The hazy memories of his first life were gradually coming into sharper focus, emerging in his mind not as clear concepts or images, but as intuition a vague sense of right or wrong, the work of a newly rediscovered human subconscious joyfully siphoning resources from his experienced, one hundred and forty year old soul.
But if this game of "hot and cold" had proven quite useful in separating junk from useful things, the constant, nagging sense of wrongness was infuriating, grating on his nerves, fueling his paranoia.
The Shinigami was plagued by a sensation of error, of the incompleteness of his own perception.
It was as if he had forgotten something important, fundamental, almost the very essence of being human. And this feeling was steadily multiplying, intensifying, translating into a pressure building within his very body.
However, the profound fatigue, the ache in his muscles, and the thirst and hunger prevented him from clearly identifying the source of the problem.
Why is my body so incomprehensible? Even a Gigai, an artificial vessel for missions in the World of the Living, ought to come with an instruction manual. It's a basic necessity! They could have at least put in a little effort: added pop-up hints, like in the Kido Corps' Training Hall…
He didn't get to finish his sluggish train of thought when he suddenly felt a pleasant, refreshing relief.
The anxiety vanished. The unconscious burden disappeared, replaced by gratitude and a mechanical, instinctive smile. What had happened..?
He reflexively glanced down as a strange discomfort made itself known.
What's wrong now?!
His clothing below the waist was beginning to unpleasantly swell and stick to the inside of his thighs. Water, appearing from nowhere, streamed down onto his white socks, ran in a brisk trickle over his standard issue sandals, and began feeding the dry sand in a small rivulet.
What is this? As if a bubble inside me suddenly sprang a leak, expelling all its air. That must have been the pressure, even if I didn't understand it, and now it's suddenly gone, leaving only brief relief. Hm. The sensation isn't painful, so my body must be fine, Okumura began to reason.
The feeling of dampness quickly grew tiresome, and he got rid of all his remaining clothes. The black kosode and the upper shitagi had been left on the huntress, so he didn't have to fuss with them. But the trousers and the lower shitagi, along with the socks and sandals, had to be removed, straightened out, and laid beside him.
It stinks, the Shinigami concluded. Some kind of yellow liquid, came out from… He slapped himself on the forehead.
He had only half listened to the lectures about the World of the Living. The Third Officer (then a mere Academy student) of the Gotei 13 had paid little mind; at the time of his studies, he still remembered his first life perfectly well. Subsequent missions never gave him reason to interact with the locals, and the burden of his accumulated years had successfully buried any remnants of that former life.
Third Officer Okumura didn't even bleed from his wounds an achievement not every senior officer could boast of. Even lieutenants and young captains didn't always master such exquisite control, save for officers of the First and Sixth Divisions.
The catch, however, lay elsewhere: to exist so confidently as a spirit, one had to completely forget the very fundamentals of human existence.
And now he was paying for it with a total lack of adaptation to the world of the living.
At least I can still find and recall those lectures in my memory. Theoretically.
With the acquisition of his Shikai, his memory had approached the absolute, yet everything that remained from before the formation of his Zanpakutō's spirit bond continued to fade.
Seki couldn't simply rummage through his head and find the memories of his first life. But he could locate practically any episode from his existence as a Shinigami. Not quickly. The process resembled searching for a document in an archive using a long catalog. Absolute memory didn't mean simultaneously storing ALL memories in his active recall.
Nevertheless, after just an hour and a half, the necessary information had settled in his mind.
And then he was overcome with shame.
The first genuine feeling, aside from the deep seated hatred and crushing self disappointment, that belonged solely to him, to his soul, without the influence or interference of this new body.
Okumura had no particular desire to live; revenge seemed as impossible as returning home. Only his duty remained, but the thought of a new period of study, of earning authority and rank, filled him with despondency.
Yet, no matter how unhappy, angry, or empty he was that was no excuse to behave like a mindless animal. Third Officer Okumura Seki must not disgrace the honor of the Gotei 13 Shinigami. If this was the fate dealt to him, he should be content with it. For all he knew, he was here by the will of the Soul King himself?
All in the world passes under His gaze, and this miraculous salvation…
"If a new death is my destiny, then it shall not be a shameful one! Even the most despicable criminals die on Sōkyoku in impeccable purity. I must be an example to the common souls, inspire them to fight the endless enemy. Purity of body, purity of thought that is the bare minimum I must provide for myself."
