Winter War: Difference between revisions

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''Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.'' }}

 

* [[A Good Way to Die]]: Zaraki died exactly as he wanted to. Many other characters were not so lucky.

* [[Alien Geometries]] / [[Ascetic Aesthetic]]: Las Noches has a mild (or sometimes not so mild) version of this. Properly lampshaded:

* [[An Arm and a Leg]]: Kensei lost part of one leg during the Karakura Town battle, a result of the Visoreds' lost fight against Barragan. Later on, {{spoiler|Isane}} loses most of an arm {{spoiler|to the Barragan Fragment's [[Bloody Murder|corrosive blood.]]}}

* [[Animal Motifs]]: Pagally's zanpakutou is Cernicalo, Spanish for "kestrel", and her resureccion gives her sharp-feathered wings. Also, {{spoiler|Pantera}} compares people to animals in his conversations with {{spoiler|Grimmjow}}- for example, referring to Ikkaku as a wounded dragon and Hanatarou as a mouse.

* [[Broken Bird]]: [[Heroic Self-Deprecation|Kotetsu]] [[Failure Knight|Isane]]. On the other hand, Hinamori Momo has recovered, for the most part.

* [[Call Back]]: In Chapter 31:

** And a bit later, {{spoiler|during her confrontation with Suzumushi}}, Nanao recalls Ukitake and Sasakibe's words from their early conversation about zanpakutou spirits.

* [[Can't Live Without You]]: Invoked AND lampshaded at the same time by {{spoiler|real!Nemu - as all clone!Nemus are technically [[Anatomy of the Soul|her soul/personality]] [[Fate Worse Than Death|sliced into tiny pieces]] and [[Literal Split Personality|placed separately into thirty or so bodies]], you only have to kill the original one (or what has left of her) to erase all her copies from existence...}} and she asks her former colleagues to do exactly that. And calmly explains just how and why it's going to work.

** Far earlier in the fic, [[La Résistance]] discovers that at least two Captains are alive and need to be rescued from Los Noches. {{spoiler|And have been Hollowfied into [[Tortured Abomination|Tortured Abominations.]] After that reveal, Kira and Hitsugaya [["I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight|still manage to recognize Hinamori]]. [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|And promptly die.]] The Los Noches group has had a good run so far, even running into a non-Hollowfied Byakuya. [[Go Mad From the Isolation|He's not]] [[Death Seeker|all there.]] [[Tortured Abomination|Neither is Renji.]]}} [[Trauma Conga Line|All of these combined]] can make a [[Schmuck Bait|second read]] [[Beyond the Impossible|even more painful]] [[Tear Jerker|than the first.]]

* [[How Many Fingers?]]: Asked of Orihime {{spoiler|after she rejects Ichigo's hollow}}.

* [[Hypocritical Humor]]: Nanao describes Aizen as "Something of a control obsessive. The sort of person who has to have everything exactly as planned, precisely as organized, every detail under there control..." And then wonders why Ayasegawa is staring at her.

* [[Iaijutsu Practitioner]]: Shirogane Mihane practices iaido, and gives Isane a quick lesson in the basics.

* [[Meaningful Name]]: Kage ("shadow"), one of the [[Ninja|Onmitsukidou]].

* [[Mental World]]: Suzumushi's (which may or may not have also been Tousen's) is a seriously weird-looking place.

* [[Mercy Kill]]: {{spoiler|Kazeshini to Nemu, Byakuya to Rukia. Ikkaku to an unidentified victim of Aizen's experiments. Isshin to Tatsuki (sort of).}}

* [[Miles to Go Before I Sleep]]: Ukitake. He has considered a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] twice- first against {{spoiler|Gin}} and later against {{spoiler|the Barragan fragment}}- the first time it wasn't necessary, and the second Isane talked him out of it.

* [[Not So Different]]: Even though Grimmjow joins up with [[La Résistance]] out of convenience (see above), he gets on with and is remarkably similar to the former Eleventh Division members.

