Flames
Prompt: Mission fic
Rating: T for battle violence and mentions of injury/blood
Setting: after the 10 year timeskip
Synopsis: After a mission to eradicate some dangerous Hollows goes badly, Momo protects a badly injured Toshiro.
AN: once again I am writing a fic for the prompts from @yearoftheotpevent's challenge. This started off as a completely different idea and somehow ended up like this. For me it's a bit of a weird one, but I still liked how it turned out. I realised I often write about Toshiro coming to save or fight alongside Momo, so I decided to do the opposite this time around.
Hope you enjoy it!
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The distant roars of a Menos sends a shiver up Momo’s spine. The answering calls of the Huge Hollows makes her will her legs to run faster. She hasn’t seen any yet, but she knows lower class Hollows lurk in the forests, waiting to take the scraps of whatever the Huge Hollows and Menos left behind.
She sheathes Tobiume back against her hip despite the pain lancing up her right side and it’s not long before her throat burns from panting.
However, her focus is on finding Toshiro. He’d been flung in this direction, but she can barely sense his reiatsu. She tries to stay focused on the few erratic whisps that reach her. An attack like that wouldn’t kill him, not even close, but it likely put him out of this battle for good.
She cringes at her captain’s distant calls, barely heard over the Hollows. She normally wouldn’t abandon his side during a fight, but he’d ordered her to find his fellow captain. Rangiku had to stay with her officers, but Momo saw the flash of fear across her face after Toshiro had been knocked out of the sky. He’d want her to keep their officers safe above all else, and so she only nodded at Momo and said she’d call Fourth Division after the fight was over.
His reiatsu is getting closer and closer, but it suddenly changes from bursts into pulses. Momo’s throat tightens in worry. He’s either on the verge of or already unconscious. If she injuries are that severe, she won’t have enough to heal him as best as she can.
Her fears are confirmed when she stumbles to a stop and let’s out a breathless shout. Several Hollows have gathered around where she senses Toshiro. A few are bent over in what appears to be a wide hole, roaring into it. Around them are shard of ice, broken away from Daiguren Hyourinmaru. One Hollow’s horn, mark, and arm are covered in ice; it’s the most determined of the group to get down to where Toshiro likely lies.
Momo can’t take them all on alone. It hardly seems to matter in the wake of an anger she hadn’t felt in over a decade. It burns her, causing her the shake and grit her teeth. The pain in her side evaporates and Tobiume's flames boil her blood, screaming for her to attack.
She rushes forward, tearing through the trees while she unsheathes and releases Tobiume into her shikai state. She cries out as she unleashes fireball after fireball at every Hollow. Some howl and scurry away, others turn to attack her, snarling as the fires either die down or continue to burn on their furs or skins.
A few Hollows charge at her, talons and limbs raised and teeth bared. Jumping one of them in a flash step, she raises and swings Tobiume into it’s mask. Not risking a second, she pulls her blade out before the Hollow even begins to disintegrate and launches herself at the next one.
This one is quadrupedal, but with a wince, she dodges an attack of one of it’s spiked tails. When the other tail flies at her, she slices Tobiume into it, cutting deeply. As the Hollow roars in pain and attempts to fall back, she points her middle and index fingers and chants, “Hado Four, Byakurai!”
The blue bolt bursts from her fingertips and slices into the Hollow’s mask, and continues until it cuts through another Hollow behind it through the torso. As one disintegrates, Momo launches a fireball at the other in a finishing low.
She doesn’t have time to catch her breath as more stomp towards her. To her chagrin, two of them looking like they are the most power of the group, bordering on becoming Huge Hollows. She launches more fireballs, but it does little to deter them.
She’s distracted by the few Hollows behind them who have returned to the hole. The adrenaline cools a fraction. No, she can’t take them all on her own, and she changes her tactics.
She flash-steps out of the way of striking talons and dodges her way between the Hollows’ legs to get behind them. Without a second to waste, she fires another barrage of fireballs at the Hollow’s still lingering at the hole, sending them dashing away with howls and yelps. In the seconds before their pain would turn to fury and they’d launch at her, she flash steps the gap between her and the hole. With only foot on the ground to propel her and not seeing the bottom, she leaps into it.
She winces at her landing, fresh pain now flaring up in her legs. she’d underestimated the depth of the hole. Flinging her head around, she only takes in three things: she’s in a cave system, Toshiro lies with a protect layer of ice over him, and he has indeed fallen unconscious.
“Hitsugaya-kun,” she says without realizing, voice raspy.
The howls from above snap her attention back to the hole. Hollows bend into the cave, trying to either reach in and attack her, or worse, fall in.
