Become A Ghost

Become A Ghost, Chapter Twenty-Four

Byakuya tossed the two Arrancar away the moment the garganta snapped shut behind him, and released his bankai as soon as he touched foot to sand in Hueco Mundo. He felt that he would need every bit of firepower he could muster, because what had looked like mere dozens of Hollows from the far side of the garganta turned out to be hundreds of them, teeming with blood-lust and exultation at having their lord Aizen restored to them.

There was no time to think about Orihime, besides enjoying a fierce satisfaction that she was safe now, that he had removed these threats from her presence and soon would be destroying them for daring to attack her. 

He swept the clouds of blades around in erratic patterns, keeping his opponents confused and scattered as they were relentlessly sliced to ribbons. It became apparent, when he saw how quickly most of them were dropping, that while the majority of this small army were of mere Gillians with a few Adjuchas-level, the only Numéro-level Hollows were those two vicious little females. Yumichika had taken the leg off of one of them, and the other's Resurrección form had been mangled beyond use; she dropped it and returned to her humanoid form, panting and enraged. 

"Menoly, get out of here," she ordered the more wounded one, who nodded and disappeared with a bang of Sonido.

Menoly? That was the name of one of Orihime's tormentors, during her imprisonment in this godforsaken place ten years earlier. She had told him about them, one quiet night in the gardens after dinner, not long after her death. Her voice had been fervent, but guilty, when she admitted she hoped they were dead. 

"So you see, Byakuya-sama, I'm not so very good of a person after all," Orihime had concluded, glancing up at him with eyes full of guilt. He had thought her foolishly soft-hearted at that time; now that he loved her, he recognized her kindness and understood her shame, even while disagreeing with it. He knew that the only way to ensure one was not to be forever plagued by an enemy was to kill said enemy. He would kill every being in Hueco Mundo if it meant she could finally feel safe. 

The rage Byakuya had felt, that summer night months ago, on Orihime's behalf reawakened; it shook him to his very bones, and he breathed deeply to let it burn away anything resembling leniency.

"That must mean you are Loly, then," he addressed the girl when he was capable of speaking once more. 

"That's me," she confirmed. Her one eye-- the other hidden behind her Hollow mask-- narrowed in suspicion. "What's it to you?"

"To me?" Byakuya replied, his tone glacial. "Less than nothing to me. To Inoue Orihime, however..." He called back half of his blades, leaving the other half to continue slaughtering the various Hollows writhing around them, persistent in their attack of his person. 

That single eye of hers widened in surprise and dawning alarm as Byakuya began to form Senbonzakura's blades into the spherical form of his Goukei technique. Alarmed, she tried to use Sonido to escape them, but each abortive attempt was blocked by the incoming wall of blades. She darted back and forth, her movements more and more jerky as panic began to set in. 

"To Inoue Orihime your continued existence is a mistake, for in her mercy she spared you," Byakuya informed the Arrancar girl. He brought his zanpakutou's shards around to cup her in a profusion of blades, the seam closing from the foot up. "I will not compound that error."

Her horrified face, mouth open and gasping in fear, was the only part exposed as he approached her, his gaze pure ice as he met her eyes and let her see that within them was her death. 

"My sole regret is that this will not take longer and be more painful. Though I will slow it down as much as possible for your benefit, as a personal thanks for your kind treatment of Inoue Orihime," Byakuya finished, and with that, he sealed the final space to enclose her completely in Goukei's sphere. With a thought to Senbonzakura, he activated the technique's final act of bursting inward to shred her apart on a molecular level, flash-stepping to a safe distance so that the immense shock-wave of reiatsu could not reach him. The force of it destroyed the last of the Hollows that had been trying in futility to attack him.