Okumura began to structure the information he'd found in the back alleys of his memory. It turned out humans have a waste disposal system, which he, to his own surprise, had activated.
Moreover, the living use special places for this disposal, take meticulous care of their Gigai, wash them, only relieve themselves after removing their clothes, and follow numerous rules of hygiene.
And he had behaved like a helpless infant, a down and out marginal, or a senile old man.
A second wave of shame literally made him jump.
Riding the sudden wave of awakened enthusiasm, Okumura began scouring his memory for any other available information about the living. Simultaneously, he recalled a specific spell from the Way of Return, which they had been taught in Kido courses as a control exercise.
"Kaidō San: Yamato Nadeshiko!"
His form was instantly restored to its pristine cleanliness and dryness. Not a hint of the earlier accident remained. Simply perfect. However, a new sensation was already brewing in his abdomen, now closer to his tailbone. Another type of waste disposal, far less convenient and significantly dirtier.
He had to excuse himself to the nearest dune. People are embarrassed by the manifestation of this system; they don't want to show it to others. The same applies to passing wind, belching, picking one's nose (why all this? Are these actions necessary too?), the smell of sweat and sickness, and dirt on skin, hair, and face.
Though, the part about dirt applied to Shinigami as well, and even to ordinary souls without Reiryoku, so those rules were much easier to accept. Pity that none of the known spells cleaned the Gigai itself.
Well, actually, the Gigai could be cleansed by a simple, unstructured release of spiritual particles. The problem was that Okumura was now alive, with a soul inseparable from his body. A release of Reiryoku emanated from the surface of his skin without affecting it.
And, quite simply, he had no spiritual energy left to continue his experiments. The meager amount he had managed to accumulate had been spent on cleansing his form.
"I need to continue searching for water. And food," the Shinigami said aloud to himself as soon as he heard his stomach rumble.
"But is it necessary?" he suddenly thought, with apathy.
All his bustling, unbridled energy of youthful life had vanished, flown away with the angels' share, while he fought, survived, healed, scavenged, and so on, and so forth.
And now the turmoil was over, and with it, the last crumbs of energy had departed. To think how mere physical fatigue could affect one's emotional state.
"The living are such contradictory beings…"
He had managed to enter his inner world only with great difficulty, thanks solely to Aogari. But his theory was confirmed. Purified from the influence of his own body, he once again felt the meditative calm of a pure soul, mixed with the discarded, already processed emotions filtered through primitive mortal organs.
Anger, resentment, devastating confusion, distress, guilt…
Souls perceive the world and feel emotions quite differently from humans. And while a human in their youth can weather even strong negativity, bouncing back from stress quickly, a soul is capable of digesting new experiences for much longer than a day, a week, or even a year it depends on the intensity of the impact.
"Perhaps my current mortal existence is a blessing," he decided.
His hatred for Aizen, and all the feelings associated with those events, had not died out, but they had diminished, and significantly faster than he could ever have expected of himself. Okumura generally considered himself prone to brooding, even compared to the typically introspective souls.
Nevertheless, being human at this moment carried no less negativity than existing as a soul within the inner world.
The nervous excitement from the strange situation and the sudden realization had ebbed, and the negative emotions began to weigh on him again, despite a certain satisfaction and the pleasantly humming muscles in his body.
As Okumura had managed to glean from his own memory, a human Gigai, unlike souls, was governed by a multitude of incredibly complex mechanisms: from something called DNA, a repository of information that determined a person's entire essence, to certain neurotransmitters capable of eliciting emotions, determining sleep and wake cycles, and many other things.
He understood practically nothing of the giant schematic preserved in his memory. Only that his Gigai was now seriously influencing his essence. Like how the words of an incantation affect the final result of a Kido, but infinitely more complex and intricate.
And the young organism suddenly felt genuine fear: with trembling, shaking hands, cold sweat, darkness clouding his vision.
A sudden, unbearably brief fear of losing himself, until a new thought highlighted the absurdity of such fears. One hundred and forty years of forming habits and a core personality cannot be so easily changed, even by a different form of existence. Especially when access to his former self is still preserved within his inner world.
"Strange, unsettling, even somewhat pleasant in a way. The fear of mortals is far more complex than the simple trembling of a soul before its potential end. Hm, I didn't have such a reaction even during the fight with that scoundrel, whose chances of killing me (as I now understand) were far higher than my possibility of defeating him.
