Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 179 - Reunion

For the next month, Wayne made camp nearby and settled his people in. Every Soul Reaper under his command was furious, first a brutal forced march, then a dead stop for no apparent reason, but none of them dared say so out loud. They couldn't use the Senkaimon to return to Soul Society, either. Unless Wayne died and they carried his body back, abandoning a still-active mission while teammates remained in the field would mark them as deserters. A unanimous distress call was the only exception.

So all ten of them stayed put, following Wayne's lead, hunting lone Hollow beasts to sharpen themselves while they waited. Even the squad member who had butted heads with Wayne stayed, because Wayne had covered their retreat, and that counted for something.

One day, the squad returned to camp after another grinding stretch of combat and collapsed around the fire. The weeks of constant tension had hollowed them out. They sat in silence, staring at the flames. The firelight was the only thing that still put any warmth in their eyes.

"Tsuki. I think we need to talk." It was already well into the double digits, the number of times Mizusue had pulled Wayne aside for a private word in the past half-year.

"The fighters are at their limit. We can't keep grinding like this." Her bond with Wayne was deep enough that her own mind hadn't gone as dark and vacant as the others'. She trusted him absolutely, and she understood the hatred driving him, so in every combat decision, she stood in his corner without hesitation. But she also understood what the rest of the squad was going through. She had asked about going home more than once.

"Wait a little longer." Wayne's voice was flat. No feeling in it at all.

"Wait for what, exactly?" Mizusue's brow creased. "Tsuki — ever since we crossed into Hueco Mundo, you've been a different person. Cold. Detached. That's not you. And I don't buy that Yagami China's death is the whole reason. What are you hiding from us?"

"You're right, my lady. I have kept things from you." A long beat of silence. Then Wayne slowly stood and walked toward her. "From the moment I was born in Soul Society, I knew there was someone I had to destroy. Someone immensely powerful. Someone who plans decades ahead, who holds one of the highest positions in existence, whose ambition has no ceiling. He is the single most formidable enemy I have."

"Tsuki." Mizusue's voice was flat. "What are you talking about?"

"To beat him, I pushed forward. I kept growing. I built everything I have now." Wayne's expression tightened with pain. "And it still isn't enough. That man — he took my friends. My comrades. My home. He took everything. So I have to get stronger. And Hueco Mundo is the fastest path."

"Tsuki... you..."

BZZZ!

While Mizusue was still processing his words, a spatial tremor detonated across the camp. A pitch-black rift split the air, and from it surged a wave of Reiatsu so dense it pressed against the skin. Multiple signatures, more than ten of them, easily Adjuchas-class.

"Garganta! Hollows! We're under attack!"

The Soul Reapers shot to their feet. The Reiatsu felt like a hand closing around their throats. More than ten Adjuchas, that wasn't a fight, that was a massacre. If they didn't move now, there wouldn't be a second chance.

Half-broken as they were, every one of them yanked out their Zanpakuto and called for the Senkaimon. But the moment the gate started to form, a wave of black Reiatsu rolled over them like a tide. In the span of a breath, the connection vanished. No gate. No way out.

Worse, each of them was sealed inside a separate barrier, isolated from the others. They hacked at the walls. Nothing. The barriers didn't so much as shudder.

Wayne and Mizusue were caged too.

Wayne looked at the barrier around him and smiled. Faint, almost nostalgic.

Spatial Confinement. He hadn't seen this in a long time.

A pity, though. Jekain had stayed at high-tier Adjuchas after all, never managed that final step forward.

He didn't have to wait long. Across the clearing, Jekain stepped through the sealed air into the barrier, a host of Hollow beasts at his back.

"Jekain." Wayne lifted a hand in greeting.

"Sir..." Jekain's head tilted. "Have we met?"

He hadn't changed much. Still the same human frame with a dragon's skull for a head. But the Hollow Mask had aged, lines worn into it by decades of time, weathering the face of a man who had once been steward of a castle into something that looked old.

