compromised. And yet the number of Arrancar soldiers hadn’t dwindled at all. It almost felt like their ranks were increasing.

“Are they getting reinforcements? No, that’s not it        ”

The countless skull-faced soldiers were piling themselves up and creating a wall so that the core force was partitioned off and protected. They were doing it without hesitation, as though they had already accepted their own deaths.

“What’s with them? What’s going on here?”

Let us rewind to several minutes earlier.

“W-we’re in hot water! What’s with that pale girl? All she’s doing is making everything explode all of a sudden!” Loly, hiding in the shadow of the skull

soldiers, screamed and broke into a cold sweat.

Menoly, to whom the question had been directed, had been overtaken by fear and was shivering. “Th-this is so bad, Loly! She might be as strong as that Quilge guy with the glasses…”

Next to Aizen’s two panicking bodyguards, a man was analyzing the battle calmly. He was the Exequias leader, Rudobon.

“Hm… Those reishi seem to have the ability to turn anything they touch into an explosive. Because the origin of the reishi themselves does not have explosive properties and she can release them rapid fire like that, planning to wait until she runs out of spiritual pressure would seem unwise.”

“Wait a sec! How can you talk like everything’s fine? Things are only going to get worse!”

Rudobon, on hearing the half-shrieked complaint, sighed and shook his head. “Those who served with Lord Aizen should not expose their shame for an even instant. You should always be composed. You cannot feel despair when faced with death. Even if your life ends here, you should think about what you could do in your final moments to benefit Lord Aizen.”

“Don’t talk all calm like that, Zommari! All Lord Aizen’s gonna get at this rate are the ashes of our nails!”

“I am honored that you would compare me to Zommari. There is no reason to worry. In any case, I do not plan on dying here.” Rudobon pulled out his zanpaku-to and held the blade ready, horizontal to the ground.

“Please observe the ability that I polished to wash away my shame after falling behind the Soul Reapers…!”

“Grow, Arbol!” In an instant, Rudobon’s zanpaku-to shifted into something like tree ivy and spread, twining around Rudobon’s arms and his lower body to transform him into an arbor. He then created skull-masked soldiers one after another from the branches growing from his back, and the fresh soldiers also turned into a wall to protect them from the enemy’s explosions.

“What? This is exactly what you were doing before…” Loly’s eyes went wide midsentence. The sand to the front of her was rising, and new skull soldiers were starting to come to life from inside the desert. Rudobon’s roots must be spreading through the ground like bamboo shoots to produce a mass of new soldiers.

Calaveras, the zanpaku-to Arbol’s ability, let Rudobon suck up the reishi in Hueco Mundo through his roots and use them to create an endless supply of loyal soldiers.

Although the nature of his ability hadn’t changed, the speed at which he could create soldiers increased astoundingly as new trees grew where the roots spread, expanding his reach. It was a technique he had developed while attempting to create soldiers underground where the cold couldn’t reach them, in response to the time Rukia Kuchiki froze and sealed his branches. The extraordinary speed at which he could manufacture his soldiers had become a new weapon that had significantly increased Rudobon’s abilities.

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