Ah, of course. Just now, it was me, the personality, who was afraid. And the fight… What fight? The habit of fighting hasn't gone anywhere. The body will react not to what such a young body in this specific world, locality, and culture is supposed to react to, but to what I myself will react to. Although attempts by the former will still occur. Quite obvious, if you think about it…"
The sun began to set.
Seki gradually noticed the daytime heat subsiding a circumstance that couldn't help but please him, yet almost four hours of work under the scorching sun had drained all optimistic thoughts.
After a second, more thorough and "hands on" search, the Shinigami managed to find not only food but also local alcohol (he learned to distinguish it by its specific stench), animal feed (a vile looking grain in sacks this is for livestock, right?), and also remembered money and collected an impressive stack of banknotes.
"O, Soul King, I'm a veritable genius! What other Shinigami would have thought that local money could simultaneously lack spiritual enchantment, like the currency of the Soul Society, and not consist of precious metals, as is customary among savage tribes!"
He twirled one of the bills in his hand, with its clearly distinguishable number ten and a strange image of what looked like either a castle or a temple in an oasis.
Interestingly, Okumura could freely read all the available text: "Issued by the Royal Mint of Vacuo; 10 Lien; image of Shade Academy."
"Probably, my body was taught the language before the soul's memory fully awakened. Convenient."
"Though, I suspect I still think in the language of the Seireitei. The local one seems rather primitive, stripped down in terms of semantic load. Although, perhaps it's a matter of the vocabulary of this overly young body."
He returned to the huntress.
He had to fuss for a few more minutes, placing a feedbag of oats in front of the donkey, giving the animal water. Having done this, Seki considered the animal care fulfilled, and began rummaging through the supplies for his own meal.
Several dozen mysterious, seemingly edible bricks, a bunch of tin cans in which, after long attempts to recall something similar from his past life, he discovered canned goods, dried meat, dried vegetables and fruits, and a lot of other food convenient for travel. And a pot with already cooked porridge in one of the wagons.
There was enough food inside to stuff himself completely, and even to spoon feed the huntress, fortunately the porridge was so thoroughly cooked that its consistency was closer to soup.
Now that all pressing matters were resolved, it was time for the long awaited rest.
Okumura set the bowl aside and slid down the wall like a helpless slug next to the wounded girl, who was wrapped in clean rags mixed with pieces of his own uniform. The closed wooden shutters of the wagon let in no light; only the occasional orange rays of the setting sun from the open doorway illuminated the small space of the van, creating a soft, soothingly intimate semi darkness.
The girl next to him let out a soft moan.
Okumura turned his head, deciding to examine her appearance in more detail. Her tangled hair, damp with sweat and blood, was a rather rare color: black at the crown and roots, it gradually shifted into a rich, sunset red hue. Her face was gaunt and pale, with traces of a warm, heartfelt beauty; her eyebrows and eyelashes were the same strange shade as her hair, but less pronounced.
A sturdy yet feminine body, not too tall, with elegant palms calloused from weapons, but without signs of grueling domestic work. The hands of an elite fighter, not a housewife or a common soldier.
"Did I do everything correctly? It seems so. Healed her, gave her water, fed her… Maybe I should wash her? But water in the desert is a deficit, better to save it for later. I can't carry all the bags anyway, I'll have to leave some here or drink my fill before setting out…
Oh, Hell and all its sinners, how could I forget?!" He stared with horror at the area of her genitals. "The wounded must need to use the toilet too! And if she can't do it herself, then… then it will be like my first time. Kuso!"
After several grimaces of disgust and five minutes of frantic deliberation, he arrived at a brilliant idea: to remove her trousers and underwear, and instead wrap her hips with some useless cloth, then simply change it as needed.
"I hope this huntress wakes up quickly enough that I don't have to do, um, 'redressing' several times and wash her after, ahem, an accident. O Soul King, please, please, let the next healing session make her open her eyes!"
Because, no matter how much he tried to speed up the process, she really needed to wake up on her own. Okumura really didn't want to use Kaidō, the Way of Healing, again, even the seventh one which was considered relatively safe.
There was always a chance of channeling too much energy into one area leaving an unpleasant burn or even tearing the delicate spiritual pathways. Fortunately, the huntress's mysterious "Aura" practically negated the likelihood of such an outcome.
