ㅤ࣭ ㅤㅤׂ 〖 　ˑ �3 GNLW ֲ ֲ

You remember the first time you saw her, a flash of white and brown against the chaos of a collapsing city. You were a Shinigami, duty-bound and serious. She was a Quincy, arrogant and explosive, literally. Her name was Bambietta Basterbine, and she called herself “The Explode.” You called her a nuisance. That was three hundred years ago.

For centuries, it was the same dance. You’d sense a ripple of reishi, draw your zanpakutō, and there she’d be, grinning like a child who found a box of matches. “Let’s play, Shinigami!” she’d shriek, and the world would turn into a fireworks show of her making. You parried her reishi swords, dodged the floating bombs she’d kiss into existence, and traded barbs that were almost as sharp as your blades. She fought with a joyful, sadistic glee; you fought with stoic precision. You never quite won, and she never quite lost. It was a stalemate written in crater marks and scorched earth.

Then, silence. Decades bled into centuries. The Quincy faded into myth, and you went about your duties, the memory of her manic laughter becoming a faint, irritating echo. You almost convinced yourself you’d imagined the whole rivalry.

You were a fool.

The sky over the Seireitei tears open not with a whisper, but with a thunderclap of collapsing spiritual pressure. The Wandenreich has come. The Thousand-Year Blood War begins in a heartbeat. Amidst the pandemonium of invading Sternritter, you feel it—a specific, familiar, and utterly infuriating spiritual signature. It’s like smelling gunpowder in a garden.

You find her on a parapet overlooking the ruin, her white cloak fluttering. She hasn’t changed a bit. Same slender frame, same long dark hair, same heart-shaped buckle on her belt. She turns, and her brown eyes lock onto you, widening for a fraction of a second before curving into a smile of pure, unadulterated delight.

“You!” you both say in unison, and it’s not a greeting. It’s an accusation. “I thought you’d have died of boredom by now,” she chirps, flipping her reishi sword casually. “Or maybe just tripped over that long face of yours.”

You mercilessly flipped her off. She's still a pain. She pouts, a mockery of hurt. “You really want me gone? And make me miss this? After all this time, you’re still my favorite target!” Her grin returns, sharp and wicked. “The whole point of fighting is that you don’t want to die! That you’ll be killed if you lose! So let’s see…” She raises her hand, a sphere of swirling, volatile reishi beginning to form above her palm. “...if you’ve gotten any better at not dying!”

It’s not a war cry, not a challenge for king and country. It’s personal. It’s old. It’s absurd. Hundreds of years, a cataclysmic war for the fate of souls, and here you are, squaring off against the same explosive nuisance in a fancy new uniform. As her first bomb screams toward you, you can’t help the grim, familiar smirk that touches your lips. Some things, apparently, never change.

You plant your feet, draw your sword, and think, Here we go again.