Chapter 12 A Shadowed Family

[Wilfora]

Time: Unbeknownst
Place: Hueco Mundo

Endless white hallways. Turns out of the blue leading down more bleached halls. Four-way intersections that lead to who knows where. No markings on the floor, the walls or the ceiling to tell where the causal walker was. To get around the hollows had to know exactly where they were and how to get to where they were going.

Many of the younger arrancar got lost, most never to be heard from again, under normal circumstances anyway. When they were found, only barely living skeletons inched towards their fellow hollows. Most that were found like that were killed to gain what little power they had left.

However, Stray, and the other Espada of Shira’s ranks, knew how to get around quickly. They followed the reiatsu trails left by the stronger ones who had come before.

Not that it mattered to Stray. She had spent much time with Shira roaming this place. The map had glued itself to the back of her mind and now she spent less time looking at it and more time looking at the blank walls that went on forever. They annoyed her greatly.

Ahead, moonlight shined in the floor. Stray stopped running; she had been following a trail that led to third and tenth Espada’s Fraccion barracks and upon reaching a window of lunar rays, she opted for a break. She leaned against the opposite wall with her eyes closed, soaking in the moon’s rays.

Moments later Stray opened her eyes and stared out the circular barred window. After looking out for a time, the familiarity of the moon sunk in. She immediately sensed for Shira and found him in his room, alone and watching the moon as she was, remembering.

Didn’t run this time. Accepting what you’ve done aren’t you? Stray stopped searching for her kin, as reiatsu returned to her own being. She stared out the window a moment more, then was on her way.

It didn’t take long for Stray to reach where she was headed. But it was before then that the other female Espada had joined Stray in walking towards the Fraccion that she called her own. Chiharu –often called Chi—was third Espada. She was the only other female Espada, to Stray’s knowledge anyway.

Chi was one of the few hollows that other hollows took a liking to almost immediately. She had an aura that drew people to her. Due to it, many greatly respected her. Not that they understood why but she did nothing to draw them near. It seemed to be natural to the Espada to get along with the others no matter the rudeness they showed her. Though, half the time she wanted to rip their heads off with words.

However, as a female, she wasn’t all brawl like the strong thick-headed male Espada. No, unlike Stray, Chiharu was, in every aspect, graceful. When Chiharu had first come to walk with Stray, Stray had not noticed her presence until she had spoken.

Her grace of step was what made her who she was. The fabrics she wore enhanced this look at standstill. Chiharu had dropped the traditional robes years ago when she had taken Espada. In their place, she wore a pale blue robe that wrapped around her figure. It allowed the waves of her long blond hair to sink in and contrast with the blue, as it seemed to gleam with moon rays. Her skin tone matched the moon’s surface.

“Shira requested this then?” She asked Stray, who had stopped at the entryway of the third Espada’s Fraccion barracks. Stray peeked within and took bearings of the Fraccion. Morally disgusted, Stray re-experienced the girly side of the Espada. Most of the female hollows had pink on them, even if just a bit. The males, freakishly, wore lots of pink infused with an assortment of teal, white, or a sky blue.

“Yeah… only way I’d be going where I have to.” Stray sighed, falling in step with Chiharu as they headed deeper inside.

Soon enough the bright colors of the outer Fraccion members melted away into the distance. They were replaced with dull entities of blue and an unsightly yellow mold that spread across the walls, making them a gruesome, sickly green. A single pale white door opened before them. After Chiharu and Stray stepped through, it slammed shut. Intricate silver swirls shined brightly for a moment, illuminating the area before quickly dimming, and the darkness took over.

Beady red eyes opened and at least 30 pairs turned and stared at the Espada before them. Chiharu spread her hand, palm down and a dim light pulsed from it. The creatures hiding in the dark cringed and some of the closest ones retreated further away into the darkness.

Stray grinned. “You’ve collected quite a few Chi. All of them adjuchas?” She asked taking a few steps towards them. Smaller presences backed away while stronger ones held their ground, hissing and growling at her.

Chiharu placed a strong hand on Stray’s shoulder and tugged her back a few paces. “Best not the test them while in here… I have no control over them currently,” she murmured. “They are yours to toy with, just not here… please…”

Stray sighed. “Fine. Are they adjuchas though?”

Chi remained silent. She moved her hand in a circular motion before her and the room illuminated neon green, the moss being the source of it. Stray looked at the hollows that were now shrieking and covering their eyes, or at least trying to.

“Do they look like adjuchas, dear Stray?” Chiharu wrapped her arms around her own waist, playfully mocking Stray.

Stray hung her head. “Yes Chi…” Chiharu nodded and drew her hand counter, the moss returning to its original state of being.

