- Pronouns
- She/Her
{X} Find somewhere quiet to recover and think about what just happened.
Now You Feel Like Number None [Bleach Arrancar Quest]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- Australia
With how the vote for the latest update is going, I think I know how her Resurreccion seems to have changed so dramatically.
You know how Old Man Zangetsu faked his way into seeming like Ichigo's soul reaper powers even though in actuality he was his quincy powers? I think it's a similar situation here. In response to Cirucci's negative reaction to Nemo's power, Nemo will search deep within herself for a way to get a powerup that doesn't involve becoming a mind-enslaving tyrant. Her soul reaper powers are the answer.
Arrancars are half soul reaper and their soul reaper powers are real, letting them do things that are similar to things soul reapers do (like Sonido), things that unlike anything both hollows and soul reapers can do (Hierro and Pesquisa), and things that only soul reapers can do (Kido and Konso). That doesn't mean arrancars can do things like Shikai or Bankai, of course, but it does give them stuff to work with. In this case, Nemo will use her soul reaper powers to either modify her Resurreccion or create a fake one. Just as OMZ's fake soul reaper powers will be weaker than Ichigo's true soul reaper powers, the fake/modified Resurreccion will be weaker than original Polilla, but it would also not come with freaky mind control powers.
Finally, to justify why the new Res is dark and black while the old Res is shining, bright, and gold, I would like to present something from the Winter War arc.
EDIT: Yes, I realise I'm reaching and that this theory is really implausible, but so is the fact that an arrancar's Resurreccion could change to drastically in form and function, so bleh.
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- Location
- Nebraska
{X} Follow Nemo back home
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Well, that literally happened to Cirucci between the Yammy and Nnoitra fights in quest canon and the Omake story is paralleling it, so it would be weird if her Resurreccion stayed the same, really.
- Location
- Australia
What happened to Cirucci was a thematic upgrade, not an inversion of theme.
- Location
- Texas
As of right now, until I write something that says otherwise, the mind-whammy requires Nemo to release, and then hit you square in the eyes with a specialized mind-control beam. When it does, you get stunned, and then if she keeps it trained on you long enough, your eyes start glowing in synch with hers and you're her thrall.
Possible defenses against it include: Don't look at Nemo in release state. Have friends nearby who will intervene if you get caught in the beam, before she can reprogram you.
Yammy was fighting alone, so when he got caught in the beam there was no one who could help snap him out of it, by blocking the beam or shooting Nemo out of the sky, or whatever.
Beyond the mind-whammy beam, Privaron Nemo has some fairly conventional power boosts, because she's hax, but nothing super shocking. She can float, and throw sword-balas (which I stole from watching a video of the Hollow Knight boss fight), and fire ceros, which are big scary sunlight beams, but the mind control is the game-changing trick.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
cool moths dont look at explosions
In any case I'm not seeing where this whole "inversion of theme" idea is coming from? It looks like in Phigments AU Nemo simply has Radiance powers. I don't see why she needs shadow powers too?
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Yeah, same here. I really prefer the Privaron Nemo who's basically just the product of Nemo and Cirucci power-level-swapping. So she's a Nemo who was the Queen of Shadows, maybe ruling part of the Forest of Menos where even the moonlight of Hueco Mundo never reached them. And then Aizen found her and brought her in, breaking her mask, and she and Mantis were happy as fellow Espada.
And then the magic plot rock ruined everything, Mantis died, and she barely cared enough to fight for her position so accepted her position as gate guardian because she was super-depressed over the death of her friend.
(Meanwhile, part of Minirucci's self-actualisation is declaring herself to be the Thunderbird Princess as she gains control over the souls within her and unlocks her enhanced Res)
ChildishChimera
A umbran summon
- Location
- New York
{X} Find somewhere quiet to recover and think about what just happened.
- Location
- Texas
I'm sort of conflicted about "more subdued" privaron thing.
I do, in fact, think the whole Radiance thing is not totally working. Partially because of flaws in execution, partially because it ends up going pretty far afield of the source material, partially because I'm not really willing to just straight commit to it and start writing 9000 word updates. (Seriously. That last update was 1000 words, after I reduced the fighting to a barely-described "Nemo has the upper hand -- Wait, Yammy has the upper hand -- Wait, Nemo WTFPWNS Yammy after all" sequence. And that took a while to hack out, and I still didn't find space to put in any jokes, which goes against everything I stand for. But I have a day job, and it isn't writing fanfiction of fanfiction.)
Also, to an extent, I'm treating this as a collaborative exercise, even though so far I'm the only one actually writing anything. But, as much as possible, I'm incorporating the suggestions and work made by other people, via the discord chat log and artwork, much of which leaned towards more thematic ties to Hollow Knight, and more investigation and tomb-raiding. And that is helpful, in many ways, because it provides some structure and direction, but also tricky, because we're trying to fit everything into some very specific shapes and have it come out as not total nonsense.
It's an interesting puzzle.
I do, in fact, think the whole Radiance thing is not totally working. Partially because of flaws in execution, partially because it ends up going pretty far afield of the source material, partially because I'm not really willing to just straight commit to it and start writing 9000 word updates. (Seriously. That last update was 1000 words, after I reduced the fighting to a barely-described "Nemo has the upper hand -- Wait, Yammy has the upper hand -- Wait, Nemo WTFPWNS Yammy after all" sequence. And that took a while to hack out, and I still didn't find space to put in any jokes, which goes against everything I stand for. But I have a day job, and it isn't writing fanfiction of fanfiction.)
Also, to an extent, I'm treating this as a collaborative exercise, even though so far I'm the only one actually writing anything. But, as much as possible, I'm incorporating the suggestions and work made by other people, via the discord chat log and artwork, much of which leaned towards more thematic ties to Hollow Knight, and more investigation and tomb-raiding. And that is helpful, in many ways, because it provides some structure and direction, but also tricky, because we're trying to fit everything into some very specific shapes and have it come out as not total nonsense.
It's an interesting puzzle.