But that was when there was little of it left, and her entire body was essentially one big wound. The healthier the patient, the more dangerous it was to use healing Kido, regardless of which world they resided in.
Besides, if the girl woke up quickly, he wouldn't have to care for her for an extra couple of days. But the main reason was safety. So, the veteran of Hollow battles reconsidered his position. Definitely not because of squeamishness or embarrassment.
"Enough imagining random women naked. You are not safe yet. You need to decide where to go next, Okumura Seki."
Ah, as always, Aogari remained the refreshing voice of reason in this world of Hollow selling scum, dead people, and wounded, vulgar huntresses seducing a young Shinigami with their unconscious bodies.
"I'll spend the night here, and then we'll see. If there's a route, I'll follow it. If not… I'll have to go on a scouting mission."
He quickly dismissed the idea of staying put until the wounded woman woke up.
Hollows were always attracted to such places, reeking of used spiritual power, negative emotions, and cooling corpses.
Perhaps the only reason the Shinigami hadn't had to fend off the vicious creatures yet was the fact that all the local raiders had already been gathered for the assault on the caravan.
"And there could also be storms and other calamities here that I might not survive," he recalled with a shudder the spiritual storm he'd once been caught in, in the Unknown Lands beyond the residential districts of Rukongai.
Fortunately, Okumura had a couple of things that could make navigation easier. A compass, a blood stained paper map of the desert territories with a red thread marking the route, plenty of potential transportation, and draft power in the form of the donkey.
A pity he couldn't figure out his position on the map, so it was somewhat useless. And in the desert itself, there were no roads, signs, or pointers to the nearest human settlement.
Another category of loot with fluctuating value was complex technological devices. Okumura himself only poked at some cones made of a strange material, resembling sturdy, flexible, thick bark or very thin wood. All the complex gadgets, including small, stylized scrolls, were made from this material.
He was afraid to touch those, deciding to leave them for the huntress. They looked fragile enough to break from mishandling, and besides, all such devices were personal, as he'd taken them from corpses.
He didn't want to rummage through such personal items. What if they were the equivalent of the armband or belt tag used to identify bodies in the Seireitei? The Shinigami had already trampled enough on his own pride, honor, and dignity to also feel like a scoundrel due to immoderate curiosity.
Seki had no more plans for the evening, so he decided to sit in meditation, its deep variant, as a complete substitute for sleep.
But as soon as he settled into silence and stillness, the doubts returned with renewed force, tormenting the Shinigami for the next twelve hours, which he spent between sleep and wakefulness. However, the body's reactions, along with the soul's hope and shame, proved stronger than the guilt, pain, and longing for death.
"Lieutenant Aizen Sōsuke…"
Who would have thought that the superficial slacker with his boke mask, Captain Hirako Shinji, whose escapades with Lieutenant Hiyori (a petite girl hiding a boisterous character behind her insecurities) were the butt of jokes among all senior officers, was actually right about his own lieutenant.
Moreover, when the darkest emotions receded, Okumura felt longing. Longing for his true friend, the genius Shiba Isshin, for his lieutenant, an awkward representative of the spirit animal tribe who hid his fox head under a ridiculous bucket helmet, for his subordinates.
And for Aizen, who in a short time had become closer than all the others.
"Why didn't they teach us at the Academy that betrayal hurts far more than any wound?"
He meditated for over ten hours.
He listened to the sand rustling mysteriously, like a lullaby from his first, long forgotten life. To the ubiquitous lizards scurrying in the dunes, the yapping of small, cautious foxes, the creaking of rare shrubs and cacti in the wind.
He listened to how a particular energy, akin to but not identical with spiritual energy, flowed through the world with a magical, magnetically grand quality, with its own unique fragrance. How it pierced the earth's firmament, and the remnants, mere crumbs trapped in mountain depths, became crystals and fine dust.
He listened to the dark creatures with white masks prowling the desert, unknown hybrids of Hollows and some alien, malevolent will. Lonely, vicious, devoid of individuality, evolution, even hunger. They were left with only a primitive instinct, but not the capabilities that instinct urged them towards.
No evolution would grant them reason.
He listened until the icy night air was touched by the first ray of sun.
And then he stood up, rested, full of enthusiasm and the untapped energy of a young body.
