Where before the Sexta Espada had been ready to depart and absolve himself of all further involvement with the strange, singing, rose-crafting, hammer-swinging, tantrum-throwing girl with lengthy bice hair and matching eyes, who’d wandered in from gods only knew where and claimed a plot of bereft sand--she had just destroyed the quartz tree that had been supplying the stone for her crafting, after all--he suddenly seemed to find an ounce humor in the unmistakably genuine outburst she experienced at Nyarle’s arrival, and at the glaring fact that she had just insulted the Tigress right to her face.
Rem laughed. A single sharp, almost quiet barking noise that flung off the flat of his tongue without care, as his dark emerald eyes were presently hidden behind the ragged curtain of his disheveled raven bangs, his glinting ivory canines peeking from behind pale fuschia lips that were twisted in an almost unsettling grin. Roneve had threatened to crush his skull in with her mighty Hammer of Justice, and he
laughed.
Then, as if a single frame from the reel of reality had been cut out, he was instantaneously gone from where he had been standing in the shifting piles of sand, leaving only a faint, disintegrating ring of dust in his wake.
Had he left, as he’d wanted to?
...
No. Not yet.
The slithering hiss of a sword as it was slid free of its sheath sounded from over Roneve’s shoulder, the same shoulder on which she balanced her comically oversized warhammer.
“Word of advice,” Rem’s voice, diaphanous, like the passing night breeze.
The youthful, emerald-eyed Espada was perched on the head of the lass’s hammer, crouched down in a posture reminiscent to that of a looming gargoyle hovering above its potential prey, so that she could look up and peer into his eyes beneath the shadow of his chaotically disarrayed hair.
Just as she had brandished her weapon at him, he now held his zanpakutou--a length of solid black steel that shone dully beneath the light of the moon--so that its apical tip was poised nary an inch above the end of the girl’s nose. A dark liquid oozed from the blade’s surface, and the heavy, cloying scent of copper hung in the air around the weapon--that of blood. Yet he had not cut Roneve, nor any flesh, his own, or otherwise. Sangre was a blade that simply bled perpetually, whenever it was not encased inside its sheath.
A single ruby bead of blood dripped and ‘
plip!’-ed on the end of Roneve’s nose.
“Death doesn’t care if you’re a Queen or a worm. In the end, we all die, and the only difference is in
how,” he said, though there was neither amusement nor compassion in his voice. Empty. His voice sounded painfully empty, and his expression was unreadable.
Glowing silver eyes simpered across his mind’s inner eye, summoned unbidden from the depths of memory.
‘
Where are you? Will I ever find you again…?’
Rem moved his sword to point at the Quatra Espada; Ryukei.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a girl, a child, or a Queen. Or an insufferable spoiled brat,” he explained. “If he suspects that you’re an enemy, then he won’t hesitate to exterminate you on the spot and be done with it. And she,” here, he swung his sword to point it in Nyarle’s direction, “she loves to hunt, and if she catches you, she’ll take you back to her den and eat you.”
Rem stood up, perfectly balanced atop of the hammer, and he sheathed his weapon in a smooth motion.
“There’s a chance that they might let you live, if only to drag you before the Primera so that they can then rip whatever useful information you might have out of you. But the manner in which you’ll die will depend entirely upon you” he finished, shrugging a shoulder.
“I don’t really care either way.”
That was the last thing he said before he vanished from his perch, materializing several yards away from Roneve, Ryukei, and Nyarle, already crunching his boots across the sand as he left them all behind and departed, specifically in a direction that was away from the White Palace. They could accuse him of running with his cottontail between his legs if it so pleased them--but he was
walking. Walking away, having said and done all that he had to say and do. The girl, whoever she was, was their problem now.
Rem tossed up a hand in a mock wave, and was gone in a burst of shuddering Sonido.
[
Note: Just trying to separate Rem from the group, so that he has a chance of encountering Alter Kimaris on his own, and their fight can begin.]