She uses the first kido that comes to mind. She stabs Tobiume into the ground and raises both hands. With as much calm as she can muster, she chants the full incantation for Sokatsui. With every inch the Hollows get closer, her heart races a beat faster and her voice gets louder. At the incantation’s last word, the blue-white energy flies from her hands and explodes into a massive wave that engulfs the entire hole.
As soon as it dies down, she casts a kyomon. Beyond it, most of the Hollows have been injured; a few were completely disintegrated by the blast. The surviving ones try and fail to break the barrier. It’s almost a whole minute later when they stop and edge away from sight. Momo remains rigid, listening to their heavy steps and snarls grow distant until they’re gone.
She falls to her knees with a relieved gasp. Quivers take over her, the adrenaline draining from her completely. She dislodges Tobiume from the ground and returns her back to her sealed state before sheathing her away.
With the state Toshiro is in, she can’t transport him somehow back to the others. With a sigh, she realises she has to wait for them to come find them. Toshiro’s reiatsu, even this weak, would still be felt by Shinji and Rangiku from the battlefield at least. If it weren’t for how dire the situation is, she might have laughed at the notion that of all the places Toshiro could have fell into, he fell through a hole into a cave; or maybe he’d created it himself, but with a lack of rocks and broken earth on the ground, it doesn’t look like that happened.
With some struggle, she stands again. She’s about to turn her sights to Toshiro, but remembering she is in a tunnel, panic grips her at the idea that the Hollows might eventually come across where the cave entrance was, or if there was another hole that led into the system.
She moves over to Toshiro. The ice encasing him was actually one of Daiguren Hyourinmaru’s broken wings, and with some effort and ignoring the piercing cold, she lifts it away. He lies on his right side, his fringe falling over his closed eyes, and Hyourinmaru rests on top of his palm, the fingers barely curled towards the hilt. His bankai had been deactivated, but pieces of ice like one of his wings, the small chunks are scattered around him, and the sheet of it lining a section of the cave wall remain. Ice also sealed over a gash in her head the other open wounds across his arms. He has drying blood in his hair and on his skin, but he’s not bleeding out.
It’s with this in mind she chooses to us the last of her kido to raise kyomons over both ways of the tunnel. Casting the last one, she collapses back against the cave wall in exhaustion. She winces as the pain in her side returns. Her uniform had been ripped by an earlier attack, but she doesn’t look down to confirm whether it’s only a bruise or an open wound. It wasn’t enough to stop her reaching Toshiro, it couldn’t be too bad.
At the thought of her friend, she looks over to him and slides down the wall until she’s sitting next to him. She’s careful to not disturb him, keeping her feet close to her and lowering her reiatsu so it wouldn’t melt the ice over his wounds. She wishes she could inspect his wounds, but she take what meager comfort she can get in the steady rise and falls of shoulder and chest from when he breathes.
Still, she doesn’t resist the urge to gingerly brush his fringe back. Dirt cakes his forehead and cheek, but that isn’t what makes her freeze. His frown is gone.
And it reminds her again of how vulnerable her friend is right now. The blood dying his hair red at the back and making the spike sticky doesn’t help either; it was so rare he got wounded like this. Without the poised stance, the deep frown, and the icy gaze, he looks younger. Like he doesn’t belong in the uniform he’s worn for decades. As though he should be back in the Rukongai with his Granny.
She smiles sadly at the thought and careful withdraws her hand. They’d both been young when they’d been accepted into the Academy, but Toshiro’s age became a factor many couldn’t overlook. It only added to his status as a prodigy. He couldn’t ever escape it, whether it was those admiring him for having achieved so much at such a young age, or even when with her whenever she called him ‘Shiro-chan’. She’d never meant it to demean him or show she saw him as only a boy, it was a habit. A tie to the past she always had.
It's been a constant, like him.
And despite herself and the dire situation they’re in, she wonders why she had always expected him to follow her. She’d told herself it was because she recognized his spiritual potential when he expressed being hungry as though it weren’t an odd occurrence for a Soul.
‘Anyone who experiences hunger can become a Shinigami’, she’d been told by other children in Junrinan. When she realized that included herself, she couldn’t have been more happier. It was a naïve thought at the time - especially after she discovered there were Souls in the lower districts who never had their hunger satiated without having to do some awful things to get food – but she could fulfill her dream of becoming a Shinigami and enroll in Academy.
She’d imagine her life there, dressing in the Academy’s uniform and going to all the classes, learning how to cast kido and training with wooden swords and making friends who also had spiritual potential like her.