"Mude. Timd." Wayne spoke their names in turn.

Then his throat locked.

"Where's Nel? Why isn't Nel here? And Harribel's gone too?" His voice was quieter now. "What happened to all of you? What happened in these past decades?"

The Hollow beasts exchanged uneasy glances. How did this Soul Reaper know their hierarchy so precisely? He was calling out names of members who had never once appeared in public.

"Sir." Jekain made no move to attack. "Kent told me you might know where Ace Wayne is."

That name. Ace Wayne. He hadn't heard it in so many years that every time a rumor surfaced, every time the faintest trace turned up, he was already on his feet, searching, pushing outward across Hueco Mundo, looking for the king who had once led them toward something like glory.

"Ah." Wayne nodded. "Words won't do it justice. Better to just show you."

He drew his Zanpakuto. Every Hollow beast in the clearing tensed at once, dropping into combat stances.

Wayne ignored them and spoke the release.

"Welcome back, Wayne."

BOOM!

Pale-gold Reiatsu detonated inside the barrier. It climbed, and kept climbing. And out of that light, the silhouette of Ace Wayne, his true form, the Hollow beast, materialized before them all.

THUD!

Jekain hit his knees before the image had even fully formed. He wasn't thinking. He didn't need to. A silhouette could lie, but that Reiatsu couldn't. He'd carried that signature in his memory for decades, and it was singing through him now, unmistakable.

"King..." His voice cracked. His whole body was shaking, Reiatsu spiking so hard he looked like he might shatter. "King, you're alive. You're still alive!"

The moment Jekain knelt, every Hollow beast who had followed Wayne in the old days understood at once. They dropped. All of them, facing that gold light.

"We welcome our King home!"

Wayne exhaled.

That word, home, return, he had waited decades to hear it.

"Everyone." He withdrew the Hollowfication image, his voice steadying. "I know you have questions about what you're looking at. We'll get to it. But business first."

He turned to work.

"Jekain, push the Spatial Confinement to full coverage. Seal the entire surrounding area." His eyes moved. "Timd, some Emblems. And what have you been building lately?"

"King... I..." Timd hadn't found his footing yet. His hands were shaking as he dug out a fistful of Emblems and held them out.

"It's fine. We'll have time for all of it." Wayne took the Emblems with a faint smile and tucked them away. He looked toward the bulk of the assembled Hollow beasts. "Mude, take everyone. The woman with the lake-blue hair who came in with me, leave her. Everyone else..."

He paused for exactly a beat.

"Kill them."

"Yes!"

They scattered instantly. Then the screaming started. It didn't stop for a while. Blood soaked into the sand, dark and spreading, and the sounds of tearing flesh filled the camp until they didn't.

When it settled, only Wayne, Jekain, and Timd remained where they stood.

"King... why did you—"

"Where's Nel?"

The moment Wayne said it, whatever doubt had been lingering in Jekain's chest was gone. Only his King would ask about Nel first.

"Lady Nel..." Jekain let out a slow breath. He was quiet for a moment. Then:

"In the years after we fled to the Forest of Menos — when you never came back — we sent people into Hueco Mundo to look for you. They found traces of your Reiatsu near the old castle. But there was no sign of you. We thought..." He paused. "We assumed something had happened to you. We kept looking anyway.

"Then one day, Lady Nel came back. She told us what happened in your final battle. She gave me instructions to hold the territory. And then she left alone, said she was going to avenge you." His voice flattened. "She never returned."

Wayne's eyes narrowed slowly. Something cold moved behind them and didn't leave.

"King." Timd stepped in. "My clones now cover the entire western half of Hueco Mundo. We've found no trace of Lady Nel anywhere in the west. About half a year ago, I finally broke through to peak high-tier Adjuchas through constant feeding. That's when I started pushing our search westward, trying to pick up her trail."

"Understood." Wayne processed that, then: "Harribel?"