* [[Now You Tell Me]]: Urahara manages to tell his team that he took a few liberties with his part of operation plans just minutes before said liberties start to fall right on their heads (some of them literally). Cue reaction:

* [[OC Stand In]]: Shirogane and Ogidou are canon characters, but appeared only in the omakes- and not many of those, either. The fic therefore makes up a lot about them- particularly Ogidou, who goes from a rather forgettable member of the Fourth Division to a scary [[Deadly Doctor]] who creeps out most of his allies.

* [[Odd Friendship]]: Ikkaku and Momo.

* [[Omnicidal Maniac]]: Aizen has set events in motion that will, if left unchecked, lead to the destruction of Soul Society, Hueco Mundo, and the living world. The protagonists don't know his motivation, but their speculations about the matter are in line with this trope.

Ryuuken: Unless it’s on purpose. Perhaps he wants this. Wants to see it all fall apart. }}

* [[Only a Flesh Wound]]: Averted early on, when {{spoiler|Ito}} dies by bleeding out from a wound sustained a little earlier in the fight.

* [[Only the Knowledgable May Pass]]: While meeting in an occupied Seireitei, Soi Fong and one of her Onmitsukidou use lines from a Tang Chinese poem as a password, switching off in the middle of lines and then skipping to the end. While someone sufficiently learned might know the poem, they probably wouldn't know when to switch off, or recognize what was going on based on the first phrase. (The authors provide a link to the whole thing, since Soi Fong and Kage only use the first two and last two lines: [http://www.chinese-poems.com/d26.html Facing Snow, by Du Fu].)

Kage: ...worries and grieves. (''Pause'') To many places, communication is lost. I sit straight at my desk but cannot read my books for grief. }}

* [[Pet the Dog]]: Ikkaku and Grimmjow comforting {{spoiler|Hanatarou}} (genuinely - and it ''did'' work).

* [[Power Incontinence]]: Barragan's power can also "decay" the barrier between a Visored and their Inner Hollow. Mashiro has periods of normalcy, but she loses control of her transformation without warning. Rose is in even worse state, and is apparently stuck in the transformed/out of control state all the time.

* [[Precision F-Strike]]: The polite and formal Hoshibana Akira (third seat of Sixth division since before Byakuya became captain), while defending his division-mate Rikichi's motives for a particularly foolish action:

** There's also the very formal Sasakibe in Chapter 6, warning Grimmjow not to provoke Ikkaku:

** Yoruichi gives a mental one after she realizes that {{spoiler|Szayel- of whom she knows just enough to be sure that he's very bad news- is in Karakura}}.

* [[Pretty Spry for a Dead Guy]]: An odd example. [[La Résistance]] - and the reader - know all along that Rangiku is dead, [[The Dragon|Gin]] refuses to believe it.

* [[Razor Wings]]: Pagally's Resureccion gives her these.

* [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]: Nanao delivers a very effective one to {{spoiler|Suzumushi}}, both pointing out her past failures and explaining exactly why her current scheme {{spoiler|to [[Demonic Possession|take over Nanao's body]]}} would not work.

* [[Rebel Leader]]: Ukitake, although he subverts most of the particulars, such as by being seriously injured, not yet- if ever- recovered, and consequently sidelined from most of the fighting. At one point, when setting up a first meeting with someone who doesn't know much about the Gotei 13's upper ranks, he has Sasakibe do the talking and listens from behind a screen (along with most of his lieutenants) because he knows he would give the wrong impression.

* [[Red Oni, Blue Oni]]: Ikkaku (red) and Nanao (blue), the co-leaders of the Hueco Mundo mission.

* [[Sacrificial Lion]]: {{spoiler|Takano Dan}}, despite being an OC. He gets a lot of characterization- including two POV segments and a more detailed backstory than ''any'' of the other OCs- and his death is one of the first as the Rukongai fight starts.

* [[Say It with Hearts]]: Invoked in one of Ikkaku's early POV sections:

Then she did him proud by screeching at the others like the little harpy he knew she was, telling them to ''go go go you lazy maggots now now now!'' }}

* [[Senseless Sacrifice]]: Subverted when Rikichi {{spoiler|runs away to be caught by Gin's people and serve as 'unvoluntary' source of information about Rangiku 'being alive'}} - it ''might'' even have worked... but most likely it would've ended as a disaster for the whole Resistance instead (and fortunately he was stopped before he could do it anyway). Played straight (bordering on [[Stupid Sacrifice]]) with {{spoiler|Suzuki, who, against direct orders from Shirogane, breaks the retreat and faces twenty or so Arrancars alone, just because she cannot leave Iba's 'dead body' to their mercy. She is almost instantly overwhelmed and killed. And [[Not Quite Dead]] Iba [[Tear Jerker|has to watch, unable to do anything to save her]].}}

* [[She Is Not My Girlfriend]]: Kon claims that he and Mashiro are "just friends." Kensei is not convinced.