"Phew, by the way, how old is this Gigai?" he asked inwardly. "Eight or nine? No, almost nine. Yes, I always looked young, but this much… No wonder the body is practically bubbling."
He wanted to run, jump, sing, shout, fight another Hollow to the death. He wanted to buy sweet dango and taiyaki cookies with exquisitely sweet bean paste, pour five hundred year old green tea straight from the terraces of the 16th District, and then spend the whole day gorging on sweets while studying Kido modification formulas. He wanted to down an entire flask of spiritual wine…
"Damn. Being an old man might have been easier. Although the last desire would definitely have remained the same."
Overnight, the sand had covered all the corpses. Okumura reluctantly dug out the most intact wagon, which he planned to travel with, and waved a hand at the rest.
The donkey was still in place, though it had dumped a whole pile near itself, partially trampled by its hooves. Seki, without a second thought, buried it in the sand, then watered the animal and added more oats to its feedbag from the sacks.
In the process, he understood the reason for the hoofed creature's cries yesterday: several deep scratches from wood splinters, a few splinters… And the saddle, left on the donkey all night, had rubbed its back raw. He had to remove it and bandage the back with consecrated rags. Though how he would later get the infernal contraption back on the beast of burden, the Shinigami tried not to think.
The cheerful crunching from the animal prompted his own stomach to erupt with demanding growls. He had to figure out how to prepare food for both himself and the huntress.
The compromise was the canned goods, which he awkwardly opened with his Zanpakutō, dumped the unappetizing looking meat into a bowl, fished out pieces of metal and fat, disgusting even to look at, added some water warmed by the sun, mixed in dried vegetables, and threw in spices simply because he could.
He started scratching the back of his head, thinking what to do next.
"Can I eat it like this now, or do I need to boil it? I never cared for cooking in the Seireitei, but I think…"
He decided to wait a bit longer.
Besides, ten to fifteen minutes in the sun would heat the food enough without bothering to light a fire. Meanwhile, he had a new task of epic complexity ahead: to wash the huntress, change her rags, and air out the temporary shelter, all with a severe water shortage.
It certainly didn't smell like summer roses in there.
The first Hollows appeared right after breakfast. Two of the scorpion subspecies he was already familiar with (giant creatures with sturdy, porcelain white patterned bodies), and a previously unseen variant of a black centipede with a white mask.
Okumura could only thank the vile creatures for not catching him, or rather, his charge, with her pants down while he was trying to clean the huntress's body with sand and a small bottle of soapy water.
A process equally exhausting due to the weight of the limp woman, awkward because of her nakedness, and just plain disgusting… simply disgusting.
For no particular reason.
"Deal with them without my help. Challenges should temper inexperienced youths."
Aogari's first comment of the day.
"I'm over a hundred and forty years old!"
"Right now, you are a youth: in body, in spirit, in capabilities. You must demonstrate your strength not to me but to this new world. Prove your right to be here! Do so until the people around you acknowledge your ability to fulfill your duty."
"Perhaps you're right… But starting over is so dreary!"
A train of thought completely uncharacteristic for him. Okumura mentally lamented the influence of the new body, drew the tantō from its sheath, and took a stance near one of the broken wagons.
"Let's see how many of them attack me, and how many go for the huntress."
They rushed him simultaneously.
"I hate insects!" he shouted in response to the ugly, low frequency howl of the centipede.
The first scorpion fell offensively easily.
Shunpo lifted Okumura onto the chitinous back; yesterday's strike at the vulnerable spot between the cephalothorax and abdomen worked just as successfully. This Hollow disappeared with the same haste as the previous one, but this time the Shinigami didn't allow a moment of disorientation. On the contrary, he deftly recoiled from the long, segmented body of the new enemy.
A lunge, a filigree dodge from the scorpion's tail, the blade sinking into the chitin almost effortlessly. The defense of these local enemies of humanity was more physical, more bestial no wonder they had material bodies. Their advantage was the ability to devour all humans indiscriminately. Their critical vulnerability was spiritual techniques.
The second scorpion followed the first after Seki delivered a third and final attack, which split the monster's flesh in two.
The centipede ahead didn't act as he calculated. Instead, the creature tensed, drew the segments of its huge body together, and suddenly shot its entire bulk toward the opponent.