"Hmph." Timd's lip curled. "Once she saw you were gone, she collected her subordinates and walked. On her way out, she let her people try to pull ours along with her." A beat. "Didn't work. Every last one of ours stayed."

Wayne closed his eyes.

In the manga, Aizen had folded Baraggan into his ranks first, then Harribel not long after. Harribel leaving his own faction made sense, the person who had bound her was gone. But trying to take people with her? That he hadn't foreseen. That must have been Apache and the others acting on their own initiative. It wasn't Harribel's style. And even with his forces gutted to less than a tenth of what they'd been, there were still a dozen or so Adjuchas left, not a number Harribel would have moved against directly.

Either way. Times had changed. Whether Aizen had approached her yet, he couldn't know. It didn't matter much. He'd brought Harribel in to build strength, nothing more. Her leaving was always a possibility, she had never been one of his from the ground up.

"Keep looking for Nel," Wayne said. "That's the priority."

"King, how did you end up, "

"That is a long story." A small exhale. Then Wayne sat and told it.

He laid out everything: Aizen cutting him down, the Dual Soul Body pulling him through Soul Burial into Soul Society, the long climb to become a Soul Reaper, and then the discovery that his Hollow beast form and his Zanpakuto were the same thing. He left out the Dominator of Hueco Mundo. He left out anything touching on the Laws. Just the decades in between, the strange, grinding, unlikely path that had brought him back to this moment.

"Right now, part of my power has been stripped away by that Soul Reaper. I need to take it back. Before I can do that, I need to get as strong as I can."

"King." Jekain's voice was steady. "Tell us what you need."

"What do our forces look like?" The battle decades ago had gutted them. Fewer than one in ten high-tier Adjuchas had made it out. But time had passed. They should have rebuilt something.

"Because of the foothold you established in the Forest of Menos before all of this happened, we had somewhere to go." Jekain bowed his head slightly. "Currently: twelve high-tier Adjuchas. Twenty-eight mid-tier. Sixty-plus low-tier. Ordinary class below that. Our base shifted to the Forest of Menos after we lost the castle, tempering Gillians into Adjuchas and folding them into our ranks isn't easy down there."

"Our reach in Hueco Mundo?"

"Since that battle, we've only ever sent half our mid-tier and above up to hunt or push our boundaries. The old castle is occupied, another Hollow faction moved in. We haven't been able to take it back." Jekain's tone didn't waver, but something in it went flat. "King. That is our failure."

"Oh?" The corner of Wayne's mouth lifted. "Cuckoos in the nest. What are we dealing with?"

"Over a hundred low-tier Adjuchas. Around fifty mid-tier. Twenty-two high-tier." Jekain's face tightened, but he didn't stop. "And one low-tier Vasto Lorde-class Menos. King, against that lineup, we cannot win."

"Mm." Wayne nodded slowly. "Good."

He'd been wondering where to sharpen himself. And here was a Vasto Lorde-class Menos sitting in his old castle, waiting.

"We'll start there." His voice was certain. "But I need to build my strength first. Let's move, back to the Forest of Menos. Once I'm ready, we're taking our castle back."

"Yes. My King."

WHOOSH!

Mude was already back, massive frame moving through the dark, his subordinates trailing behind him. Fresh blood ringed their mouths. The Soul Reaper meal, it seemed, had been satisfying.

"King. Everyone except that female Soul Reaper has been divided among the brothers. The woman herself, we knocked her out. Your call on what happens next."

Mude had followed Wayne since the beginning, longer than most. The moment he understood that this Soul Reaper was his King, there was no hesitation, no demand for explanation. He believed. He had always believed, through every form, every absence, every decade of silence.

"Keep her unconscious. I'll handle her myself." A quiet sigh. Then Wayne's voice sharpened back to command. "Jekain, sweep the area. Erase every trace of the fight. Then open the Garganta. We're going home."

"Yes, My King."

➤ Next: The King Returns