the dune conflict

When Naomi rolled off of him, Miyamoto took the opportunity to light a cigarette and turn on the radio. He had put in a tape of jazz before he and his commanding officer went for a rumble under the sheets, and it helped sooth the hot blood that was flowing through his veins. 

“You’re as good with the short sword as you are with your other, Moto-kun,” Naomi said, her voice deep and luxurious. “I haven’t screamed notes that high in fifty years now.” 

Miyamoto smiled his cheesy smile and took a drag on his cigarette. There was no light inside of their tent, and it had been specially made by the Kidoshu so as to be soundproof. Only the faint illumination of his smoke, which kissed Naomi’s pale features with the orange glow of fire, disturbed their peace. 

Slowly, Naomi’s hand traced circles around his left nipple before slowly sliding down under the sheets. She smiled when she found him hard again. “You don’t like to talk a lot, but you like to fuck I see.” 

“Yeah well, there’s nothing else to do out here, eh? Why follow orders for no reason when we can enjoy ourselves, ya’ dig?” 

Naomi giggled at that as she moved the covers back and moved on top of him. Both hands, each with fingers ending in long fingernails, grasped his chest as she lowered herself down. “I agr-ooooh, yes.” 

Miyamoto smiled as he began his task, face screwed up from pleasure. That same pleasure became pain as he found himself popped into the air by a sudden tremor. Naomi screamed when she hit the ground and she rolled to her feet as gracefully as she could. Miyamoto just laid there, rubbing the back of his head. 

“Fucking shit, the hell was tha---wooah!” Another tremor knocked him from his feet as he stood up, and this time he came down on all fours. Cursing louder than ever before, he grabbed his hakama, threw them on, and strode outside of the tent. Without his sash he had to use his hands to keep the cloth at his waist. 

“Hey, you! What’s going on?” Miyamoto yelled to a young shinigami running from one tent to the next. Said shinigami came to him, bowed three times, and then rose with a solemn expression. 

“A spiritual disturbance has been detected two clicks from the camp. Reishi analysts and reiatsu sensors both indicate that it’s hollow. The Hohlreich are here.” 

When the shinigami ran off to further spread the message, Miyamoto turned to face the sky. Disgust must have been plastered on his face because Naomi, now fully clothed, strode from the tent and gave him a queer look. 

“What’s going on, Moto-kun?” 

He took a pause before answering her. Miyamoto’s hands opened and closed over and over again as he attempted to grasp the reality of what was coming. “We were stationed out here, in the wastes of the southern Rukongai, to stop a possible hollow attack. Three thousand men wasted on nothing, right Naomi?” 

“Yes, that’s what we were tol--” 

Miyamoto stopped Naomi by taking hold of her and bringing her close to his face. He didn’t care that his hakama slid to the ground or that she was his commanding officer; his vision was blinded by tears and anger. “It was supposed to be something to please the nobles, who are scared! There shouldn’t be hollow in the Rukongai! There shouldn’t be enemies here! So why are we under attack?!” 

“Let go of me!” Naomi shouted as she struggled to break free. When she finally disentangled herself, she realized it wasn’t her strength that forced him to let go. A tremor ran through the ground, causing cracks to invade the hard flat they were camped on like vines did a tree. “What...is…” 

Another tremor passed through the land, this time coupled by a clap of what sounded like thunder. Miyamoto looked up to scan the skies, but he found no stormclouds. A red star appeared in the empty blue then, followed by a black and another red. “That series of flares means…” 

Another tremor through Miyamoto to his knees. The camp burst into excitement and he felt Naomi run away from. His tears had yet to stop flowing. 

“Why, man…” Miyamoto grabbed a first full of sand and through it at the heavens, as if cursing some god. “WHY DO I HAVE TO DIE TODAY?!” 

---

0 

Nabill’s boot stomped the life out of some small lizard that had been crawling along the crest of the dune. The sun above turned the desert they were crossing into a hellish wasteland. Most hollow had been able to endure it, their hungers and their powers pushing them on. Some had fallen to the heat, only to be devoured by their kin. Even Nabill felt sweat bead on his brow and trickle down the side of his face. He ignored it, just as he did everything else. The sun, the sky, the sand; all of it was as meaningless as the hollow he had eaten to break his fast. 

“There they are, Lord General,” Nabill heard a voice say. He cared not which of the arrancar had spoke to him. They, too, were meaningless. 

Drawing the upper katana of the two he wore on his left hip, the general hoisted the steel blade into the air. It hummed as it moved, and the eyes of an entire army fell upon it. 

“Take the light.” 

A roar of approval, so loud that it was like to be heard a million miles away in the seireitei, was birthed behind him. Four black spheres blasted into the sky, colliding with one another a dozen miles over the sands and creating a black blanket under the sun. Day turned to night almost immediately for miles around, and streams of sunlight kissed the desert at its edge. Within the shade, however, the hollow were at their strongest. All seven thousand of them. 

“Now take their lives.” And when his sword came down, the dam was broken and the flood unleashed. The forces gathered before him were just a stepping stone to reach the treasure that was the Seireitei. 

---

 

Jayk moved like the lightning, and the mace in his hand was a hundred times as deadly. It smashed in the heads of shinigami, shattered their swords, and left bleeding bodies to die in the sands. The moment the chaos had started he had jumped into a throng of ten men, eager for blood and glory. By the time the pack of hollow he was leading caught up, they were all dead, and Jayk was pressing deeper into the heart of the conflict. 

“You bastard!” shouted one shinigami, whose sword was wreathed in fire. It came down in a flash but Jayk tumbled out of the way and brought his mace up against the shinigami’s knee. The leg exploded in a gout of blood and gore, the shinigami screamed, and then the mace came around and landed on his throat. 

“Eleven,” Jayk heard himself say. Subconsciously, he was counting every body he felled. 

Another shinigami stabbed at him. The blade he swung was clad in black blood and strips of hollow meat; Jayk could smell the anger and fear that it excused, along with the piss that stained the shinigami’s hakama. When the blade came around to strike the missed target, Jayk ducked and brought his sword up into the shinigami’s groin. When he toppled over he brought it down on his skull, caving it in. “Twelve.” 

Then heat washed over him and he felt his feet dangling. Next thing Jayk knew, he was flying into a massive hollow, whose head had just been removed. Another fireball cleaved through the crowd to finish the job, but the mace met it head on and dispersed it. When Jayk went to lift his left arm, he realized it was burned black and numb. 

“Son of a--” a flash of lightning cut off his words and he ducked and used sonido to blast forward. The shinigami attempted to put space between them but years of focus on his spells meant that he was as slow as the biggest gillian. The mace hit the shinigami’s shoulder, then his ribs, then turned his face into a mixture of bloody pulp and splintered bone. “Thirteen.” 

Without a single missed heartbeat, Jayk turned and jumped on top of a massive bull hollow he saw charging through the melee. He landed on its back with a thud, raised his mace, and tightened his legs around its neck. “Charge them all down! Rip life from body, you fucking currs! If any of you have white teeth when this is over, I’ll fuck your bloody corpses, even in hell!” A blood-drunk laugh ended his yelling as he looked to the horizon. 

There, lining the dunes, were fresh shinigami. Reinforcements had finally come, and at their head was a man wearing a white haori. Captain, he thought. His mace pointed at the shinigami, who was miles away, and he leaned into the bull’s ear and said “We gore that one.”