LOG; COMPLETE;

[anti-buttons.livejournal.com]

When; September 5th; v. early morning
Rating; PG? YA RLY. tl;dr, but only 13 tags long!
Characters; Ishida Uryuu {anti_buttons} & Cirucci Thunderwitch {thunderwitch}
Summary; The beginning of the end.
Log;



The cloud above his head should not have been able to produce the rain it did, it was so small. It must have been a joke, akin to the City jabbing him nonstop with a stick or its finger, a means of saying, this is a nuisance and not a problem. It had barely been a drizzle when it begun.

Still, his irritation with it and panic about his belongings had lead to a slight increase, though far from a down pour, and necessitated Uryuu's removing himself from his apartment. He would not allow the loss of his sewing machine, the memory of its victimization to rain and lightning strong in his mind.

So it was that at 12:30 AM Ishida Uryuu stood outside on a clear night, umbrella in hand, trying to cheer himself up. Happy thoughts - "ridiculous", he muttered, and refused to let his mind wander to her.



If Cirucci Thunderwitch had anything to say about it, the Quincy would always be thinking about her. Her pride, her number, her wounds, her glory, her disgusting, disgusting obsession. Anything, everything, it didn't matter to her, as long as she could consume his entire being one way or another, any way she could, to destroy him any way she had. Her pitiful retribution for her treatment at his hands, the one thing she could never escape, never forget or sweep under the rug.

A cloud of her own, rumbling, dark, and sporting the faint light of disguised lightening hung over her head, her pouting lips, her immaculate make-up, and her curled hair. But her pout didn't stay long, not too long. Of course, it was hard to keep her reiatsu so suppressed, but she'd had practice. Practice keeping herself hidden, as shameful as that was, so that she was detected, yes, but by then it was too late, wasn't it?

"Shiro-Megane-Kun~"



The her in this case had referred to Inoue Orihime, whom he refused to muse on in some sad attempt to feel happy - why should that work? In the case of the Thunderwitch, of course, it was near law that he never thought of her. It aided in his policy of ignoring her. As such, he thought of neither person, of absolutely nothing in that moment - because so much of what might please him carried undercurrents, memories with dead, drowning weight.

Uryuu had just settled on imagining a design for a cape when he heard the thunder, too far to be from his own cloud, too heavy to belong to it. He looked up, really half-expecting the sight that greeted him: the Thunderwitch, perched above on a balcony.

Practice retained his schooled lack of expression, though his hand tightened on the umbrella. To make his point clear, he lowered his gaze, pretending he hadn't seen her at all - though his muscles were tense, at the ready to launch himself from his attack, spirit particles beneath his feet.



To be ignored. How if ruffled her metaphorical feathers. Legs crossed and uncrossed, and she refused to dignify him with a movement, not yet. No, she was taught already, entire body humming with the desire to move. Move, move, kill, strike, yell, scream, cry, anything. She couldn't be seen playing her previous games with him. They made her weak, in others' eyes. And she couldn't afford that, either.

"Going to stand outside all night, hmm?" A croon, she was always good at the presentation, but the roiling storm above her head betrayed her, much to her frustration. Because she knew what she had to do, she knew what she wanted, and yet...

She was not about to attack him with weather on her head.



With every intention of continuing to disregard her presence, Uryuu remained unmoved. To begin to walk would be a form of concession, and also pointless, as she would follow. Though the cloud above his head spread it's reach by an inch, and darkened, the rain fall remained an unsteady drizzle, and Uryuu fought to maintain that almost neutrality, so that he might then push toward clear skies.

As if she would make that easy. His lips pursed at the sound of her voice, the swinging pitch, and despite himself, he looked at her. At the very least, it was with only his eyes, sharp and hard and cornered, rather than his head - she wasn't wet, but she also didn't have an umbrella.

The picture of maturity, Uryuu squared his shoulders and pretended it had been a particularly odd gust of wind. Capes, think of capes.



Disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting. Lips pursed, and a particularly loud bout of thunder rumbled. Fuck him, fuck this-

"I'll take that as a yes." Crooned, beneath the flash of a lightning bolt. She hopped down, hands demurely, her, demurely, holding her skirt hem down as she landed beside him from the balcony above, straightening with a smile.

"Enjoying being back? Probably not." If he wouldn't talk for himself, she would. "Because you know what's going to happen next, don't you?"



To his credit, Uryuu did not jump, flinch, or so much as involuntarily twitch a muscle when she fell beside him. That was inevitable - and, unfortunately, he knew with a certainty that blackened his cloud, it was equally inevitable that she would go so far as to touch him if he kept it up, simply to see how far his determination would go.

He'd worked himself into a corner with this one, and his mouth set into a grim line. To acknowledge her now would be a bow of his head, a step yielded in her favor. But there was only so much he could do, short of outright making a shot at her saketsu chain.

(And why not? He wondered, letting himself think the tone of the thought merely idle). Instead:

"I'm sure you'll tell me anyway," Uryuu retorted, at least able to sound only bored.



"Of course I will, Shiro-Megane-Kun." She actually didn't take a stop closer, stood a good foot away from the edge of his umbrella, smoothed her skirt hem before one hand found her hip and the other a curl of hair.