LXXXX. Riders on the Storm
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Happy Birthday @Pandemonious Ivy, I got you an Ulquiorra scene 
LXXXX. Riders on the Storm
The roar of thunder and the breath of wind. The relentless patter of cold rain, cold fingers drawing patterns on your skin. The flash of lightning, leaving afterimages in your eyes. The world is oppressive, godlike power bending the weather itself to its whims. You look at the girls ahead of you, their clothes damp, hair growing more and more matted and heavy. The one called Tatsuki looked fearsome and aggressive with her straight, spiky hair - now she just looks like a wet cat. The tall, long-haired one shivers with cold.
You shift your footing, dancing practice driven through your bone letting you find balance easily on the wet asphalt. To them, this is a hostile world, the wrath of nature punishing them for stepping outside. To you, it is the embrace of a lover.
You raise Polilla point first, her tip pointing to Ururu's head. You don't want to harm her either - to harm any of them, really. There is no need to fight. As long as both you and the girls stay out of Cirucci's fight with Kurosaki, this battle need not be theirs. You're fine with just staring warily at each other until it's settled one way or another.
"Like hell," Tatsuki says, glowering. She takes a step forward. "We came here to help Ichigo because he's an idiot who hasn't even finished his weirdo mask training before jumping into battle, we're not letting his dumbass get killed!"
You shake your head. You're not here to kill him. You almost tell them you're not here to kill anyone, but -
Well, that's not true, is it. You aren't. But Grimmjow's group, and Luppi with them, came for a fight to the death.
But that's different. They're Shinigami, like Ichigo, not like… Not like these children in front of you. What are they doing, getting involved in this kind of battle? This can't be their choice. Especially not Ururu, who didn't even choose to fight you last time. Wasn't her new guardian supposed to keep her safe, not use her as a weapon like the mist-man did?
The girl tilts her head.
"This is my choice," she says simply, her tone calm and even.
Above you another rumble of thunder is drowned out by a titanic clash, red-and-black energy engulfing blue-white lightning, the shockwave of it blowing against the wind and chasing the rain away for a moment. Ururu looks up at the sky.
"We need to hurry."
They have no idea what they're getting involved in. Do they even know what their allies are like? You've seen their sins - what they did to Ururu. What they do to your kind - and you don't mean Hollows. You've seen them use human souls as blood sport, letting them hollow out so they can hunt them. Yes, even one of their own allies, fighting in this very city - feather-eyed Yumichika. What a righteous bunch they threw their lot with.
You are an Arrancar, and Arrancars don't eat people - this isn't some righteous battle where innocent human lives are at stake. This is a battle between Soul Society and Las Noches, two distant worlds, and these girls have no business getting involved, no reason to risk their lives over it.
"I've b-been to Soul Society," Orihime stammers, and for a moment you think she's doubting - but no, she's just clattering her teeth from the cold and the rain. "I've met Mayuri. Ichigo almost fought that feathered guy! I've seen how awful they can be, but it d-doesn't matter! Ichigo is not Soul Society! He's our friend, the protector of this town, who has b-been fighting Hollows since the day he gained his powers! He's nothing to do with what you're talking about!"
"And this is the third time your lot is coming after him," Tatsuki says. "What a joke. 'Don't get involved,' you say? You gave up any right to ask this the moment you used me to get at Ichigo."
Oh. Right.
That's a fair point.
There is a sound like a dragon's roar and Tatsuki erupts in flames. She comes at you sliding across the street on jets of flame coming out of her feet, the asphalt melting in her wake, bubbling red and gold like molten lava, fist braced to hit you like a runaway train.
You let your reiatsu slam into her with all its force, and her eyes widen in shock. She trips, shuffles her feet to find her balance, comes at you again, but it was the only moment you needed. You make a back-handed slap at the air and your Bala Envolver knocks her off-course, sending her careening into a streetlight.
Your body burns with released power, but it's a good burn, a thrilling burn, like that of a warm-up exercise. Now comes the sport.
"Tatsuki!" Orihime shouts, but the one you're keeping an eye on is the silent one, Ururu. She lowers the barrel of her boxy cannon, taking aim - you raise one hand and flick your fingers. A grey-black wisp wails like a child too young to understand the death that takes him, and she falls to the earth.
"Tsubaki, I reject!" shouts Orihime, anger and fear in her voice. The dart of light comes at you again, and you don't think you can aim your Bala quickly enough to block it. Instead you push harder on your power, stretching out the storm's shadows, making the rain into great curtains casting the street in darkness. The dart of light slows down as if diving through molasses, and you kick the ground, Sonido taking twenty feet into the air. The projectile passes harmlessly below you and you twirl on yourself, uniform billowing in the storm wind as you gather power with each ballet steps.
You hear a scream and Tatsuki is charging again, sailing through the air on her wake of fire like a demented human rocket. You lean down and stretch your arm, offering your gloved hand as if to a dancing partner, and your reiatsu flows through this hand in a downpour. The barrage of Bala Envolver sings the Chorus of the Doomed Reapers, your own work twisted to accompany your performance, and embraces Tatsuki.
At least three of the projectiles must have struck her, but her power is impressive. These jets of fire sacrifice mobility for sheer speed, and let her simply ram her way through your barrage. She comes out of the smoke and wispy tendrils with bruises and tears in her outfit, but no less determined for it. You can't step back in time; she's on you, hurling a fiery fist at your face -
You arch your back and duck your head, a graceful flowing motion, and Tatsuki's fist misses you by an inch. Silken bindings wrap around her, slowing her down to your level. You raise one hand, gently press it against her flank, and push. This Bala sends her barreling madly through the skyline.
You breathe in, gather your power into your horns, and take another flash-step, to the top of the buildings. You look down to aim…
The dart of light comes from behind, striking you in the shoulder plate. You let out a gasp, but it is not forceful, merely a pinprick of pain and a light push… And then the projectile lodged in your wound erupts with charged reiatsu, becomes a blade the size of a knife splitting your skin with surgical sharpness. Then it emerges out of you, circling around for another strike. You struggle to bring your charged power under control, orb of grey light bubbling between your horns.
Below you, Ururu has taken aim again. But her cannonball cannot match a Cero. She pulls the trigger and you unleash your power.
It is not a cannonball at all. Belatedly, you remember what you'd first thought on seeing her, that this boxy, square cannon must have been a different weapon than the one she used for her long-distance shot. You see a brief glint of some kind of grid inside the wide barrel, then dozens of individual missiles come out in a swarm, drawing curves of condensation through the rain as they hone in on you.