At some point in her imaginings, Toshiro appeared in the background, then as part of her everday life at the Academy. He’d in a year behind her, studying just as furiously as she. Unlike her, he’d complain often about the adults that taught to classes and would probably excel in the zanjutsu training; she had no basis for the latter, just a gut feeling. She’d hope he’d make friends, but never in her imaginings could she see him with others. He’d be alone, and the thought saddened her enough to imagine even more unrealistic scenarios where they took classes together along with her other friends so he wouldn’t be alone.
She liked the idea of him being there, of seeing him and talking to him about classes and Shinigami-related matters. Even when he’d adamantly refused to ever go to the Academy, she knew – no, she always hoped – he would change his mind.
Her thoughts as disrupted by a groan. Toshiro barely moves, but he’s undoubtedly coming back to consciousness.
“Shiro-chan,” she says, voice still hoarse.
His eyelids scrunch up for a moment, then blink open. His gaze his hazy, trying to coming into focus. Momo shifts so she can lean her head closer to his. “Shiro-chan, can you hear me?”
His brows furrow in confusion. “Hina…mo…” With another groan, he angles his head upward.
Her surprise gives way to alarm. “No, don’t move!”
He doesn’t listen, raising his head from the ground to look at her. He goes rigid with a wince and he falls back to the ground.
Momo quickly checks the ice over his head wound and let’s out a relieved sigh that it hadn’t cracked. Still, it hurts her to see him in this much pain.
“You need to stay still,” she advises while checking his other wounds. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t heal your wounds. If you move, you’ll start to bleed again.”
His gaze is clearer, and without having to say anything, she knows he understands. "Where...?"
Momo recounts to him what happened on the battlefield, when she saw him thrown aside by the Hollow, and then her discovery of him and confrontation with the Hollows.
He eyes her from head to toe after the latter. Is he checking for injuries? Typical of him, to worry about her even when he's like this.
She's suddenly thankful she's seated in such a way that he can't see the tear in the side of her uniform and the wound beneath it. Even if it's mainly just bruising, he would likely make a bigger deal out of it than it needed to be.
She waves her hand in reassurance. "I'm okay, I wasn't hurt by them." She leans away and points to the hole above. “I’ve put up barriers in case the Hollows find us, but we’re safe for now. Hopefully Captain Hirako or Rangiku-san find us soon.”
Toshiro lowers his gaze to the ground, his lashes brushing over his cheeks. A resignation, accepting he can’t do anything and has to wait.
Momo is about to offer what little words she can, but Toshiro’s frown deepens. His hand under Hyourinmaru twitches. He’s trying to move his fingers to curl around the zanpakuto’s hilt, but judging from his scowl, he’s barely able to move. Momo only then notices his nails are blue and his skin is so pale she can see most of the veins in his arms. She’d barely touched him before, but now wonders how cold he is right now.
He heart tightens at watching him trying to hold Hyourinmaru. He may have resigned to waiting for help, but she can understand if holding on to Hyourinmaru would comfort him.
She slowly reaches over to his, giving him time to see her action. He’s too focused though, and he lets out a gasp when her hands help to curl his fingers. Indeed he’s freezing, perhaps the coldest his hands have ever been. She will ask him later, but for now she chalks the lower temperature to not being conscious to reign in Hyourinmaru’s abilities.
Despite the cold, she’s gentle and unhurried, making sure to not disturb the sheen of ice encasing a scrap on the back of his hand. Her face burns knowing Toshiro is watching her wide-eyed.
She still doesn’t meet his gaze even when she has curled his fingers around Hyourinmaru. No, her eyes are glued to her trembling, peachy hands over his still, pale one. It’s that vulnerability again, of having to do this for him when he couldn’t do it himself. It’s the paleness and cold of his skin. It’s the callouses he had built up over the years. It knowing that she knew this hand since they were children.
It's a young person’s hand, one that has done many things. Its reached out to help, it’s gripped a sword in too many battle, it’s bled and scarred over, and it’s held her. It’s not the first time she wonders if they were too young to become Shinigami, if either she or Toshiro should’ve waited until they were adults before going to the Academy. She knows residents in the Junrinan around their ages living more peaceful lives, their hands softer and their minds not filled with memories of blood and battle.
Why had he chosen to go to the Academy? He’d been so stubborn about not going, and then with little explanation, he enrolled.
It's then she meets his eyes. That determination has returned, but it softens at her gaze. She can tell he wonders what she’s thinking. For whatever reason, she smiles.
She had been delighted back then’ now they could fulfill all of her daydreams in one or another. If only she knew what came after, then maybe she’d try to convince him to leave an re-enroll decades down the track.
