Bleach Hereafter RPG

Whatever had been happening, was now over. The great rifts in the Shadow-Realm were closing, and already protocols were being undertaken- in parallel with the hated Shinigami- to restore a sense of normalcy to the Mortal World. The armies of the Schatten Bereich, poised to invade the world and carry the battle to the Seitanrei, were recalled and disbanded once more. But not everything was to return to normal. An uneasy tension remained in the once still air. 

For some unfathomable reason, wind still blew in the Schatten Bereich. An earthly wind, that ruffled normally still air, fluttered banners, and left everyone on edge. The worlds- plural- had changed, and whatever semblance of normalcy was restored now, all felt it was a temporary measure at best. A calm, a lull before the Storm would begin once more in earnest.

Returning with reluctance to her assigned situation, Leutnant Steinfeld couldn't help but feel an immense sense of disappointment. True, she should be relieved that nobody was harmed, that all out war had been avoided, and that she had merely had to stand around waiting for a few hours, as everyone's eagerness ebbed into a sombre mood, before finally evaporating once an all-clear was given.

Yet she couldn't help but feel she had been on the cusp of something great. Something momentous. A chance to be...to do...something of worth again. She remembered the sense of satisfaction she had felt as a field agent, leaping into action, fighting a real Shinigami. She remembered also- though she had never truly forgotten- the burning hell of the Demon Invasion, the constant smell of sulphur and burning flesh, and her own agonising wounds and near-death. 

For some time she had been running from those memories, she knew. As she had run from her loveless, failed marriage. She had poured herself entirely into it, but she could never truly give her husband what he wanted. She was far too much like everything he himself had wanted to be, and was now too self-consumed with apathy and bitterness to ever be again .

And so, quietly, discreetly, she had given up, given in. No formal divorce had been requested or filed yet, but in deed as well as word they might as well have been. 

Entering the mostly still vacant Hospital Ward, she tutted at the discarded rolls of supplies.  Those Sanitatzstaffel who had remained, anticipating a flow of casualties to treat, had largely left, as artificial evening fell on the Schatten Bereich, crystal clocks tolling the changing of hours.  Soon a night shift would arrive, she knew, and likely be bored, as there were rarely injuries or illness in the Shadow Realm, though a few were always kept on stand-by, in case agents in the field had to be portalled in for emergency treatment.

But right now there were no field agents on duty, she knew. The entire Wandenreich had withdrawn from the Mortal World, ready to re-invade it and fight the Seitanrei, and had then...simply watched, as whatever great calamity was occurring, simply stopped.

She suspected that this would, in time, like so many other false alarms over the ages, be forgotten as one more oddity in this ever changing, ever strange universe.

Picking up a discarded roll of bandages in her gloved hand, she regarded it with a sigh. Was this it for her too, then? To always be standing by, on the side-lines, waiting for someone to roll in? 

"There must be more I can do." She whispered. "If I cannot be wife, mother, teacher or warrior, let me at least be something more than a bored bed-changer."

Silence greeted her.

With reluctance, she went to take off her military uniform, and sign out for the evening.


Suddenly there was a sudden -whoosh- of air through the whole room, and the crystal chimes clanged. An emergency portalling? But from where? Who?

Dropping gently from a portal directly into one of the many free crash-beds, a heavily wounded, bleeding young man, his skin almost deathly pale from blood loss, his hair a blonde-tone turned brown.  Two unknown Quincies accompanied him.

"You, attend to his wounds." They said. She did not recognise them, which was odd. But their uniforms bore the sigil of the Emperor's Own, and so she saluted.

"By His will, at once." She responded mechanically. Grunting, they turned, and re-entered the emergency portal, vanishing once more along with it.

Now she was alone, a dying man in a crash bed.

"Nurse it is then." she muttered to herself, exchanging her white gloves for surgical ones. 

She quickly pulsed out a call for help.

Adventure or no adventure, she had a job to do.

Duty always comes first.