Your Cero sings the great aria, and the missiles' explosions provide a cascade of counterpoints - but ultimately, the drums prevail of the voice, a badly tuned performance. Your beam cuts a swath through the core of the swarm and expends much of its power against their explosions, but her attack is wider than your own. Too many missiles arc around you and close in without letting you room to escape. A curtain of fire and pain engulfs you, consecutive blasts wracking your body from all sides Your body is crushed on all sides by a vice of air and heat, and your lungs inhale fire, flaring all your internal wounds in one instant. You are hurled out of the explosion like a ragdoll, body limp and lungs trying to wrack their way out of your throat, blind to the world through a haze of darkness and tears. Any hope of correcting your course or being hurled far enough that the enemy will take time catching up ends when your back hits a hard membrane and bounces off, sending another flare of pain across your back. You struggle to gather reishi under you and fall to your knees in the air, catching a hazy glimpse of the shield of light that stopped your course.
The smoke of conflagration curls into the mists of Cero Triste. They form ahead of you, stretching out towards you, and you take a step to jump into their concealment -
Too slow. Tatsuki is coming back, the shield having kept you in her reach. She rides out of the mists shrouded in flame like a demon from a storybook, not any kind of Hollow or Shinigami, but it's all straight lines and wide curves, no flexibility, and you've already hit her with Envolver. She can't beat you like this - and then she changes. The fire crawls up her feet and legs, wraps around her, melds from fire into blazing golden light. Now she is surrounded by a sheath of concentrated power cutting through your reiatsu like a blade and shedding the bindings of Envolver one by one.
She's not flying as fast as she was before, but it doesn't matter, because you can no longer parry her blows. You hurl a frantic Bala and she knocks your hand aside, letting it fly off into the sky with a shout of despair. Then she brings her forehead down on your mask, knocking your head back with a cracking sound. She punches your plexus and you double over, blood and spit flying off your lips, lungs screaming. You draw Polilla to try and gain reach, but she grabs your armed wrist and wrenches it, flowing like water to be behind you, twisting your arm against your back. You open your mouth on a silent scream.
"Don't you realize what awakened my powers?" she whispers. "It was you and that boss of yours. Her power, crushing me, making me some kind of puppet, unable to move, unable to think, just letting her make me do anything she wanted, even betraying my friends. I've been made to feel like this before. Never. Again. You think you can hammer me with your aura and make me powerless?! Never! AGAIN! Now surrender!"
Your elbow creaks in protest as it is twisted beyond its limits. You think a tendon snapped. The pain is unbearable.
Or it would be, if you weren't your own guinea pig in teaching yourself medicine. You've broken each of these joints at least once before. The sound is no longer even sickening to you. The pain is an awful sting, stinging, but it is familiar. Almost a comfort. It doesn't stop you, and Tatsuki left you one free hand. You twist it behind you, lightly touching her chest, and before she can react a weakened Bala hurls her away from you.
She doesn't let go of your arm. As she flies away she tries to hold onto it, wrenching the elbow and dislocating the shoulder before finally slipping and falling from the sky. Pain comes in wave from each articulation of your arm.
You grab your own wrist to twist the entire arm back into place with High-Speed Regeneration, but before you can focus Ururu appears before you.
If Tatsuki was a demon she is a ghost, a ghost of stories, not one like you. Her pigtails are flat against her skull, her t-shirt and short heavy with rain, an abandoned child standing in the storm and uncaring of it. Raindrops shine like jewels on the steel plates covering her forearms and ankles. Lightning flashes behind you and is reflected in her eyes, a bright, lifeless glimmer.
"Slaughter Mode, Limited Release: Level One," she says in a whisper.
You feel the surge of her reiatsu, pushing back your own for but an instant, a cold breath on your skin, a predator's bloodthirsty, calculating gaze, smelling of chemicals and sterilized steel. Her pupils widen, taking up most of her irises.
You don't even try to engage her. You dive below into the mists, which form into flocks of pigeons and sparrows and swallows, into the souls of the city's mortals whispering what they lost in death, what bound them to these streets and houses. She comes down upon you like a meteor, but she is not as fast as she was in your first fight. You take another flash-step above her and wrap mists around you, and she hits only a moth-like shadow, scattering it into vapor. She pauses in the air, tracking you - in this state your reiatsu is easily felt but it blends into the mist, making it hard to tell your exact location. You gather power for a Cero…
"I reject!"
Two sparks light up in the middle of the mist, then fly away from each other, pulling light behind them and drawing a shape like an eye. The mists within disappear, a lens of pure air, reverting to the minutes before the storm, empty of even the rain. Beyond that lens, Ururu sees you with half-dead eyes.
You fire your half-baked Cero as she charges at you. Your pressure slows her down and she isn't as fast as she was before, it is a perfect shot - and then a triangle of light forms before her and your beam breaks on the shield like a wave against the rocks. The shield shatters, the beam half-scatters, but it doesn't have enough strength left to stop Ururu. She punches through it, grey power dividing around her armored fist, and then she's on you, her gauntlet slamming into your guts. In a strange moment of frozen time before the pain you experience something unlike any punch you've ever felt. Ururu is perhaps only half as strong as you remembered, but the gauntlet channels that strength, not enhancing it but turning into an intangible wave that passes through your Hierro as if it were not there. Your insides are torn by the shockwave.
It's only pain. You've felt it so many times before. Your right arm still limp at your side, you hurl a Bala at her face, pushing her back, following it with another - this time she raises her gauntlets in a block and takes it without flinching.
Is this what she's made of herself? Embraced the monster locked inside her, the one that made her almost kill innocents in her mad pursuit? The one her maker created to turn her into a weapon, instead of a girl? How can that be right?
"None of us have a choice," she says, her tone flat, the mists slowly curling up around you, rain once again breaching the window of pure air. "To stand back is to let those we care about die. Whoever started this war, all our friends are on one side. This power was not forced upon me. I asked for it."
That's when Tatsuki comes from below you, eyes mad, her sheath of light having unraveled all your Bala's bindings. Panicking, you try to parry her punch, but it was a feint; she whirls in the air, coming at your flank in a spinning kick. You hear the crack of your ribs, the wave of fire spreading across your left side, and you are hurled out of the cover of your mists, into the rain.