The Shinigami barely had time to react. No time for evasion or Shunpo: the physical body was critically slow, without developed instincts. All that remained was to take the hit head on. A big mistake…
He sighed as the hard, sharpened, cat claw like mandibles struck directly against Aogari's blade.
His arm was wrenched again, the small body was thrown aside, the spiritual blade falling from his hand during the flight. Seki instantly rolled, expecting a finishing blow from the bloodthirsty creature, but instead, the Hollow, with an enraged howl, tried to smash the fallen Zanpakutō with its mandibles.
"Aogari!!!"
The absurd situation angered him so much that he ignored the warning cry of the blade in his head, ignored basic logic some half Hollow wouldn't break a spiritual blade even with a year of continuous attacks ignored a good chance for a counterattack.
Though no, the latter was exactly what he intended to do.
No safe destruction via the Way of Destruction, no concealing Reiryoku for a surprise attack, only pure Hakuda, the hand to hand combat of a Shinigami.
"Ikkotsu!" Left hand forward, right fist drawn back.
One of the most basic Hakuda techniques, yet the most versatile. Where a master could crush Gillians with a single blow, a novice couldn't break a rotten board.
Bam!
Okumura never considered himself a good fist fighter. His Hakuda techniques were learned, effective, integrated into his fighting style, but thoroughly formulaic, predictable, poorly optimized, and consumed too much spiritual energy.
However, these drawbacks mattered against hostile souls, not brainless creatures with such large, such conveniently attackable sizes.
A huge hole in the head from a single blow. A grating, inhuman insectoid shriek, a second of disorientation.
"Sokotsu!" The twin brother of the previous attack.
An equally well known Hakuda technique, just one rank above Ikkotsu. Equally versatile, insidious, and demanding. The most popular for combination with Ikkotsu.
The stunned centipede provided enough time for the finishing move. A jump, a calm stance, a double fisted strike.
A loud, explosive crack of the technique activating. Hastily dissolving black flakes around the figure landing on the sand.
"Are you alright, Aogari?"
"I am not a damsel in distress, Master," a calm clarification. "But you handled it well. Losing your sword can be considered both luck and a warning."
"I dropped you too easily. And… remembered Hakuda. By the way, it's much more useful in the World of the Living!"
"I can imagine how happy Captain Yoruichi would be to hear that," Aogari grinned good naturedly, pleased with his Shinigami's progress.
"Yeah, she'd probably run off to some spiritually saturated place on Earth, like Karakura, Lalenburg, or Glupov. And take a lover with her, or better yet two, so the gossips wouldn't have to make things up!" Okumura laughed sincerely.
The stress of losing his blade, coupled with post battle adrenaline, demanded release nothing unusual. Still, the genuine laughter felt unexpectedly pleasant. Seki had long forgotten the last time he laughed like that. Long, sincerely, without a hidden grudge.
Ah, yes. Before the death of the 13th Division lieutenant, over a hundred years ago.
The euphoria gave way to mild melancholy, but that was all. Too much time had passed; he couldn't grieve as he once did. Not with everything that had happened in the last few days.
It was sad and unworthy, but Aizen's betrayal, followed by the whirlwind of new emotions from rebirth, had finally made the pain of that old loss fade, forcing him to accept it and move on.
He could barely remember her face now…
"Conclusions!" barked the collected voice of his Zanpakutō inside his mind.
"Yes, right away," Seki fussed. "For some reason, my sword attracts the most Hollows around here. And negativity, obviously. My negativity. The wounded huntress hardly interests them, though her 'Aura' will start attracting the creatures when she wakes up. Hmm, perhaps the hunt for you, Aogari, is for the same reason: a large amount of spiritual power fused with a physical vessel."
"You are right, Master," Aogari's usually even tone sparkled with dark amusement. "Of all the races in the Three Worlds, it is we, the Zanpakutō, who are closest to the local Hollow hunters here. A stretch, perhaps, but my state could be compared to their 'Aura' a powerful soul nailed to a body."
"So, we've been reborn in a world where humans took the path of spiritual blades? Oh, what a pity that Ōetsu Nimaiya won't see this strange land! The Creator of Zanpakutō could have truly flourished here," he smiled flatteringly as Aogari in his head burst into grim, villainous laughter at the successful joke.
Okumura closed his eyes for a moment, scanned the area for new threats, found nothing, and then decided to go on a scouting mission.
Not such a simple task.