"We're going to have to have our big fight~" The Privaron sounded proud, but, her weather forecast outshadowed any tone she could have adopted at the moment. "And that will be the end of all of it. Our big finale." Her big finale, not his. It was a talent, of hers, to push things she knew to the side, and she knew she would probably lose, didn't she. Of course. Because no matter how she did it, unless a curse day allowed it, he came out winning. She was weaker, she was lesser, she was...

Getting rained on. A slow, misty drizzle that she could yet ignore.

"Not today though. That would be too undignified for our final date, don't you think?"



At that, all his composure tripped over the crack in the road, and he looked at her. A proper look, his chin leading the way, his hand sliding to tilt the umbrella just so, to allow his eyes better range. A quick gathering of his wits did save his lids from a boyish widening, did keep his expression relatively cool, even as his mind raced.

A big fight, a finale? She sounded smug, but though he stared through his own light rain, he could recognize the beginning of hers - and that alone put a doubt in his mind as to whether or not she had planned a trap.

"How nice of you to decide for me," he answered, not acknowledging her reference to a date. "And what then? After I defeat you," the cold fact, "You'll still be here, and dead, and defeated. Not that I'll kill you - but that you are dead won't change."



"What then?" She smiled, a smirk, really, fingers grasping the edge of his umbrella and tugging down, a teasing sort of confidence as she obscured his face. The 105th didn't want to see his face. She didn't want to look at him, and though her need for attention craved it, she summarily rejected it in this moment. It was a form of suicide, what she was about to do, and a part of her knew it, which brought her rain to a more steady fall.

She ignored it.

"That's the end. The game ends. All of it ends." Thunder rumbled, and she felt rain drip sullen down the ends of her hairstyle, trail down the bone mask and leak from the ends of the ornamentation that represented her power, her useless power, and made her blink, wet caught in her lashes.

"If you win, you don't ever have to deal with Cirucci Thunderwitch ever again. And if I win, then I have my revenge."



Perhaps it was the way the rain over her head intensified. Perhaps it was the steady groaning of the cloud over her head, or the way in which her eyes had never met his, in which she grasped his umbrella for no apparent reason - not to take it, not for anything. Perhaps that, and something else, but rather than feeling the clench of gloating superiority in his gut, the escalation of his imminent victory, something sour and heavy settled.

But he fought it. Uryuu had a knack for seeing things the way he wanted to see them, even if he needed to walk himself around the logic ring once to do so - and there was nothing about this that he could not see as good, as finally, and whatever her motivations, well - how could they matter to him? Whatever prompted a monster?

"An offer I really can't refuse," and his smirk felt a little thin.

The rain over his head fell into a constant. Whatever prompted her - unimportant, uninteresting, he would finally have his way, his peace, but even with the wet bone the rain glistened in her eyelashes and she looked like a woman without an umbrella.

Uryuu knew better, but his arm extended the reach of his umbrella. His hair began to dampen; water slid over glass and blurred his vision, she was white and violet and violent and dark, all falling together.

"I accept."



She wouldn't acknowledge the offer, because... she wouldn't. Her painted lips quirked up into a falser smirk, and she took the reprieve to brush wet strands of her hair out of her face, tuck them behind the dripped bone mask, and shake out her skirt hem with a petulant note towards the curse.

"You didn't have a choice." He did, he always did, it seemed. It was she who was without choices. She was the one who didn't have a choice in what went on, in what she did. She had to act a certain way. She was an Arrancar, and the water that had soaked her dress touched skin, but not the skin of her chest, because there was a hole there. No heart, and people with no hearts, they acted like this. Obligations, broken pride, and all of it, she acted like that, because it was what she is.

"But good." Her fingers twined around the umbrella handle, slow, half sensuous, and snatched suddenly, and turned away from him, his umbrella resting the handle on her shoulder and starting to walk away.

"You'll know when the time comes, Ishida." Shiro-Megane-Kun was for the public. This was more personal than just a fight, after all. "I'll come soon."

When it rains, it pours, it seems.



As ever, she spoke in her own favor - something that should have been familiar to him, and in a personal, reflective way, except her words had a stronger flavour of delusion. After all, he had the talent and record to bolster his arrogance, to support his platform. At least, however empty her words, they prevented him from looking too long at her as she tended to hair and dress.

It was dangerous. She would always be dangerous, though he would win - that was certain.

To express not mere skepticism but the entirety of how well he knew her bluff, he only raised his eyebrows. Uryuu knew he had choices, he knew each of them, knew how to create another out of her lack.

His mouth opened at the forwardness of her gesture, brows falling to narrow his undefined gaze, but he suppressed the sound - there was an inevitability in this too, and even with the prediction, his fingers loosened, allowed her theft with little resistance.

It would be undignified to protest, to squall, to launch after and try to reclaim it. Uryuu maintained his silence, did not let himself watch her back. Pulling his eyes away, to a lit streetlamp, his exhale nearly fogged his glasses.

Wet hands slid into damp pockets. "I really am an idiot," Uryuu mused.

But overhead: only a contemplative drizzle.