A short time later, arrancars ushered the adjuchas out of the barracks. An older arrancar female asked Stray where they were to be taken. “Not far, just outside the palace grounds” she replied.

The female arrancar was puzzled but, after a glaring look from Stray, let it go. The arrancar quickly backed away, then disappeared, headed to take lead of the procession. Stray watched them from the hall outside the complex structure Chiharu called home. A hand lightly gripped her shoulder and squeezed.

“Yes Chiharu? Something you need?” Stray didn’t need to turn to see who it was. Only Chiharu was brave enough to touch her.

“Nothing but for you to take care of yourself.” Chiharu smiled gently. “You’ll at least eat one of them right? Not like we need second Espada to take your position do we, Stray?” she jested. A quiet moment passed as Chiharu waited for an answer. “Stray?”

Stray didn’t respond at first, but then shrugged Chiharu’s hand off her shoulder. “I’ll be fine. Worry about yourself.”

Chiharu watched as Stray walked down an adjacent hallway that the adjuchas had not taken. So today is another of those day… Her face saddened and, turning her mind away from other thoughts, she retreated silently back within her barracks.

Stray, too, was left with her own thoughts. There was a while before the reiatsu trails stopped and Stray would be at Fraccion 10’s crazeaholic door.

More white walls. This time there were no windows, just continual walking. That only gave Stray more time with her thoughts, which she wished for less and less as time wore on and the distance didn’t seem to shorten in length.

Movement from the far end of the hall awakened Stray from her trance. Stray watched, looking for the movement again, to squash it this time. Nothing sounded while Stray listened, so she continued to walk. A blue-white blur streaked past and Stray turned on her heels. The hallway was empty. Paranoid, she looked around with her senses this time, her eyes closed.

Cold, tight arms wrapped around Stray’s torso. Stray tensed and opened her eyes slowly and looked down. The hands, she observed, were pale white with green fur that reached to the wrist and stopped as they played on her stomach.

“Ja—“

There was breathing in her ear. “Oh! Don’t speak. You’ll ruin the idea.”

Stray shivered, then yelled. “Jake, get off me this instant!!” Her arms shot from her sides, throwing Jake off-balance as he staggered a few steps away.

Jake placed his hands on his hips, clearly pouting. “You ruined it!”

“I did not. I saved myself. That’s plenty enough.” Stray shot Jake a death look.

Jake sighed. “Your model is so fine through…” he murmured. “Anyway,” he leaned forward, one eye shut, “I’ve got a feeling you’ve been looking for me miss.”

Jake the tenth Espada, was more than slightly creepy. His eccentric personality was a perfect match to his sickly tall frame; which, added to his skeletal thickness gave the appearance that he was disappearing into himself as he leaned toward Stray. That, and behind those tinted glasses of his there was always a hidden, murderous glint in his eyes.

Stray tucked her chin in, moving forward. Before Jake realized what was happening a red handprint with claw bites was tattooed on his face. Stray pulled her hand away. “Yes, I have been.”

Strands of corrupted looking green hair dangled themselves in front of Jake’s face. Jake blew them out of his eyesight but they fluttered back, right where they had been. Annoyed, he blew them out of his face again, but they returned yet again.

This continued until Jake raised his hand – more angered at his hair that wouldn’t stay put than at Stray for ignoring the idea he had built earlier – and picked them up with his fingers.

He glared at them, then tucked them behind his long furred ears that somewhat resembled a weasel. They managed to tone down Jake’s creepy, killer-like self to the point that he came across as funny.

Jake sighed. “Going to say or no?” He turned his back to Stray and started to walk to a set of doors that Stray had apparently not seen earlier. The door was an intricate white infused with radioactive green. The color seemed to flow from the top of the door to the bottom. However, never touching the floor as Stray thought it might.

Stray followed in silence for a moment. “I need your adjuchas,” she mumbled, looking away from the door as it flashed brightly before opening for the two of them.

“Wait, what did you say?” Jake asked as he brushed his hair free of a knot he had found.

Stray turned back and walked inside the barracks. “I’ll only repeat myself once. I need your adjuchas.”

“I’m not givin’ them to you. I don’t have many left.” Jake looked away, and upon reaching his workbench, preoccupied himself with a skeletal bone.

Stray calmly walked to the other side of the table, then proceeded to slam her fists down, the bones rattling out-of-place. “As your Primera Espada and chosen hand of King, I demand you give me your adjuchas!!! I don’t give a damn if you love to play with them! By the king’s name, Shira, you—”

Jake placed his finger over Stray’s lips. “Hush! You’ve gone and ruined my skeleton’s layout. I’ll give you what you wish but then you must be gone from this place!” Jake turned away, grumbling and fuming. Fine… if adjuchas is what you want, you can have my weakest and rowdiest! Serves you right for messing with him, you menacing, ungrateful…

Jake bid Stray follow as one of the Fraccion members opened a door near the workbench. Stray hesitated but followed regardless.