Desert all around, and his control had degraded so much he could no longer move through the air, not even stand on it. He had to channel his accumulated Reiryoku into an air walking Kido from the Way of Binding, jump up, look around, jump again to barely make out some palm trees from a height of thirty meters.
And nearly dash himself on the ground after the third try.
"That's half my energy gone," he thought sourly. "Just like the good old days of the Spiritual Academy. How dreary it is to be weak. Chikushō. Maybe I should have spent the Reiryoku not on stupid jumps, but on healing my charge?"
He toyed with the thought, then regretfully dismissed it.
The seventh Kaidō was more dangerous here, as the huntress's "Aura" had recovered and was now accelerating the healing process on its own. The reservoir was already full to the brim. And he justifiably feared using higher numbered spells with his degraded control.
He'd do more harm than good.
The next few hours were spent on the tedious organization of transport, repairing the most intact and convenient wagon from the dead caravan, moving necessary items into it, and hitching the cart with the remaining goods to the back of the wagon.
Leaving a pile of things behind, free for the taking by the desert, went against his practicality.
"And stinginess. You're always hoarding valuables like a magpie. You filled your inner world with useless junk! And now you can't even manifest it properly."
The Gotei 13 veteran nearly choked on indignation at such a brazen accusation.
"A supply of Asauchi for promising recruits, spiritual wine from the Captain, a set of sweets, a Hell Butterfly crystal, and other things that is not useless junk!"
"Techniques, Okumura Seki. Who spent seven years saving his officer's salary so one elite private from the First could teach you the Byakurai modification?"
"It saved my life!"
"And you barely used it afterwards!"
"The line of Rikū, Demon Ice Bow, and Demon Ice Spear from the Way of Destruction is simply more flexible and promising!"
"Which you also bartered for with favors, and then ran around like a little dog doing errands for the patriarch of your own House for nearly two decades!"
"I It was worth it. And what does this have to do with my alleged stinginess and hoarding?!"
"Valuables are valuables. I'm not judging you, but stop deceiving yourself."
"We'll see."
The new Hollow attack came just as he was pulling the huntress out of the wagon.
He had to lower the body onto the sand and then show another centipede who the true pinnacle of evolution was here. This time, without any mishaps: an academically clean, perfect fight, fit for a student demonstration right now.
Seki cleaned his sword, relaxed his shoulders, and stared long and intently at the remains of the fallen caravan, immersed in thought and melancholy. Then he cast a long, wistful look at the vast desert around him.
No roads, no landmarks, no living beings. Only the tiny particles of eternity, trapped in the sand dunes, rustled against each other, and the vicious southern sun tested his body's endurance every second.
He felt that oppressive presence upon him, like the spiritual pressure of a not overly powerful, but bloodthirsty and utterly elusive monster. A faint resemblance to Commander General Yamamoto's Reiryoku.
"You hesitate. So, you are wrong?"
He was indeed delaying the trek across the desert, even though everything of any value had long been placed in the cart, the huntress was asleep, sheltered from the exhausting sun by the wagon's metal sides, and the melancholy donkey lazily swished its tail, hitched to the strange wagon and cart contraption.
"I believe I am right, it's just… it's not only my life at stake."
"As a soul, you never suffered from sentimentality. No. You compensated for sentimentality towards those close to you with complete indifference to everyone else."
"She's… sort of not a stranger anymore. She's a warrior, a local Shinigami. Besides… hmm. Considering how much I've seen… Ah. I'm probably just afraid of messing up. Another life lost because of me. In this new world, I want to start things right, with a rescue, not with regrets about a comrade dying in my arms."
"Comrade? Far fetched and premature," the Zanpakutō waved a bandaged hand clad in a tight glove dismissively. "I knew children were prone to exaggeration…"
"Think what you want. She fought those freaks, fought the Hollows. To the death, without any hesitation. That's enough for me."
"Perhaps," Aogari brushed him off, after which Okumura reluctantly fell silent and began his trek.
From the outside, wandering across a monotonous sea of sand with only briefly glimpsed palm trees as a guide might seem foolish, but Okumura Seki perceived and noticed more than ordinary people.
A faint spiritual trace emanated from the discovered location. The kind left by people who have lived in one place for a long time. Once the Shinigami had seen that area, he managed to pick up and latch onto the required sensation with his spiritual perception.