It feels so uncaring now. Where is its embrace? Above you distant blades clash, a fight so far beyond your strength.
Rain wraps in tiny whirlpools as you form platforms beneath your feet and steady yourself. You see the light ahead of you, move to parry it, but this time again the dart slip past your grasp and this time it is no glancing blow at your mask. It hits your chest, pierces your Hierro, and becomes a blade of light inside your skin, tearing a line of blood through your torso. It flies away as your feet slide in water. Lightning flashes closer this time, the smell of ozone tickling your nose, and its illumination casts Ururu above you as a human darkness, a hole in the sky.
Her fist impacts your jaw and her gauntlets drive her power past your Hierro again. The blow does not crack your mask nor bruise your skin - it hits the skull, fracturing your jaw.
This time there is no recovery course, no catching yourself, no air-steps. You come down limp and broken, hitting a roof at an angle and breaking the wall. Tiles screech and shatter, coming down on you like a wholly different rain. Your body stops at the far end wall of a room you can't make out. You are numb, bleary-eyed, breathing haltingly. All you can see is the blurred grey of concrete around you, and the great gash opening on the raging sky. You sputter blood and black bile onto your chin, try to lift your arm, and fail.
Three distant, rain-shrouded figures come down from these torn skies.
***
Madarame Ikkaku was the first to fall, and the last to rise again.
Shawlong and Nakeem had closed in on him at the same time, speed on one side and strength on the other. The agonized faces of Nakeem's shell turned to whimpering tendrils that bound him just long enough for Shawlong to slice him open with three great strokes. The hole in the Reapers' defenses allowed a laughing, manic Luppi to dart into close range of Matsumoto, whose shikai was best suited to ranged combat, and to overwhelm her with sheer strength. This in turn meant Grimmjow could charge Captain Hitsugaya head-on while he was winding up one of his more powerful attacks.
The master of ice hastily broke out of his charging stance to counter the attack, scrambling for a defense against the shock and surprise of the assault. That's when Luppi gave a twist of his aura and a cheerful call, and the one Arrancar everyone had forgotten appeared behind the captain.
Wonderweiss struck Hitsugaya in the back, leaving his guard wide open. Then Grimmjow took off his arm. The fortress of ice Hitsugaya had been shaping to attack the group exploded with his scream and a sound like a thousand crystal glasses shattering, ice turning to water and joining the rain again.
Yumichika, one arm broken and lacking in strength, found tendrils of doubt wriggle into his mind, poisoning it. He had no fear for his life, and yet he hesitated, unsure which ally to help, unsure if he should reveal his true power, just long enough for Shawlong and Nakeem to abandon their first prey and converge on him. Then he was never given time enough to release his power.
Hitsugaya was a genius, a wonderchild of Soul Society, with decades of experience in battle, for all that his body was a child's. Within a second of losing his arm he had sealed the wound shut with ice, keeping himself from bleeding. But the Arrancars were older still, creatures centuries his elder, and they outnumbered him within moments. The strength of his Bankai could hold back Grimmjow and Luppi, hurt them even, and now crippled he was too weak to hold on forever. When Nakeem, Shawlong and Wonderweiss came at him on all side he had not strength and speed enough left to wound three foes at once, and they opened his guard again.
The music that was in Luppi's soul was no longer a marching anthem, but a dirge, a mourning wail, and he was all too happy to play the undertaker. He spoke a command and Trepadora's many hands struck all at once from Hitsugaya's back, bringing him down in a shower of icy shards.
The child-captain fell beneath the trees, and perhaps in another life his opponents might have forgotten him, but there was no one else left. Trepadora slithered down the trees like the vines of a heartless jungle to pick up his half-conscious body and crush it in his coils. The breath was squeezed out of him, his consciousness faded, and he would have died in that grip, had it not been for another's sacrifice.
Madarame Ikkaku was the first to fall, and the last to rise. He was a man without death, one who seemed to endure any wounds, any suffering, and to always rise again.With all his companions unconscious, with the understanding that his mistake had doomed them, he laughed madly and surrendered himself to the only ending he'd ever wanted, the only way to cleanse his fault.
He unleashed his Bankai, and Grimmjow met him in single combat.
Wonderweiss had already wandered off, his one task fulfilled. Luppi let a still-alive Hitsugaya slip out of his arms, for there was now greater entertainment than his death, and Nakeem and Shawlong rose from the ground, and all watched, none making a move to aid Grimmjow, for they knew what the king desired.
That power so rare and yet so familiar stirred Yumichika out of his unconsciousness. Broken and limp against the stump of a tree, the Shinigami watched his friend fight his last fight, and wept in grief, but also in admiration. He believed he would be the only one to understand.
He was wrong. The Arrancars stood and beheld, and they remembered, and his last stand was to be written in the legends of Hueco Mundo.
***
"Oh god oh god oh god. Look at what we did to her! She's all broken and bleeding and-"
"Hime, calm down. You don't have to look at this. In fact, you should go back to the street. If we can keep the enemy in the sky you have less chance to get hurt."
"Hurt? But she can't fight anymore! She can't even move…"
"Arrancars have the ability to enter a released state which heals their wounds and heightens their combat power. The enemy should not be considered safe until we have shackled it. Where is her sword?"
Polilla? God, where is Polilla… Your hand claws at the ground, finding no purchase. Where is your sword…
"She dropped it when I pulled her in an armlock and snapped her elbow, I think."
"This is good. Miss Orihime, do you have Mister Urahara's manacles?"
"I - yes, yes, they're right here… God, this is awful. She didn't even want to fight…"
"She didn't want to surrender either, and we had to stop her from helping her allies. You did what was right. Remember your training? Focus. You didn't kill anyone. We can just take her in - you can even heal her, if you like. All that matters is that she's put out of the fight and we can go help Chad and Glasses Guy and then Ichigo if he hasn't already gotten his dumb ass killed by then."
"Okay, I have the manacles, remind me how you activate them-"
"Please hand them to me. It is not safe for you to approach the enemy. I am more resilient, and less injured than Miss Arisawa."
"A-all ri-"
Then there is silence.
Even in your half-consciousness, you can feel it. In fact you can feel it even more, with your body numb to all sensation, drifting in dark waters, leaving your mind's eye open wide to all that is beyond the material.
