RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE!
The unfinished tower collapsed in an avalanche, cleaved clean through the middle.
Bricks and rubble rattled down in a CLATTER CLATTER, dust billowing like a sandstorm until half the sky went gray.
The explosion drew every eye in the classroom. Students stared out the windows, stunned.
"What happened?"
"Did they finally demolish that abandoned building?"
"It looks like something sliced it open."
"Don't be dumb. Obviously they used explosives. What could possibly slice a whole tower?"
...
Kuchiki Rukia and Kurosaki Ichigo gaped. They had no idea why Tachibana Yu would chop an entire building.
Had he bought an apartment inside?
"Could a Hollow be there?" Rukia blurted, then bolted from the room. Ichigo hurried after her.
They slipped into Soul Reaper form and sprinted.
"Yu, did you find one?" Rukia asked, tense as she faced the rolling sea of dust and debris.
She could hardly believe it. Neither she nor her device had registered a Hollow. How had he? Had he mastered sensing threads already? Even so, how could he outstrip her?
Ichigo, on the other hand, trusted Yu completely. He drew his blade, eyes on the haze. "Is there a Hollow in there?"
Yu nodded. "I can feel it, faint but there. Odds are it's lying in ambush."
"Then we should go carefully," Rukia said, raising a hand to cast kidō at any moment.
Ichigo tightened his grip.
Yu glanced at the two of them, then hefted his eighty meter blade. "Go in for what?"
Under their stunned eyes he brought the giant sword down again and again, laughing. "Just cut the building and the Hollow together."
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE!
The already wrecked frame took fresh punishment. Larger sections exploded to powder. The ground split with trenches seven or eight meters deep.
Dust geysered higher.
In seconds the hidden Hollow could not bear it. It burst from the smoke, bellowing with a twisted mask, "Damn Soul Reaper, are you insane?"
SWISH!
A silver arc flashed across its body.
The monster split in two on the spot. Its question became a final line.
At that instant, a massive gate appeared in the sky, carved with two colossal skulls in dark bloody red. The door creaked open and a blade shot forth, skewering the Hollow.
Instead of dissolving into faint motes, it screamed as the blade reeled it back inside. The door shut with a dreadful finality.
Ichigo swallowed hard, pointing. "Rukia, that was..."
Rukia drew a slow breath. "You have heard of Hell, yes?"
She did not wait for an answer.
"When a spirit falls into Hollowhood and does evil, being cut by a Soul Reaper still purifies it and returns it to the cycle."
"But if a human committed unforgivable crimes while alive, the Gates of Hell take them."
"Inside is a place without life and without death, an unending punishment from which the guilty never escape."
Ichigo sucked in a sharp breath. So there was Hell as well as Soul Society.
Yu had known all along. What surprised him was something else. "I just made a huge scene. Plenty of humans saw. Why aren't you mad?"
Normally Rukia would be hopping mad.
She wore a strange look. "You will not believe this, but yesterday a few kind souls approached me. They said they would handle memory rewriting."
A question mark practically hovered above Yu's head. Who would be the sucker handling that?
At the same time, near Inoue Orihime's place, Urahara Kisuke, Tessai Tsukabishi, Hanakari Jinta, and Tsumugiya Ururu worked up a sweat, dutifully spraying away.
Tessai wiped his brow and managed a smile. "Boss, we are finally almost done."
They had been at it since yesterday, an entire day and night, and had cleared most of the witnesses' memories.
Jinta ground his teeth. "All because of that damned human. Over a thousand slashes. Why did he not die of exhaustion?"
Even Ururu pouted for once, tiny fist pumping. "That human really is too mean."
Urahara tried to soothe them. "Do not be angry. Captain Kurosaki rarely asks favors. We should do it properly. Besides, we are almost fin—"
A fresh detonation rolled in from Karakura First High.
He spread his sensing thread for a glance.
Urahara's face went purple. He could not help cursing. "Are those brats trying to kill us?"
He had not finished here, and a brand new disaster had kicked off there.
...
Back at school, Yu, Rukia, and Ichigo explained everything to Sado Yasutora.
The soul trapped in the parrot understood at last. After apologizing to Chad, the child was sent on by Rukia to Soul Society.
"Well then..." Rukia lifted her memory spray and gave Chad a puff right in the face.
At the same time, in Soul Society's Technology Development Bureau, alarms flared red across a wall of monitors.
Uniformed technicians rushed about, drenched in sweat as they calibrated instruments.
A staffer shouted, "Confirmed. An unrecorded spiritual pressure, magnitude between captain and vice-captain."
Another called, "And a second unknown pressure, only around seventh-seat level."
Moments later a third voice rang out, "We tracked the location. It is the living world, Karakura Town."
Hearing the reports, the Twelfth Division's third seat, Akon, went grim and strode for the door. "Karakura again. Who is provoking Soul Society this time?"