In the room beyond, hollows were in their natural states roaming about. The walls were an eerie teal-blue and clean, free of the yellowish mold in Chiharu’s adjuchas’ room.

“Seal your zanpakutos.” Jake’s voice drifted across the room, and one by one – if not some at the same time – different hollows returned to their human forms. About 10 were left in their hollow state.

Jake pointed at the younger hollows. “These are the adjuchas I have left. Take what you want and leave me and my mind be!!” He turned away and staggered back into the other room.

Ugh… The door shut behind him. Finally… peace and quiet with these bones… He turned to the table and rearranged them.

Jake slipped his hand under his hair and pushed his fingers into his head. He tried pulling something out from within, and annoyed he couldn’t, gently pulled strands of hair out-of-the-way. What was seen then was his hollow hole running straight through his head.

He then proceeded to draw a single bone from the hole. It was small, about the size of a rabbit’s foot. This he placed where the neck might have been. “Hello, elder brother…” he mused, as the skeleton pulsed a vibrant red before falling out-of-place.

Stray took four of the stronger adjuchas of the lot and left. The four that she took ambled along behind her for a time. Two of them Stray caught going down a different hallway out of curiosity. This happened frequently.

Another time Stray lost one of them to the halls while chasing two of them. Only one adjuchas was left with her when they exited the palace. This one had followed Stray everywhere, never leaving to wander down a completely random hallway or just away from the arrancar in question. No, it had stayed with her.

Once outside, Stray’s breathing became easier, as the fresh air did her good.

No day came to these sands, but the sun was not needed as the sand sparkled with rays of light from the moon. Trees placed themselves oddly about, some closely clustered, others spread far too thin.

It was near a cluster of those dead tree tops that Stray found the other adjuchas. Arrancars of Fraccion 3 kept them in a tightly knit area – a square – where a putrid yellow and pink barrier rose around them. The female arrancar from earlier approached Stray and asked what they should do now.

“I will take things from here. Remove your wretched barriers and flee my sight before I kill the lot of you arrancar.” The adjucha at Stray’s side flinched but remained.

“Yes ma’am,” the female said.

Stray kicked her in the stomach violently as she turned to leave. “I told you to leave!! Not give me this, Yes ma’am, I am a loser, crap!” Stray yelled as the arrancar fell to her knees.

The arrancar scrambled to her feet and fled towards the others. She pointed at Stray frantically, talking quickly, as Stray drew nearer with every step.

One of the elder male arrancars clasped one of her hands and hurried the hysteric female back inside. The other arrancars followed suit but at their own pace, the barrier dispersing as the arrancars left their places.

The adjucha at Stray’s side shrieked, and the hollows that were huddled together snapped to attention, looking at it. Some moved their gazes higher onto Stray’s figure.

“Follow or die when I return,” Stray announced to the gathered adjuchas. She then turned and started away. Stray didn’t look back to see if they were coming or not, she just ran. Following her mind to the place that scared her most; the turning grounds. It didn’t matter whether the place scared her or not though. Stray had a job to do, and she would carry it out.

Soon enough they reached the grounds where Stray had grown up as a little hollow in the adjucha stage. This use to be her favorite spot to come to but, since that day, it would never be so again.

Stray took to the rock formation that was above the actual grounds itself. The adjuchas that had followed from the Palace now filed into the inlet of a cove. The ground was a rocky sand, and many of the adjuchas felt at home, as it was the type of ground that they had lived on before they had been collected by the third and tenth Espada.

Stray looked down on the weakling hollows that just stood there. Tsk…They don’t even eat when the food is before them, she thought. Stray growled loudly, and their attention was on her immediately.

“Devour one another. You don’t wanna die? Eat.” Stray watched as the hollows looked confused for a moment, pain and puzzlement and fear crossing their faces before they looked at their old friends and roommates oddly. Everywhere fights broke out, the adjuchas scared out of their minds, not wanting to die, each for their own reasons.

Stray backed away, and jumped up into the tree that was there, resting her back against the trunk. Now that things had begun, she was able to sit back and relax. That was not her mind’s plan though.

The moon’s radiance had gears turning within Stray’s head. They weren’t going to let Stray forget that day that happened just a few years ago. No, there was the crescent moon, which mocked Stray’s memories of that day.

Her mind wandered, as it traveled back to that day…