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This article, The Resolve to Fight, is the second chapter of The Rising arc, which is part of Bleach: Cataclysm. This chapter focuses on several characters, with the focus being from the point-of-view of Garrett Sheppard, Tiffany Henderson and Randy Jones.
Garrett collapsed into his armchair and heaved a heavy sigh of the purest relief. He had been working six days straight, over three different jobs, and was only getting in now at nearly half-past eleven on a Saturday night. Whilst that wouldn't usually annoy him he had been at it for nearly a month now.
"Finally home?"
He turned to look at his sister. Jenna made a beeline for the fridge and poured herself a glass of orange juice before sinking into the sofa. She wore a pink housecoat and a pair of furry slippers and judging by her wet hair she wasn't long out of the shower.
"I thought you where going out?" He asked.
"That was the plan." Jenna admitted. "But then I got this text."
Garrett scanned the message on his sister's phone and scowled. Her date had cancelled on her, claiming it wasn't her but him, and had called time on their relationship for by. He gave her the phone back and shook his head.
"You know what we need?" He asked.
"What?"
"Ice cream!"
Randy scanned his watch. Twelve o'clock at night and he was still running the roads dispatching Hollow! So much for his Saturday night. His social life had up and vanished like a fart in the wind.
"I suppose another hour wouldn't kill me."
Randy's feet emitted the tell-tale green light of Bringer Light as he leapt up into the air and sped away. He went another twenty minutes or so before he sensed another Hollow and he skidded to a halt in front of it. It roared in his face, all hate and spit, and Randy waved at the air in front of his nose.
"Ugly and bad breathe. Just my luck."
The battle went like the others had this evening. Randy's skeletal gloves impacted the Hollow's torso and suddenly there was nothing there; blood and bone exploded, a roar escaped its lips, and Randy casually avoided its flailing counter before swiftly landing a right hay-maker! The roaring died, Randy sighed, and quiet returned.
"I don't sense anymore Hollow nearby. Guess I can call it a night then."
But as Randy walked away he instinctively ducked low as a blade passed mere inches above his head. He turned to attack but froze suddenly, eyes widening in surprise, as a blade entered his stomach.
"... You...!"
And with that darkness took him...
Tiffany had been preparing to go home to Grat. But instead she ended up helping Kentaro and the others to fight back an odd attack by what she could only guess where white shambling corpses that had the appearance of a mannequin. These things, for lack of a better word, attempted to bite their victims, all the while grabbing with blood-soaked hands. They shrieked all-the-while, a truly demonic sound that Tiffany was sure she would hear in her nightmares, and they only seemed vulnerable to high-intensity flames.
"What are we dealing with here?" She asked Kentaro.
He laughed; more a chuckle than anything, but he was amused.
"When did 'you' become 'we'?" He continued chuckling. "They're called Soulless."
Kentaro answered after a short delay, looking and sounding very much like Kenji for a time, sounding like he had all the answers. He was rubbing at his eyes however. Almost as if he didn't believe what he was saying.
"Though I don't know how that is possible. I killed them all, along with their creator, before The Collapse. Yet here we have them regardless. And they aren't restricted to the Reikei either. We've had similar reports in the World of the Living: shambling corpses, shrieking like banshees and devoid of reason or coordination, targeting people with high spiritual energy."
"Which areas of the Human World?" Tiffany asked, suddenly alarmed.
Kentaro caught the change in her tone and grinned.
"Areas rich in spiritual energy. Grat, Argleton, Kagamino, to name a few." He squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. "Why are you still here?" He asked suddenly.
"Excuse me?" Tiffany answered, genuinely shocked. "I've been helping-"
"You've had more than one chance to head back and you haven't." Kentaro said, cutting her off. "I don't sleep half as much as I should but I'm not blind. You've been hanging around me, looking always like you want to say something, but then you never do. So spill it: what's on your mind?"
"... I don't think Shinrei is dead."
"Explain."
So she told him about the young man called Ries Nohr. His sudden appearance before The Beatdown, which Kentaro agreed was suspicious, and the massive spiritual energy that appeared to protect Grat during The Collapse, but then disappeared just as quickly. Kentaro listened in silence, asking just a few questions at important parts, until Tiffany finished by saying that Ries' memory was even worse following the incident.
"... I need you to go back to Grat for me."
"And do what exactly?" Tiffany asked.
"Watch Ries and monitor the Soulless situation. If Shinrei is alive then I need to know, if only so I can tell my sister."
"I can do that."
It was amazing how quickly a night could change. Garrett had been sharing ice cream with Jenna when he got a phone call out of the blue from Lloyd. Apparently Randy had been in an accident and had been stabbed pretty badly in the stomach. At the moment he was at the hospital in Grat and was barely holding on. By the time Garrett got there on his uncle's old motorbike -- breaking the speed limit several times in the process -- Randy had been rushed into theatre, where the doctors where undergoing what would hopefully be life-saving surgery.
He found Lloyd in the waiting room.
"What the hell happened!?" Garrett demanded.
"I don't know!" Lloyd answered. "Randy's parents haven't come out yet."
As surgeons themselves it was quite likely Randy's parents where the ones operating on him at this very moment.
"But his father did say one thing." Lloyd continued in a whisper. "It wasn't a Hollow and there's some kind of infection in the wound."
As Garrett absorbed this information he and Lloyd stepped clear as a distraught woman approached reception and inquired after the status of her husband. Whilst he wasn't one to pry Garrett did hear that her husband had been stabbed and that there was an infection in the wound, same as Randy.
He clenched his fists tight enough to draw blood.
"Lloyd, if there's any change you call me."
"Where are you going?"
"... Someone or something out there nearly killed my friend." He whispered fiercely. "I'm going to find it. And when I do I'm going to kill it."
Garrett Sheppard was back and he was pissed.