There is a beast at the heart of the sun, a wolf coiled inside a black star, raging and clawing at it. There has been since this battle started, a demon-god fighting in a battlefield of clouds and nascent lightning against a princess of the storm. But now at last the beast roars in triumph as its claws tear through the fiery darkness of the star, devour its heat, its power, and become a new sun, grinning with its mask of bone and shadow.
Then it opens its mouth, and draws in the storm. The wolf rules the sky, or perhaps it is a coyote, less a feral horror and more a deadly trickster; it has become the sun and so it gives orders to the tempest. The storm is overwhelmed, beaten back out of the sun's sky, her dress of rain and clouds torn to ribbons, the flashing whip of her thunder thrown back in her face… And it seems as if it will now tear at the heart of her true self to reveal the secret of lightning, the storm's greatest treasure, and steal it for himself. The demon-wolf-coyote laughs, and rips away one last curtain.
And the storm smiles. For in her cleverness she has substituted in the lightning's hiding place a pebble, a stone, an idol carved in the image of God; and now the demon is looking upon God's own face, a thing which is forbidden, and his mind is struck with wonder and awe and terror.
In that moment the clouds close in on him, embrace him with thunder and triumph, and the demon is cast down from the heavens where it dared tread.
"Ichigo!" shouts a girl's voice, you know not which.
You smile. Your gift saved her again. Your gift…
Ah…
Why are you fighting? You scold and shout at these children for fighting the Shinigami's wars, and they shrug off all your cries, become angrier at each one.
Do you fight for the Arrancars? For Aizen? For the order of Las Noches, so wild and cruel? Is this a fate you wish to see forced upon the world? No, you care for none of these things.
Do you fight against the Shinigami? To end their tyranny, to avenge the wrongs they have done to your kind? No, not in truth. You yourself have slain Hollows to save mortal souls before. You care only that they do not see you as different, that they would hunt you down like a monster, when in reality you might be willing to fight Hollows at their side - but only those who embrace their madness and hunger, not those who can be shown another way.
You fight for your freedom, and that of Cirucci, and that of your friends. Small things. Personal lives. No great design. You fight for La Marana, so that you may teach your art to all, and bring people together. You fight for the ways Cirucci taught you, art and culture and nobility and honor, that they may be spread to all the other Arrancars.
You fight for the same reasons these girls do. How blind you were, to try and rise above them. To lie to yourself and make this a war of worlds where they should just stand aside. You care no more for Las Noches than they do for Soul Society. You care for Cirucci as they do for Kurosaki, and each of them likely has their own passion, their own art they want to pursue, just as the tailor's craft is for you.
You are the same. Another day, you would like to talk about it. To make them see your way. To try and see theirs. To perhaps reconcile your difference and work for a better path.
But not today. Today your desires are in absolute opposition. And that means you must fight them with all your heart, and treat them as equals, not children. As worthy of your respect.
As worthy of your strength.
It's time to stop holding back.
Your jaw is cracked and dislocated, your right arm is a useless mess, several of your ribs are broken, and you have open wounds in your chest and back.
Your legs are fine. You stand up and blink the tears out of your eyes. Your vision is clear and lucid. Before you are only three shocked and frightened girls.
You reach into your soul and bring the screaming cohorts of your self to heel. You bring out more power than ever before, a wave of darkness that washes over your enemy. The shadows of the room twist in your image and hail you as their queen.
You grab your arm in your good hand and wrench it into place, tendons snapping back, bone relocating. You slide your lower jaw and it reconnects. Blood slides down your stainless uniform, leaving it pristine to reveal your unmarred skin. You inhale deeply, once, lungs inflating your ribcage, and all the ribs mend. You don't do anything to help your torn guts heal; they wriggle against each other like great fat worms, bubbling with new flesh before settling again.
Ururu drops the engraved steel manacles she was holding and charges at you, and you meet her with a punch that makes the entire roof quake with the shockwave of Bala. She is sent prone on her back, gasping, and you wait for the move you're expecting.
Tatsuki is already trying to reach you, and the Bala you launch at her is only meant to slow her down a few seconds, so that Orihime's dart of light reaches you first. You let it slam into your shoulder, your guard wide open but her aim lacking, and slide back to the wall. Again the dart becomes a blade slicing your skin from the inside, then fading.
You know the little missile will leap out of you and come back again later. This time you won't let it. As the barrier-blade in your skin disappears, you slam your open palm against your own shoulder, firing a point-blank Bala at yourself, then another. New waves of pain wrack your left side as your collar bones shatter. You groan and let your hand fall.
A tiny little fairy, black-clothed and winged, falls out of your grasp, shattered in its flight. You grasp your left shoulder and ram it home in its socket, high-speed regeneration mending it in a second.
"Tsubaki!" Orihime shouts with dread you did not expect. Is it a person you just broke?
No time to think about it. Tatsuki is already on you, but you simply flash-step past her, letting her fist finish destroying the wall. Tatsuki is behind you, Ururu is only now getting up, and you're alone in front of Orihime, their shield-bearer whose sword you just broke. She yelps in child-like panic and crosses her arm before her, her barrier already forming. But your reiatsu is like a combattant of its own, laughing as its dark tendrils pluck at her reiatsu, poison her strength, making her just a fraction of a second too slow to gather her defense.
It almost resembles Luppi's.
Your hand slips through the unformed center of her shield and your Bala hits her unprotected, human body. She is sent hurtling out of the same hole in the roof through which you enter. The other two are shouting, already rushing you, but Sonido takes you higher, level with Orihime's flying form, and a second Bala sends her down into the street below.
You won't have to worry about her anymore.
You are in the storm again now, and it feels like home. Only your doubts made it seem cold and distant. Lightning and Balas against the dark clouds and rain cast a chiaroscuro which only makes you more powerful. Ururu and Tatsuki reach you in the air and it's like diving into a sphere of water, their every motion slowing down a little, losing in strength. Tatsuki's aura intensifies, slicing through your reiatsu to let her move unimpaired, so she reaches you first instead of flanking you alongside Ururu. Still, she's too fast and strong for you to have any chance in close combat.
