Drabbles, Oneshots, Requests and Moar.

Neliel tu Oderschvank is the beautiful, swift and crashing force of justice. Her form and her release, the skull of the ram and the noble centaur. Damning to weakness and pettiness. African traditions often depict Ram masks with a white line-- like a crack-- down the central axis of the head. "The line divides life from death, light from darkness, and reinforces the notion the Ram as the sign of rebirth or return from death."

In Celtic myth the Ram God was Cernunnos, accompanied by a serpent who bears similarity to Jormangund, the Norse World Snake who holds his own tail in his mouth. This reminds me strikingly of Nnoitra, as a serpent whom in its voracity is devouring itself. Please excuse my random foray into mythology, I was curious.

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The Price of Nobility


She was eternally grateful for her life. Whatever lives she had once had in the mortal world, what she might have been in the spirit world, all that led had up to her birth as an Arrancar. They were something she wished she could remember. She owed something to those spirits that had been devoured by Hollows and nourished the body she now filled.

She had a special sensitivity to her environment, awareness of light and darkness and the balance of those things. Too much awareness even for an Arrancar, the enlightened version of a Hollow. Neliel tu Oderschvank was a noble soul, and it pained her.

Weak beings were unable to control their desires. Unable to think of others and thusly, unable to progress very far beyond meeting their own basic needs. Unfair. They were, most essentially, a few steps above primitivism. Maybe it wasn’t specifically weakness—maybe it was a terrible, terrible fear that made them cowards. The kind of fear no one who was still alive could possibly understand. The fear of being undone, understood, of not being alone.

Arrancar didn’t need to be alone. They weren’t meant to be alone.

They were desperately afraid of being alone.

It had been so long since she had been able to stop hurting because she knew every Arrancar’s pain. No more being compelled to charity because she couldn’t bring herself to hate. Like the humans said, ignorance had been bliss.

Like smarter humans said, an idiot’s bliss wasn’t worth having. Her child form had brought her to Kurosaki Ichigo, the only thing she was grateful for.

It stood to reason that more evolved Hollows needed more evolved means of sustaining themselves. She should have realized so much sooner the ache inside every Arrancar for a complement. Ulquiorra, violently and coldly alone. Grimmjow, emotional and so greedy to be needed. Arrarui so desperate for acknowledgement. Nnoitra, so afraid of proximity that he would kill anything he could. Anything that dared to be near him. Including her.

Nnoitra. How his soul stabbed. Thirsty for the ripping of flesh the same way an alcoholic thirsted for liquor. It wasn’t just desire, it was need. It pulled at her, his aura, like a black hole. So she would be next to him while the air filled with a fine mist of blood, pitying him and hating herself. How he misunderstood… So long ago she had forsaken Nnoitra. How she wished she could help the weak creature more.

Ichigo was surrounded by friends, weak and strong, and they were not alone. And as long as he lived they would never be alone. Even though he knew she was an Arrancar, he had accepted “Nel” for who she was. To him all that mattered was that she was a friend. He had bled for her, risked his life for her. He would die to protect her and almost had died.

Neliel tu Oderschvank would make sure that never happened. She didn’t want to be alone anymore. This cursed soul of hers had been blessed by Ichigo’s friendship…. Awakened. She would do what was necessary for the greater good. Even kill her fellow Arrancar brothers and sisters.

Now she was truly alive again, now she understood, now she was able to make Nnoitra face judgment. She would become the noble and terrifying face of justice once more. She would give Nnoitra the ultimate mercy, no matter how it wounded her heart.

Would the other Arrancar be able to hold themselves back, until they found what they were looking for? How often did anyone…? They probably would never know what they needed so badly.

She had found her complement, she knew. She would protect him and hold him in her memory forever. She would never be his—he was destined for greater things, belonged to too many other people. But if she could, she would always be by his side. Painfully aware of the other people who needed him, and how much worse they would be if he was hers.

So she would happily and lovingly take this double-edged sword of nobility, to fulfill others at the cost of herself, to do what was right for him. Perhaps if she were weaker, she could let herself have him. But justice was her cross to bear, blessing and curse, and she never wanted to return to her days of ignorance; days when she could never have discovered the feral nature of pain and the sweet joy of love in her heart, feelings that she had every day now. Feelings she would, like every memory and every soul that comprised her, treasure forever.