It can’t be helped now. They both knew and experienced things that couldn’t be taken back. But they had each other despite it all. No, she realizes, through it all.
She stays like that with him until Rangiku and a few other officers arrives several minutes later. Her hands are stiff and cold when she pulls them to deactivated the all the barriers. Gradually, the flames of Tobiume warm her fingers up.
She doesn’t leave the cave when the Fourth Division officer jump in to examine Toshiro. An officer tends to the wound in her side, but she watches the other medics tend to Toshiro. They heal his wounds as best they can before getting him on to a stretcher. As they deliberate how to transport him out of the cave, Toshiro watches her in return.
It’s only then she realizes the last of the cold had disappeared in her hands, and she misses it.
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My Last Minute and Probably Wrong Guesses for @tmbswhodunit (and my undoubtedly flawed logic to go along with it)
Drumroll please...
Petrichor - @mashpotatoequeen
The title is lowercase and most of her recent titles are also lowercase
Many of her fics have titles like this (fancy words like eucatastrophe or bellis perennis)
This fic is very beautiful, amazing word choice, gorgeous visuals (which is what I really love about her writing 💖). I also enjoyed Constance and Sticky's sibling dynamic very much!
We'll Both Be Completely Home in Midair - @oflightningandstars
The title of this fic on AO3 ends in a period, which Moth has done on occasion
The AO3 version also lists where the title is from, which is a Moth staple
The fic is locked. Moth is one of the only people who consistently locks his fics
Even when you ignore the first three points that make me look overly analytic (sorry), the fic is about aliens, which is very similar to the "Cirque des Etoiles" concept which involves stars and spaces AND the Dr. Who AUs, which at some point involved Moth.
The writing, characterization, and concepts are also absolutely beautiful, so they match Moth's style perfectly!
Steady On - @mvshortcut
Milk always double spaces between their paragraphs and also this feels a lot like Milk's writing (and had me on the edge of my seat the whole time! seriously the part where Martina doesn't take Mr. Benedict's hand...why do you do this to me... /lh /I loved this fic!)
Milk's titles are all capital letters, so this fits that (sadly so do many of these fics, but that at least narrows it down)
Milk consistently tags both the books and shows for their fics. There are only two fics in this that fit that requirement. It was for this specific reason that I only tagged the TV show for my own fic (at least for now. I'll probably edit my tags now that the exchange is over).
The Interview - @acollectionofcuriousreblogs
Summary is a longer sentence, other authors usually use shorter ones.
The way the paragraphs are spaced is very similar to her other fics
The angst is AMAZING and very similar to that one snippet I saw on her tumblr during whumptor with her OC's (which was also very well written, but also hurts??? And what happens to Sticky??? The public (me) needs to know! /lh /great writing).
The Alpaca -@lizardwoman-from-earths-core-2
Has used *** to separate lines in fics before
The fic is unrated, and some of her fics on AO3 are also unrated, which is generally rare.
I really enjoyed this fic. The line "some has Godfathered my daughter" made me laugh. 😂
Art: A Psychic Among Us - @heyitsthatonesmolgay
Has made fan art for me before (which I love😍) however, that was a pencil sketch, so it's hard to compare the styles.
You can make gifs and animations for free with fire alpaca (according to google) which I know Nick uses
The way Nick titled the fan art was to put "art" or "fan art" before the title of the art in all caps, which matches this style.
This art is fantastic, I love the animation, I love the concept, just...all of it. 10/10. Anyone in the fandom who makes art is officially a wizard in my book because I don't know how they do it.
Fairytale- @fandom-queen-13
This one gave me the most trouble out of all of them by far. At first I was 100% sure fandom-queen-13 was the one who made some of the fanart, because I have art drawn by her for my SOS fic (if you haven't see it, it's amazing!) BUT! The art submitted to the exchange didn't match the style. Also, I know Crow does a lot of fairytale AUs, and I know Sophie and I have talked about them too, so that really threw me off. HOWEVER, there were three key things about this fic that tipped me off:
1) The bold alternating text in the fic and use of ~ matches other works of hers on AO3
2) The fact that it says in the description that this fic was inspired by "@sergentsporks". There is no one with that URL on AO3 or tumblr, HOWEVER, there IS someone named "@/sergeantsporks" and I found this post: https://www.tumblr.com/sergeantsporks/695958143301255168?source=share. Only one person in our fandom liked the post. Once I figured that out, it cracked the case wide open (unless of course someone else liked and unliked the post in which case this entire guess post is completely wrong. If that is the case then um...my bad? 🤷🏻♀️)
3) The writing is amazing and completely blew me away, not unlike the art style I'm more familiar with. Seriously, this was a FANTASTIC concept and I loved it so much! Werewolf Kate and Milligan my beloveds!
