Shinji Hirako's arrival snapped the fight's balance like someone yanking the handbrake halfway down a steep hill. And what turned shock into outright disbelief was the impossible detail: he could use the mask too. The same transformation, the same predatory pressure that until then had felt exclusive to the other side.
In the blink of an eye, Shinji seized control and drove Grimmjow back with humiliating ease, as if the missing arm was just one more reason to speed up the punishment. Grimmjow tried to bite back anyway - stubborn, feral, that dirty violence that was so unmistakably his - but it was obvious: another few seconds and he'd be finished.
Then, at the last possible moment, like a shadow arriving before its own sound, Ulquiorra appeared.
"We've achieved our objective. Fall back, Grimmjow."
He didn't even spare Ichigo a glance. His voice was flat and cold, as if the protagonist were nothing more than an irrelevant detail tucked into the corner of the frame. And on the other battlefield, Yammy and the rest withdrew almost at the exact same time, as if everything were synced to some invisible command.
The ones left behind - Peter and the others - traded confused looks. It felt like they'd just fought a war… that had actually been a staged performance.
The objective.
When Ulquiorra left those two words hanging in the air, a harsh sense of dread crawled up the audience's spine. It was the kind of silence that didn't soothe - it warned. Like the pause that's just a little too short before thunder breaks.
"Sosuke Aizen's plotting something… guaranteed."
The voice came low, almost a mutter, from someone who'd been following since season one and had learned not to underestimate danger just because it looked far away. Most people had frozen Aizen in their minds as that final image from the previous arc: the monster who dropped three captain-level opponents like he was flicking off lights.
But his horror had never been just raw power. Power was what the camera showed. The rest… was what made the whole world move without realizing it.
Beside him, an actress with such a baby-faced look that people constantly mistook her for younger than she was nodded solemnly. She remembered the previous arc too well - how Aizen played everyone like toys, pulling strings, dismantling certainty, turning every victory into something that felt like it had been designed by him.
And then the story slid into the dead of night.
In the room, after a quick, desperate round of basic treatment, Ichigo and the others - each of them injured - fell asleep one by one, beaten not only by wounds but by that exhaustion that comes when you realize you survived by inches. The lighting was low, soft, the moon slipping through the curtains and laying pale stripes across the floor. Everything felt too quiet.
Until the window.
It opened with the careful touch of someone who didn't want to be noticed… and Inoue Orihime climbed in.
She appeared with that same familiar goofy smile - sweet, slightly out of place - like she was still trying to convince her own heart that none of this was real.
"Hehe… I'm here…"
But the smile didn't last two seconds. It dissolved slowly, like ink bleeding into water. Joy turned to emptiness, and emptiness turned to sorrow heavy enough to change the air in the room.
"Ichigo… I came to say goodbye."
The moment the words fell, the scene folded into a memory.
While the group fought the Arrancars earlier that day, Ulquiorra had found Orihime - alone, direct, not raising his voice. He hadn't asked. He'd imposed. A simple threat, like a contract written in blood: she would go with him to Hueco Mundo. And out of mercy - or cruelty - he granted her one last thing before leaving: she could say goodbye to one person.
And in the end, Orihime chose Ichigo.
"So this is… luring the tiger away from the mountain?!"
The realization burst out of mouths everywhere at once, like the whole audience had been jolted in sync. Because everyone remembered what Orihime was capable of. It wasn't just "healing." It was almost denying reality itself. If she hadn't been with them in the previous arc, plenty of people were convinced they'd never have made it out alive.
The thought came, inevitable, grim, and logical:
Did Sosuke Aizen want her power?
Moonlight kept spilling through the curtains as if nothing was happening, and that made it worse. Orihime moved closer, speaking softly to an unconscious Ichigo as if he could hear her somewhere inside the dream. Her words came mixed with tears she couldn't stop. And there was something devastating in the contrast - a girl so sweet, so "airheaded" to anyone who didn't pay attention… being forced to live through a goodbye no one should ever have to live through.