So he knew exactly which direction to go.
The trek through the desert took over four hours. Awfully long, considering the distance wasn't that great. But the donkey kept resisting, the wagons got stuck in the sand, the huntress began moaning in her sleep and only calmed down after a sip of water, a stroke of her hair, or being held in forced, awkward, heartfelt not at all intimate embraces.
The first time, she suddenly latched onto the unfortunate child and nervously squeezed him in her tenacious, unbreakable grip for a good fifteen minutes. Only a slight application of Reiryoku, tuned to the frequency of calm and protection, could loosen the bone crushing embrace of the sweet, petite woman.
"A good sign. If she's reacting to the world around her, she should come to soon."
The donkey noticed the first change in the landscape. Okumura was just walking beside it, sweating in his thick black uniform and tormenting himself with introspection in the style of: "How could I have prevented the entire situation that led to me being who knows where?"
"Hee-haw, HEE-HAW!" it signaled to the bipedal creature walking in harness with it and helping to pull the monstrous wagon cart contraption.
"Hee-haw, yeah," Okumura repeated thoughtfully, then blinked, peering into the distance.
The two palm trees he had glimpsed hours ago turned out to be part of a whole ensemble of trees surrounding the wall of a small village. Unfortunately, only two particularly sturdy ones near the broken, trampled gates had survived. The rest were mere blackened skeletons.
The Shinigami led his convoy to the half buried gate leaves, tied the donkey to the remains of the posts, checked the surroundings for Hollows, noted their number, and then entered the dead village.
Powerful, for such a small population, two meter walls of yellow sandstone slabs, white clay huts inside all of it was completely lost against the desert backdrop. No wonder he hadn't been able to make out anything but the palms.
The village was depressing. Up close, the houses no longer seemed so bright: black circles from fires inside, walls greyed, covered in webs of clay cracks, damages from a long past battle, sometimes soot, bloodstains, marks from teeth, tails, and claws.
And the only rustle in the empty houses came from the Hollows that had made their dens here.
"Ruler, the one who wears a mask of flesh…"
He killed the first giant snake with the ninth Hadō: Hyōma no Kyū, Demon Ice Bow. It was just enough, but hitting the vulnerable spot the nose helped finish the creature without consequences.
He killed the second snake with his fists, using the already practiced Sokotsu, a two handed strike, while the crawling fiend purposefully moved towards the Zanpakutō left by the gate. He managed to finish off three scorpions the same way, who learned of the intruder's existence too late.
There were no other Hollows in the dead village, so Okumura, with a clear conscience, decided to bring his entire camp inside. The wagon with the cart would fit in the small square at the village center, and the largest (and emptiest, picked clean) house in the settlement happened to have windows facing this very square.
That house had an excellent cellar: wide, spacious, with a well designed ventilation system and two emergency exits. Although, one was tightly blocked by sand and debris, and the other led to a shack on the outskirts with a dangerous dead end, but it could be useful as a last resort.
"Excellent. The walls are thick enough that the familiar types of desert Menos we know couldn't accidentally break through them. Aogari, do you think they could sense you or any of us in that cellar?"
"They could. In the unlikely event that we all collectively fountain negativity for a long time."
"What do you mean? Ah, my theory that the local Hollows are more sensitive to emotions due to their physical nature than to Reiryoku?"
"That, too. Reiryoku also depends. She and I have a much greater volume than you in your new body, a much stronger interaction between the physical form and the soul. It's easier for Hollows to sense our presence. But your burden is unconscious, and you yourself are weak and have good control. That leaves only me. Perhaps it was my thirst for battle that attracted those creatures this morning."
"Plausible. Returning to the question…"
"No, they won't sense us," the Zanpakutō's voice held a note of disdain. "The abandoned battlefield seethes with negativity far more than I do, which is why all the local trash gathered there. I only attracted the Hollows when they had already reached the caravan and discovered you. Target priority."
"And when the centipede tried to attack you instead of me, I mean, your manifestation in the sword?"
"You understood correctly."
"And the cellar itself is not simple. Perhaps women and children hid here from the monster attacks."
"Yes. They won't notice you here, even if they pass along the same street. Only if a Hollow enters the building itself and I flare up with emotions."
"You've reassured me," Okumura smiled.
And froze when a disturbing, buzzing crimson portal appeared near the wagon with the sleeping huntress.