Card Games - @ae-jurumi
This one was difficult. Once I determined that fandom-queen-13 was in fact likely NOT an artist, I was down to Amphibian and surprisingly, realized at the last minute that I forgot to consider Sophie as an artist. I've seen some art from Amphibian in the past, but it can be hard to track down because they have two blogs, and as for Sophie, she writes such great fic that I find myself forgetting "oh yeah, she's also an amazing artist, like really good???" however, I had to go with amphibious entity for this. Why? The art seemed slightly more their style, and most of Sophie's recent fics have titles where all words were capitalized.
Most seem to agree with me, as the tmbswhodunit poll had them winning for this
Has only written one fic that I know of (which was INCREDIBLE everyone read it) but the odds of them doing art for the exchange seemed higher
This art was amazing. It's so beautiful, I can't even tell if you drew it or use software to do it, but either way, it's incredible and proves my earlier point that all fandom artists are wizards.
I Have Spent My Entire Life Clamoring Towards It - @mysteriouseggsbenedict
All words of title are lowercase which Frances sometimes does
Posted to an anon collection as well as WhoDunIt and I know from the discord that Frances was worried about the fic being posted properly
Mary Oliver is a poet, and we know Frances studies library science
A wonderful and sweet fic, and we know that Frances is a wonderful and sweet person. Suspicious. /lh /affectionate
Seriously a very wonderful fic. I love anything where Nicholas Benedict is a good dad and a good mentor.
Cat Fic - @crow-in-springtime
Second word of title is lowercase, which is consistent with how recent fics on AO3 are titled
Author took finals according to the tags, and Crow is in the right age range for this
Has tagged fics "I wrote this instead of sleeping" before
Usually writes fairytale focused content (which I LOVE), however, this fic also seems very much in the wonderful adorable whimsical style of Crow
Crow also tags both the TV show and Book on AO3 (as does this fic)
I love this fic. But the cliffhanger though: what is the cat's name??? 👀
Don't Grow Up Too Fast - @sophieswundergarten
It is to my great shame that this took me the longest to guess and it might not even be correct
But it matches the technicalities of Sophie's writing: the use of long dashes, each word of the title is capitalized.
The biggest give away is that it’s one of the only works Sophie DIDN’T give kudos to, and you can’t leave kudos on your own work.
Also, the writing really does feel like Sophie. I know she loves nicknames, and the "Pen/Penny" thing is a nickname. So. There's a clue right there.
She also loves sibling dynamics, so focusing on Rhonda and Number Two's relationship fits that too.
Sophie already commented on two other fics and she doesn’t seem like the type to comment on her own fic and throw everyone off (would be impressed if she did though)
The writing leaves me with a warm feeling that I get whenever I read fluff by Sophie. So the more I think about it, there more confident I am about this guess. I think I just had to eliminate a few other choices first.
Amazing fic btw. They are such a family 🥰
And...finally...as many were quick to guess both on tumblr and in the discord:
Sirens of the Sea and Sky - @nobodysdaydreams
The Crangst (Crack + Angst) style is my bread and butter (though I usually emphasize the angst more).
It’s the longest fic in the bunch, because in classic Bods fashion, I never know when to quit. The whole paragraph of backstory was completely unnecessary.
Also in classic Bods fashion, the fic has a glaring typo (I wrote that Mermaid Curtain drove into the water instead of dove into the water. I fixed it on AO3 but not before everyone read it on tumblr. Oh well. At least this way we can imagine mermaid Curtain driving his golf cart into the sea).
Genuinely curious to know the exact moment in the fic that made @sophieswundergarten and @myfairkatiecat go "oh gosh dang it Bods" and all but @ me and/or private message me about it (as I suspected they might).
Don't judge me. This is finals did to my brain. They melted my mind. I swear, if this is the first fic of mine you've read, literally any of the other 7 works on my AO3 are so much better than this, I promise.
Really, who else could it be? Who else would do this? The silliness and absurdity haunts me like a plague. I will never be free. Never. I didn't even try to make this funny, this is just what my brain is like 24/7. I've never seen one episode of Sailor Moon and have barely watched any H2O and that was years ago. So why write that into a fic? I don't have the answer. I know not what I do. But I hope that at least some of you enjoyed it, because despite everything, I really enjoyed writing it!
Thank you @mahpotatoequeen for putting this together and thank you to everyone for your wonderful fics! When I have more time, I will be leaving comments on them all because you all are extremely talented deserve them! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! 💕💕💕💕
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