She'd never been the uncontested fan favorite the way Samantha Burnes
was, but she was never hated either. If anything, Alex's Orihime had a rare kind of charm: she wasn't the girl who got in the way, the dead weight dragging the protagonist down. She tried. She mattered. She was brave in her own way… and she had a heart too big to fit into an ordinary life.
Big in every sense, too - something the internet never got tired of repeating with the kind of crude humor it always kept ready.
But there was something far more important than any joke: from the beginning, the story made it clear - no stalling, no mind games, no convenient indecision - that Orihime liked Ichigo. It was simple. Honest. There was none of that infuriating dance of "when it's convenient, you're everything; when it's not, you're nothing."
That was why she consistently ranked near the top among the female characters. And inevitably, her fans and rukia's fans tore at each other online: one side swearing their girl was "the real one," the other insisting the other was "the obvious choice." Each gripping their own delusion like it was religion.
But there, watching Orihime cry quietly and confess what she felt to an Ichigo who couldn't answer… even the people who always rooted against her felt their chest tighten. It wasn't a ship war anymore.
It was just… sadness.
In the end, Orihime wiped her face, took a breath, and put on a brave expression, as if courage were something you could wear over despair.
"Ah… if life had five chances, it'd be so much better… I'd be born five times, in different cities… eat different foods… do different jobs… live in different ways…"
Her voice softened, nearly a whisper. She looked at Ichigo - at his bruised, dirty face, still marked by her tears, like an invisible signature.
And then she finished, as if handing over the last truth she had:
"…and in every one of them… I'd fall in love with the same person."
When the line landed, it felt like the episode sucked the air out of the world.
A lot of people couldn't hold it together.
Because they'd come for the fights, the wild universe, the twists, the iconic villain swagger. And out of nowhere, they were given a confession scene so human it cut through any fandom, any argument, any "team" people had chosen online.
And when she said she'd live five lives and still choose to love the same man in all of them… a lot of guys who thought they were steel discovered, right then, that they were glass.
How is anyone supposed to resist a girl like that?
Instantly, the internet turned into an emotional warzone. People admitting they cried. People insisting they didn't, while writing like they did. People praising the writing like they'd taken a punch.
And in the middle of it, far from the noise, inside an apartment where the TV light painted shadows on the walls, Emily - who rarely had time to swing by the company and breathe outside her schedule - was curled up against Alex, watching the episode with a relaxed body and an attention she'd never admit out loud.
Even she had been caught by the scene. For a moment, even her natural ambition went quiet. But then, with that teasing instinct she couldn't help, she lifted her face and blinked slowly, turning her eyes into a weapon.
"So in the end… I'm the one who ends up with you, right?"
Alex didn't answer right away.
He knew the original ending. He knew how the creator had paired everyone off, and he remembered the fandom meltdown - people acting like a crime had been committed. But if you looked at it coldly, it wasn't absurd. The hints had been there early on - Orihime's feelings for Ichigo, Renji's obvious connection to Rukia… and most of all, the fact that Ichigo and Rukia never really read as romance. What they had was something else. A battlefield bond. The kind of friendship that's only born when you bleed together.
If he had to choose… he'd choose Orihime.
And the next thought arrived in the same instant, unfiltered, like a shamelessly simple truth.
Because… yeah. He liked them big too.
The corner of his mouth threatened a smile.
Emily caught it. And before he could say a word, he lowered his head and "got to work," as if the outside world didn't exist - and as if that kind of answer didn't need language. The couch gave a soft creak. The TV kept playing scenes of a universe at war while, in the real world, another battle - much quieter - unfolded in the dark.
Even so, beneath the desire, Alex's mind didn't truly shut off. A worry pulsed at the back of his skull like a toothache.
He was going to have to change a lot in the final battle arc.
Not just to deliver a war that felt genuinely massive - the kind the audience feels in their stomach - but also to give Sosuke Aizen a perfect exit, worthy of what he'd become inside the series. And as if that weren't enough, there was also the protagonist's emotional arc. Because tweaking a war was expensive.
Tweaking a heart was dangerous.
Alex sighed inwardly, never letting his body lose its rhythm.
What a headache…
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