You smile to yourself. The beads of glass around your neck shine. You have found peace in resolve, in your respect for your opponents, in letting out your full power. You let your reishi platform dissolve to nothing and flow with Tatsuki's blow, gliding on the wind with ease, far more graceful in the air than she is. You use your newfound speed to fly backwards, leading her away from Ururu who still struggles against your spiritual pressure. Tatsuki's fists strike again and again and only graze you, knuckles as hard as steel drawing shallow cuts on your chin and shoulders.
Her power seems to adapt to whatever advantage you have on her. In moments, her sheathe of light protecting her from your reiatsu and your Bala Envolver will likely make her as agile in the sky as you are.
You don't give her moments. She's guided by reckless anger, which makes her miss the reason you are just dodging without striking back. The rain swirls around you, great spinning vortices leading up to your horns, a black flower blooming. Ururu finally catches up, her Hierro-bypassing fists ready to smash you to bits, and even the necklace's gift can't let you dodge the two of them at once.
It's too late. You take one flash-step past them, your motion marked by a single trail of black light, and open your arms, floating on the wind. They turn to face you and you unleash Cero.
Tatsuki's eyes widen, but the cold assessment in Ururu's own is a dreadful thing in a child. She hurls herself in front of her ally, curling up into a ball, presenting armored gauntlets and greaves together. Your Cero laughs and laughs as it hits her, the laugh you gave Unohana in your play; it shatters her armor into a million pieces and the girl falls - her reiatsu gutters out, but does not disappear. Still alive.
She saved Tatsuki. The girl looks at you, horrified at what you just did, at the turn the fight took in mere seconds. When she was charging you like a beast she seemed invincible, impervious to all your attacks. You can now see all the bruises, all the burn marks on her skin, the blood from her lips and eyebrow.
The mists of Cero Triste form into an arena around you, and the forms they take are all the formless shadows of your sea of souls. Even here, at the end, you couldn't bring yourself to use the glove and drag out all the pain a child warrior must have suffered to be brought here today.
You can't stand that horror in her eyes. The lights of your necklace fade, and gravity resumes its hold on you. You must form the air-steps again, and face her.
You bow, with honest respect.
"Fuck you," Tatsuki says, no strength in her voice.
You both come at each other in the same instant moment. You use your right hand to deflect part of her punch, weakened by her injuries. It finds your ribs again, hits them hard enough to crack them again, but too much of its strength was lost. It does not take you down. You strike at the same time, a jab at her head, your last Bala sobbing for its half-second of existence, and her skull bounces away from your hand.
She falls. You dart down and catch her body before it hits the ground. You form a stairway of reishi one step at a time, healing your cracked ribs again, holding the unconscious Tatsuki in your arms. When you reach the street, you lay her down.
Your reiatsu wanes like a seat at low tide, pulling back inside you. Your hands are shaking. Healing so many wounds, flaring so much strength, exhausted you more than the repeated Ceros and Balas did - although they played their part. You have no strength left. No drive. Nothing. You sigh and look up the street.
Orihime is still conscious, though the way she holds her chest tells you how badly you hurt her. She is in no state to fight. Instead she is leaning over Ururu, a shield of golden light shaped like an eye surrounding her.
You stagger over to her, and she looks up in fright.
"Please, I - I can't fight. Anymore. I'm just trying to heal her. I'm not… I can't do it fast enough for them to come back at you, o-okay? You don't have to worry, I'm just… Please. Let me heal her."
You look down at Ururu, the tiny girl, her arms covered in purple marks all along the spots once covered by the gauntlets. Her eyes are closed, her breathing harsh. But even now, under that gentle light, you can see these bruises slowly fading.
You nod wearily, and Orihime sighs with relief.
"C-can you… Bring me Tatsuki? So I can help her too? P-please."
You hesitate, for a moment. You think distant thoughts. Could she heal your wounds? Should you care that the enemy has a magical healer?
You have neither the willpower or time to consider these things. You just shrug and go fetch Tatsuki's unconscious body.
***
Cirucci pauses to catch her breath.
"I'm impressed," she says, and breaks out into a low, pained chuckle before she can finish her sentence. She stops almost immediately - even this subdued a laugh feels like it's tearing her chest apart. She clutches the wound in her flank, the only serious injury she had in this fight - a long, scorches cut across her torso, fading into a thin, shallow wound across the height of her face.
"That was a really neat trick you pulled off. It could almost have beaten me! Too bad I could answer it with one of my own."
Kurosaki Ichigo tries to rise, and falters. His black sword strikes the rooftop of the building she sent him crashing into, and he uses it to prop himself up - but can't do more than kneel. His blood and Cirucci's both drain with the rain, washing the entire rooftop in a widening motif of faded red.
"That amulet was a… dirty move, Arrancar," he says panting, blood dripping from his eyebrow and the many cuts in his long black coat. "Not fair at all."
"Oh please," Cirucci says, shrugging. "Your mask is exactly the same. You're not actually stronger than me, you can just spike higher for a few seconds and take your opponent by surprise. I just countered your trick with another trick, making us even. My victory was well-earned."
"Yeah?" The Shinigami chuckles too - and, just like her, immediately stops, wincing in pain. "That's cold comfort when you're about to kill me, uh?"
"Please," she says, rolling her eyes. "If you really thought I was going to kill you you wouldn't be cracking wise about it. No, on the contrary, I have no intention of harming you any further. You can barely move - so my job here is done."
"What the hell are you talking about."
Cirucci twirls the handle of her whip, sending Golondrina's disk over her shoulder, hanging at her back in a casual pose. She smirks.
"My goal was not your death, Shinigami. Only your capture. Ulquiorra!"
The last word is shouted, and a voice answers.
It is not the Cuatro's.
"I gotta hand it to ya, Ichigo," says a drawling voice up above them. Cirucci turn on her heels, Golondrina leaping back to her hand, to face a blond, straight-haired man, tapping the flat of a sword against his shoulders. "You lasted a lot longer than I would have thought. Did you enjoy your impromptu training session?"
"You asshole," Ichigo hisses, trying to push himself up on his sword again - and, again, failing and falling to his knees.
"Who in God's name are you?" Cirucci says, narrowing her eyes and falling into a combat stance.
"Now why would I tell you that, Arrancar?" the newcomer says tilting his head, an odd smile showing his upper teeth.
"You're one of the renegades." Cirucci frowns.
"Is that what they call us now?"