** On a much grimmer note, there's also this exchange, {{spoiler|after Grimmjow, Kazeshini-controlling-Hisagi, and Hanatarou discover Nemu Prime}}:

Hisagi<ref> that is, Kazeshini</ref> No. Not her. {{spoiler|It’s just – some things are monstrous. Even by your standards, maybe.}} }}

* [[Shell-Shocked Veteran]]: Technically, no one: the war's not over yet, so the "veteran" part doesn't quite apply. The "shell-shocked" part ''does'': Hisagi is probably the most extreme example, but he's not the only one. Assuming anyone survives at all, some of them will definitely be [[Shell-Shocked Veteran|Shell-Shocked Veterans]].

* [[Split Personality Takeover]]: {{spoiler|Ichigo's Hollow}} takes over his body and becomes arguably the most powerful of Aizen's army.

* [[Spot of Tea]]: One of the few things Aizen and [[La Résistance]] can be said to share is a fondness for tea. Almost all moments of leisure, civility, or pre-mission planning include tea. Isane even brews one last pot before a battle starts.

* [[The Squad]]: The recon squad, led by Ikkaku, which has been carrying out missions and drawing fire away from the Resistance's actual bases ever since this war started. It's actually dissolved very early in the fic, and functions largely to (re)establish several characters, including [[Original Character|OCs]] like Hoshibana and Takano, [[Ascended Extra|Ascended Extras]] like Ogidou, Shirogane, and Rikichi, and this fic's drastically changed versions of Hinamori and Ikkaku himself.

* [[The Squadette]]: Three of them in the recon squad itself- Hinamori, [[The Medic|Kaede]], and [[Iaijutsu Practitioner|Shirogane]], and more in the rest of [[La Résistance]].

* [[Switching POV]]: The third-person limited POV varies between ''35 characters'' as of Chapter 43. (Granted, some narrators reappear much more frequently than others- Nanao and Ukitake particularly- and some only get sections in ensemble chapters.)

* [[Take That]]: Intended or not, chapter 31 features the following gem:

* [[Taking You with Me]]: Ukitake considers doing this to kill Gin, but as it turns out {{spoiler|Gin unleashes a weapon of mass destruction based on Barragan’s [[Battle Aura]] when Ukitake and company have defeated him.}} It’s pretty clear that {{spoiler|Gin}} was already dying- he was just too vindictive to leave it at that.

* [[Talking Weapon]]: Kazeshini, who keeps up a running commentary/response to his wielder Hisagi's thoughts. All [[Empathic Weapon|zanpakutou]] ''can'' talk to their wielders, but most of the others in the fic are relatively quiet. Kazeshini is noted as having gotten much more talkative since Hisagi's move to Hueco Mundo, probably due to his [[Heroic BSOD|mental state]].

* [[What Would X Do?]]: Iba considers and rejects Komamura, Zaraki, Ikkaku, Yumichika, and Renji’s probable solutions to a problem, before finding the right person to “ask”: his mom, former Vice-Captain of Third Division Iba Chikane. Who then “tells” him exactly what to do... and follows up by [[I Want Grandkids|wanting to know how long it’ll be until he gets married and gives her some grandkids]].

* [[Wham! Line]]: Many of the reveals of {{spoiler|the Hollowfied shinigami}} come under this.

{{spoiler|'''Byakuya:'''}} ''It seems you are all fools and blind. {{spoiler|Renji.}}'' }}

* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: Ikkaku delivers one to Ichigo/his hollow, crossed over with [["I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight]]. Basically, his idea of getting Ichigo to retake control of his body is to spell out to him exactly what he allowed to happen to his friends by losing it in the first place.