Hollow - A Bleach/DevilhunterYohko Crossover

"Grandmother?"
Yohko knew not to move the wounded old woman, yet she did chance a pat to the sunken, wrinkled jowls. "Grandmother?!"
The elderly Madoka Mano did not respond, yet beneath her blood soaked and flower printed t-shirt, Yohko saw the woman's chest steadily rise and fall. She knew her grandmother to be a strong woman, who'd fight.

She'd die when ready, damn it!

A sudden crack of wood paneling in the next few rooms over caused Yohko to tense, her taught muscles twitching and brown eyes focusing on the exposed opening of the hidden room. Without looking away, the teenager outstretched an arm, silently pulling a woven carpet over her grandmother's prone figure in an effort to keep her unseen.

The sawdust and blood scented air carried voices with it, speaking so low that only murmurs made sense to Yohko, and words were unintelligible. A floorboard creaked pathetically before snapping under the weight of Yohko's unknown company and now a pair of shadows fell across her line of sight.

"We're too late." A female voice finally conceded at a volume Yohko could decipher. "Gone."

Her voice was so...cold; it caused a knot to well in Yohko's belly.
Of course they're gone! the girl thought, angrily. Mother...But that's no excuse to be so disrespectful! So disgusted at there fate! The girl had to swallow down a sneer in order to control herself, before trusting herself enough to creep a bit closer to the shattered opening and peek out into the living room beyond.

Yohko could see a young woman who looked no older then herself, dressed in a strange sort of black gi, and the sort of pants she's seen the priests and priestesses of the local temple wear. At her hip was a long katana, hooded in a sheathe.

"Wait." A deeper voice spoke out in a commanding tone, a tone that once again caused Yohko's muscles to freeze beneath her. "Something's not right..." Again, the floorboards groaned in stress, and he-who-posessed-the-voice moved, but he remained out of Yohko's line of sight.

"Hn?" The woman looked toward her companion with large, dark, endless eyes that, were she in a better mind set, Yohko would find quite absorbing.

The brown haired girl winced despite herself as she heard the telltale shring sound of a blade being unsheathed. The unknown figure stepped partially into her view now, and in his right hand he held an extremely long blade. He came to rest at the body of Yohko's mother, towering over it, although he was not overly tall.

Yohko screamed, springing from her coiled up pose and launching out of her hiding spot. Without focus, the girl summoned her blade into her hand, forcing her body between that of the man, and her mother's corpse, blades scraping and sparking against each other as Yohko used herself as a shield against those who would desecrate her family.

Part B
The small woman with the dark hair jumped back as Yohko suddenly lashed out, and she subconsciously lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the resounding sparks of the twin blades crashing together. Her sandaled foot skidded against some rubble, yet the woman was able to get a steady footing due to reflexes that were honed through training.
The dark haired woman blinked in a bit of shock as she realized the cut of the attacking girl's garb. "Devil hunter..." She whispered under her breath.

The young man swore under his breath, as his pale eyes narrowed in a dark glare against Yohko's wet, angry and accusing stare.

Yohko could feel her arm muscles strain as she pushed her blade against the young man's. Her knuckles stressed and her she felt her palms begin sweat against the slick handle of her Soul Sword. A cramp began to snake up her calf muscles as she dug her stance against the ruined floorboards.

"KEEP AWAY!" Screamed Yohko, voice strained by the stress of having a her whole world fall apart. "Keep away from-..."

Yohko never got to finish her cries when quite suddenly, she felt as if she were hit in the chest with a cinder block. All the air was chased from her lungs and she could not breathe. Part of her felt as if she were falling backwards, and yet another part felt as if she were struggling to keep her balance. Yohko felt her knees finally slam into the ground as the clatter of a blade falling useless into the dirt filled her ears.

"Wh-..." She struggled to gasp, but her lungs hurt her so. "Wh...?" Weakly, the devil hunter raised a hand, a hand that was just a moment ago holding her Soul Sword, to her chest; to cradle it, to catch her breath.

"...Rukia..." the boy murmured, brows furrowing in confusion. "Look."

"I see it, Ichigo." Rukia nodded, slowly relaxing into a less offensive stance and taking a step towards the breathless girl. "Strange."

"...Happened...?" Yohko gasped.

"Calm down." assured the woman whom the boy called 'Rukia'. "We won't hurt you."

Yohko, meanwhile, had her eyes fixated upon a chain that led from her chest and...she hadn't the strength to look around and see to what it was connected. With sluggish, lethargic movements, Yohko cupped a part of another chain linked to the same source in her chest. It was broken.

"Two chains?" Ichigo questioned as the severed links rattled in Yohko's nesting palms. "How can that be? What does this mean. What, is she a vampire or something?" He spat out the last question with much sarcasm and vitriol.

"She must have ..." Rukia's voice trailed off in through, before she continued, authoritivly. "Never mind, we'll figure it out later. Hey, you?" Rukia gently shook Yohko by the shoulders having now knelt by her. Slowly, Yohko made eye contact. "What are you doing here?"

"...home. Devils." Was all Yohko could muster.

Rukia glanced over the weakened girl's shoulder; that's when she saw it. A hidden room with old parchments and papers and shrines with pictures on the wooden walls. Pictures of a linage, a legacy. Photo after photo of women, each dressed in a similar fashion: a red silk, chinese dress proudly displaying a stylized yin-yan upon the chest. An ancestral home.

"This is your house?" Rukia asked. "A house of Devil hunters? The hollows attacked Devil Hunters?"

"Hollows?" The hunter's eyelids fluttered over her eyes, dazed.

"Here. Ichigo, help me." Rukia moved to pull Yohko up to her feet, Ichigo taking the other arm and the pair steadying the girl and slowly leading her along the chain's path. Her brown eyes followed the links, one over the other, until they befell the sight of a fourth party standing in the room. Yohko allowed her gaze to drift up to the face of this new person. Fresh tears welled in the young girl's eyes as she saw her mother, pale and smiling and whole, staring back at her.

"...Mom...?" Yohko said, afraid that at the title, the image would fade away to nothing. "You're ok." she could not keep her voice steady.

"Oh, Yohko." Sayoko's smile broadened, yet tears pooled in her own eyes. "I have to go now. But it doesn't hurt anymore. And I am not scared. Yohko..."

The tears spilled across Yohko's cheeks as she felt her mother's deathly cold hands take her own. At that touch, Yohko knew- her mother was going away forever.

"Yohko, please." her mother continued. "Please be happy. It's all I ever wanted for you. It's what I've always tried to tell you. Enjoy life. And everything it has to offer. Have fun! It's why we're here."

"Where are you going?" Yohko asked, helplessly. She wasn't an idiot, she knew Sayoko was now dead and would never be with her again...but where was she going? And how?

"To the Soul Society." Supplied Rukia. "It's where all the good spirits go. Ichigo will send her there. It won't hurt," The woman assured the weak, quietly sobbing girl. "And they will take good care of her."

"I am ready." Sayoko turned her wet gaze to Ichigo and offered a thankful smile and small nod.

Ichigo mirrored the nod and solemnly lofted his blade, gently stamping the end of the handle to Sayoko Mano's forehead.

As the woman began to glow and peacefully fade away before Yohko, she glanced upon her daughter for one last time. "This one's pretty cute huh, Yohko?" She teased, unable to resist the chance to give Yohko one last, good taunt.

"Mother!!" Yelped an embarrassed and mortified Yohko.

"And he does good work."

"You're hopeless!"

"I approve..."

The lights were gone, Sayoko was gone, there was a chime and a black butterfly gracefully winged along the rank breeze and out through a shattered wall.

"...Mother..."