"I've met Kisuke Urahara, and their wizard. You-" She blinks, tilts her head. Gives one glance at Ichigo. Smirks. "Of course. You've come to save your son, haven't you - Kurosaki Isshin?"
There is a moment of dumbstruck silence.
"I'm sorry WHAT-" Ichigo shouts, eyes boggling, while the blonde bursts out laughing.
"Now that is the funniest I've heard all week. Lady, you're off by eighty years of exile and about forty pounds, not all of it muscle. Man kinda let himself go around here." His laughter dies out, turning into a chuckle, then a mean, mean smile. "Oh, Arrancar, you really don't have a clue… You're in way over your head here. You got two choices: you step away from my pupil, or I kick your teeth in."
"Come and get me, you-"
Then when the light of God comes down from the pierced heavens.
***
There is an empty man.
In emptying everything but the shell of his self, he has made himself invincible to the world, for there is nothing past that shell which anyone could hurt. And because he is empty, his vision is untroubled by the chaos of distractions which fill an ordinary man's soul and occlude their sight.
Or so the empty man believes.
His vision can reach across worlds and see the base truth of all things. He sees the chains of matter which make up everything that exists. There is nothing beyond these chains; all thoughts of things immaterial or elevated are only delusions born of the fact that others have not made themselves empty, and thus have their vision occluded by the chaos in their inner selves.
At this moment, the empty man stands in an infinite darkness on a platform of light. The darkness is alive and full of voices, but these voices fear him, and so he stands in blessed silence. His hands swipe at the air, sliding pictures from another world in front of his eyes. He watches as battles unfold, as enemies are laid low and objectives are achieved. He watches, too, as reinforcements make their move, delayed by events beyond his ken - or, rather, beyond his ability to care.
When his name is called out, he swipes away most of these visions to focus on one. There, the upstart has finally proven herself of some use. But one of the reinforcements has reached her, and she is too weak to be trusted with another battle. Besides, the primary objective has been achieved.
The empty man flicks away the picture, and slides his hands across the darkness. It opens up into the dim lights of the storm, the flash of lightning illuminating his abode.
He steps out, and all present turn to face him. The empty man feels no pride in this. It is only as it should be.
"Ulquiorra!" shouts the upstart. "You need to extract the-"
"Who the heck are you-" the half-Hollow Shinigami above them begins.
Irrelevant chatter. He ignores it. He waves his hands again, and sends out a summon none other can feel.
A shaft of golden light touches the rooftop, blessing the upstart and the incapacitated target with its holy touch. It seals them off from this world, into a fragment of another, where none may harm them until their journey is done: for this reason it is called Negacion.
"What are you doing!" the Shinigami shouts in sudden comprehension, as the young man he came to rescue is taken out of his grasp in a mere second. Understandably, he becomes angry and comes down at him, blade swinging, even though killing the empty man would avail him nothing right now - the Negacion is underway, and cannot be stopped by any power but God's.
"You droopy-eyed painted mother-"
He blocks the blond man's sword with his hand, a bored expression on his face. It is not contempt, though it looks like it; the half-Hollow was once a Shinigami captain, and is incredibly strong. The empty one believes he could crush him utterly, but such a battle would take a long time and cause him to level much of the town, which he has been ordered not to do. Instead he steps like lightning twice, first to feint, then to flank the man, and knocks him off the rooftop with a sudden wave of power.
Not enough to incapacitate or even hurt him much, just enough to stun him and be rid of him long enough to leave again.
"What are you doing? Let me go! LET ME GO!" the target says, banging fruitlessly at the walls of light around him, and finding no purchase - they are not a barrier to be broken; he exists within a shard of Hueco Mundo, and so his fists only lash out at empty air. Behind him the upstart lifts the handle of her whip and smacks him on the back of the head, sending him sprawling.
"Ulquiorra," the upstart says, standing above the boy, her voice worried. She is rising further and further into the sky now, soon to disappear into the hole of darkness from which the light reached out. The empty man deigns to look at her.
"Congratulations on your successful mission," he says. "Please deliver Kurosaki to Lord Aizen in person as soon as you arrive."
"Ulquiorra," the upstart says, eyes wide and filled with fear and anger, speaking through clenched teeth, her hands clutched into tight, white-knuckled fist. "Why is there only one Negacion?"
The empty man looks around him at the city, and then at the upstart again.
"Did you forget there were two parts to this mission? Capture Kurosaki, and break the back of the Shinigami forces in town. You have done well. Now it's time to see how far the others can get."
"You bastard!" she screams, her tension exploding into sheer rage. "Didn't you see there are more of them than we were told? You're leaving Nemo alone against their reinforcements! You're leaving all of them-"
"Your Fraccion is resourceful. I am sure she will manage. And it should make a much better test of Tesla's abilities than the pitiful humans he's been handling so far. Besides - your servant wrote such a beautiful piece about doomed last stands. I would hate to deprive her of a chance to live one for herself."
"Ulquiorra, you-" she cries out with anger enough to shake the sky.
But then she is swallowed up into the sky, and he hears her no more.
Blessed silence.
The half-Hollow is coming back already, and the empty man is of no mind to fight him. He waves his hand and enters the black passage again, shutting it behind him.
***
The park lies in ruins. Torn-down trees are scattered over wide trails of upturned soil, which rain has soaked into long rivers of mud. Constructs of ice rise to meet the sky, slowly melting. Withered plants even now turn to dust, gone into the wet earth. A lightning-struck tree burns slowly, the rain carving away at the flames.
In the middle of the devastation is the last man to add to it. Ikkaku's body lies in a crater, shattered blades sticking upright where they fell around him, many gravestones for one man.
"That guy," Grimmjow says, breathing heavily. "That guy was pretty fucking good. If he hadn't waited 'till he was half-crippled to use his full power, he'd probably have forced me to release."
Blood drips down the Sexta's body. His jacket is gone now, long shredded in the heat of battle, and there are wide gashes in his hakama. Each of his limbs and his face and torso are marked by deep cuts, and one of his eyes is half-closed - yet he still stands.
"That was a really nice show," Luppi muses, his voice wistful. "I'll make it into a song, I think."
"What shall we do now, boss?" Shawlong says, his long-clawed hand holding his own chest - the deep cut in it is surrounded by purple-blue, frostbitten flesh.
"Well, now we finish them off, obviously," Luppi says, shrugging with eight tentacles at once.
