Seeing Through The Dark

Act 1
One year.

In that small span of time, Asumu Godai had made attempts to come to terms with many of his recent decisions. He didn't like to think of himself as a complicated man; he preferred simplicity over all other things, but his mind might as well have been a labyrinth of twists and turns. Much of his life had been spent fighting and honing himself in order to be a soldier worth having, a commander worth following, but at the same time, he dreamed of the day he could lie down in peace, his wife and daughter by his side, and his conflicts all resolved. A pointless hope, of course, as he knew that the life of a soldier, much less a Quincy entailed anything but peace, hence his family's ultimate demise. It shook him to his core how they had perished and himself being no where to be found, not before the death, not during the death, and certainly not after the death; he hadn't even heard of their demise until after the latest war with the Shinigami, the one he volunteered to take part in. He'd already assumed that he would end up a hopeless case by the time his army was declared the loser, but when word reached him that his cherished wife and daughter had died in the time he'd left...

His boots dug further into the white sands of Hueco Mundo, his Sternritter cloak discarded in favor of a tattered grey one with tattered ends and a hood over his head. The bleak color of the cloak matched perfectly with his surroundings, giving him at least some form of camoflauge as he wandered through these alien lands. Any other Sternritter would have worn their cloak at all times when they weren't in combat in a normally hostile environment, but "Quincy Pride" was the last thing on Asumu's mind now; any pride that a Quincy could hope to have after such a humiliating defeat would simply be a result of them living to see it through to it's end. No, he wasn't here to demonstrate any sort of pride or bravado, nor did he come here to die in a blaze of glory, slaughtering as many living things as possible: he was here to find his old comrades, his subordinates. The only reason he and the other Quincy in question survived the war was simply because they had remained here, as ordered. He was the Field-Commander of the Wandenreich's Huedo Mundo division, and when word of his family's death had reached him, he had left his platoon behind in order to find the cause of death.

Now he was back where he started, heading towards their old base of operations. He could feel their Spiritual presence in the distance, several miles off, but at that same time, he could feel something else as well... something similar, yet opposite...