When she opened her eyes she did not smile.

The world was on fire. No, it wasn't a world anymore. It was the entire galaxy, lit aflame. This was the Big Bang, the birth of the cosmos. It burned across her skin, electrified her senses, and it didn't stop. Every single atom was in flames and there was nothing to cool it down. She was in the heart of a star. She was the star. She was one of many stars. She was nothing but burning.

Burning endlessly. Agito gritted her teeth and bore through the pain. Hopefully the shred of Grimmjow's soul wasn't-

'Isn't what?' asked someone at her back. She turned around to see her zanpakuto, Michael, transformed but still there. He was an entity of pure black flame. He wasn't a humanoid figure anymore. Just a mass of black fire that raged and screamed. A whole multitude of eyes blinked into existence before withdrawing back into the pit of dark flame Michael had became. Each eye was like that of a thousand different dragons, all cat-like and hungry, hundreds of different colors from slain monsters. Agito couldn't understand what she was looking at because there was nothing to compare him to.

"What is this?" she asked because it was terrifying.

'This?' Michael said and suddenly the name didn't seem right. 'Michael' didn't seem like a name that could describe the being in front of her. Whoever this thing was, it wasn't wholly her zanpakuto. 'This is Becoming, Agito. This is what I am truly meant to be.'

"And what are you? Who?"

'I am מִיכָאֵל,' A name never felt so much. The very word held a presence as Michael spoke in his ancient tongue, with his ancient language, in his ancient accent. It pressed down against her skin as if to drown her.

"Mîkhā'ēl," Agito repeated as well as she could, the name ringing through the air. At the sound of his true name, Michael's black flames pulsed blood red, bright blue, shining gold, before settling to a ominous white glow. The oxymoron was frightening. Agito couldn't even look at this new form for long before her eyes began to ache and her head started to throb in pain.

"Where is he?" Agito asked, turning her head to the side. Michael's presence moved and she followed his form out of her peripheral vision. Agito turned to see a place that wasn't there before. She had thought she was in the heart of a star. Now she realized she was in someplace stranger. Out of the flames stood a huge Parthenon, a Greek temple of worship. It was built simply with no walls, only massive columns that held up the roof. The Parthenon was enormous, the halls wide enough for a mammoth to walk through with it's entire family side by side.

Just by will, Agito shunpo'd over inside, looking around. She never had a building within her soul and it was interesting to find one now. The stone was ice cold, even if the air still burned and smelled of ozone. On the ceiling was a mural full of blacks and blues, glittering a fearsome scene of a roman warrior engaging war with a leviathan.

Instinctively, Agito walked through the halls of perfectly aligned columns until she was in the middle of the temple where a hearth of eternal flame was kept. This fire, however, was much calmer than the raging monster outside the temple. It was blue flames and it pulsed to the rhythm of her heart. She knew what it was.

Agito refused to turn around,

She couldn't stop It. The tiles under her feet lurched and before she could right herself, she was in the grasp of a dark entity. A cold entity that was so out of place here, it was a foreign thing. The Before and After grasped an arm (a tentacle, a leg maybe?) around her waist and held her hand and they twirled around the room in a funky dance.

It declared,

"Where is he?" Agito said, letting the creature twirl her around the room.

"No," Agito said, not really understanding. She never did fully understand exactly what the cosmic beast said. It was as if the creature spoke half in an ancient tongue not supposed to be heard by human ears and half garbled underwater. "No, you can't eat my heart."

They stopped dancing and the limbs wrapped around her waist and arm constricted around her.

the entity demanded,

It was right of course. She could never even hope to move this spiritual being. The gods listened to all human demands but did they ever grant a wish? Did they ever serve a man? Only one God did and they killed his son.

"Please," she said, "Have I not been good to you? You can take of my body, my soul, but please let me keep of my life."

' the After asked, The entity was strangling her but she dared not complain. She might be the original soul of this world but that did not make her the most powerful. At any given time, the Nothing could simply swallow her soul and take her place.

"I want," she said as carefully as possible, "For war." It released her and she took a deep gulp of air to speak, "War is I, ain't I? Isn't that why I'm so special? Because I crave something no human has? Because I'm not consumed with it? Don't you love me because I'm so fun? I'm so eccentric? I'm so unpredictably human that you love me for it?

"You ancient beings watch us ants like one watches soap operas. You have grown bored haven't you? But I'm something new, something special. That's why you delighted when I built you this temple. That's why you love me," Agito said and yes, this was a bunch of word vomit of half spoken theories but it must have hit the mark because the entity began to laugh uproariously and pleased.

It shouted, Mîkhā'ēl

'That's enough.'

Agito turned around to see Michael in his black flames, carrying a lance that glowed a bright white light. She knew that something special was underneath the light but she couldn't see it, probably wasn't meant to see it then. 'His soul in beneath you.'

Agito looked down at her feet at the clean tiles. She bent to her knees and knocked against the stone, finding it hollow. She lifted the tile with ease and gazed upon the little bit of Grimmjow's soul that she was given. It was a little silver claw, glowing faintly with a blue light. How fitting for Grimmjow's soul to look as such. It was kept in a nice soul place where the fire of her own soul would not scorch it. It was safe.

Agito placed the tile back down and looked around. Potentially, because of her temple, she could house thousands of souls within herself. Maybe this was truly why she created the Parthenon. But she didn't want to house a thousand souls. All she needed to do was house nine.

asked the shapeless dark entity that was writhing a little more energetically than usual,

"Why what?"

the entity said like it was eating something particularly nasty,

And the gods hated humans. They thought them a bunch of hairless monkeys, learned to speak, learned to kill and they were an inelegant folk. They oozed spirit, like scented candles, and not very sweet smelling scented candles.

It said, madness tinging its voice and a thousand languages spilled out of its mouth, Before/After/Nothing/Eternal began to spit and rage in languages Agito wasn't supposed to hear. Her ears popped and whined as pressure increased. She covered her ears and Michael swooped down to her side to cover her with a wing.

'Go back,' he said, 'Go back.' It was screaming, raging and Agito took one look back as she fled the pantheon.

The temple stood indestructible. A writhing monster lost control of it's rage. Michael, the mass of black fire, stood at the entrance like a vigilant guardian, a spear in his grasp.

The spear was not glowing anymore. It had a brass staff, covered from top to bottom with written language so old, there was no record of them. The tip was a white bone war scythe made from the tooth of some monster, some beast.

She focused on the tooth and heard something screaming. No, not the entity now. It sounded like the screams of a thousand whales dying on the tip of Ahab. A song in crescendo, a holy hymn, a funeral derg. Something inside her shook.

Someone else was screaming.

She thinks it was her.

~~~