Grimmjow flinches.
"What?" Luppi adds, frowning, and the Sexta shrugs as well.
"Killing unconscious people doesn't feel right, I guess."
Luppi raises an eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"
"I've just never done it!" Grimmjow spits. "Not that I've tried to avoid it or anything. Just so happened everyone I ever killed was standing up and looking me in the face."
"Yeah, like that meant they stood a chance," Luppi says with a chuckle.
"I've killed plenty of weaklings before. In fact, when they're weak is the best time to kill enemies, so they don't get a chance to grow strong. It's just, they were still able to fight. I've never knocked someone out, gone off to fight someone else, then come back and stabbed the first guy while they were still out."
"Yes, well, I suppose we can slap them until they wake up if that makes you feel better about ruthless murder, but we have orders, and the orders are 'kill everybody.'"
"I know that!" Grimmjow snaps, unconsciously flaring his reiatsu - Luppi flinches back, eyes wide. "Fuck me, I still don't like it."
"I'm going to be honest with you, Arrancar," comes a voice at the edge of the ravaged battlefield. "Neither do I! In fact, I believe I should absolutely prevent this."
All eyes turn to the edge where some trees still stand whole, and all are silent for a moment.
"We're too late for one of them," a woman says somberly.
The Arrancars are reminded of Nnoitra, briefly, from the sheer weight of this spiritual pressure and its blood-scented tinge, but everything else about the man is different, save one thing: the absolute danger of his presence. And though the one at his side sheds not one hint of reiatsu, not one trace of her power, they know her to be the same, for the exact reason that her strength is so perfectly invisible.
The storm almost blows the hat off his head, and he slams it into place with one hand, twirling his cane in the other. The hat shadows his eyes and nose, but do not hide his smile. The woman besides him tugs on her ponytail, squeezing the water out of it, unworried by her enemies.
Urahara Kisuke and Shihoin Yoruichi step onto the battlefield.
***
You pick up Polilla from where she fell, planted tip-first into the curb, next to the river the street is turning into. Gutters overflow with rain, a handful of trees planted along the street lying broken by the winds.
You raise your head to look for Cirucci, and see the golden beam kiss the tallest building in the neighborhood. For a moment you don't understand. Then you see her rise up, hear her scream of rage over the sound of the wind, feel her reiatsu surge in anger, and then - she's gone. And so is the living void that called down the Negacion.
You blink, too stunned to react at first. He… left you behind? You look around you, frantic, but there are no other beams, you can still feel reiatsu all around the city, you're not alone - all of you have been left behind.
But you're winning, right? You can just withdraw through Descorrer…
You see a thin blond man fly away from the very rooftop Cirucci just left, and his power is crushing, a twisting of the senses making you feel vertigo; but before you have time to fear him he's already gone, either not having noticed you or not caring about you.
Okay. Okay. You're fine. You turn to where Orihime is crouching, her face strained in pain and effort, healing her friends. Should you just… Leave? Go help Tesla? Meet up with the others?
Where is Tesla? He had his own fight going, and if you managed to win it seems unlikely he'd lose, but… You try to scan the surroundings for his spiritual pressure.
Then you see the plume of fire rising above a house down the street, and hear its shockwave, feel it rattle your bones. You take a step back instinctively. There is the stroke of lightning, not from Cirucci's storm but from earth-borne source, and…
A giant man-beast, a colossal creature with the head and fur of a boar but the limbs of a man, comes sliding in the water flow from the corner of the street, electricity still crackling around his shoulders. Tesla. He turns around, sees you, and one flash-step takes him to your side - you didn't expect this speed or this reach given his size.
He's panting, burn marks across his furry chest. You can see now, up close with the eyepatch gone, that the star-like pattern of scars around his eyes was no mere cosmetic wound. One of his eyes is an empty black hole. The other stares at you with depths you can't read.
"Has the Quinta extracted the target?" he asks, deep basso voice rumbling like a forge's bellows. You nod quickly. "We need to leave, then. I don't think we can handle-"
Then you see his opponent.
He's a giant too, though a lesser one, human in his proportions - if only barely. Taut muscles ripple beneath his skin, pull his shirt tight around him. His hair is pulled back against his scalp, the front of it shaved and the back half pulled into a tight, thin braid, contrasting with his luxurious moustache. His thin glasses are covered in rain, and he awkwardly wipes them as he walks towards you.
The gesture is awkward because he is carrying an unconscious body on each shoulder: the white-clothed man and the dark-skinned giant.
Tsukashibi Tessai, former Captain of the Kido Corps of Soul Society. The man who almost captured you the last time you were on a living world mission. His power burns brighter than any of the flashes of lightning above; a whispering flame of colors not known to this world calls to you from within his souls, tempts you with promises of forbidden secrets.
"Orihime," Tessai says sharply. "Can you heal Uryuu and Chad?"
The long-haired girl looks up at him, eyes wide, surprised of his arrival.
"I-I can stabilize them, make sure they don't get worse, but I'm already at my limits…"
"That will be fine," he says, and lays down the bodies next to Tatsuki and Ururu.
You breathe again. You hadn't realized you had stopped.
"Nemo," Tesla says, urgently, and you turn on your heels, slice apart the threads of reality to open the Garganta…
Five square pillars come down from the sky, and you must duck back to avoid them, stepping away from the portal; they fall in perfect alignment, locking the Garganta.
You turn back, heart pumping, all too aware of your exhaustion.
"I will never understand Ururu's fascination for you," Tessai says, slowly and deliberately walking up the street towards you. Part of you notices that his feet do not break the surface of the water, but walk upon it. "Having met you only once, she believed you had a kindness inside you, and could be turned to good. Yet both times you have come to our town, you have left her broken, in pain. Do you enjoy this, Arrancar?"
You swallow harshly. Tesla stands up straight next to you, ham-like fists clutched tight.
"I will make sure now to remove the source of that sick fascination," Tessai says, cracking his knuckles, "that you may not hurt her again." He pauses. Distant lightning is reflected in his glasses, making them shine a cold white. "Unless, that is, you surrender immediately."
Tesla turns his one good eye to you, and you look up at him, anxiety twisting your gut.
Cirucci is gone. Everyone else is still fighting. You do not know if there is any extraction to be hoping for. You do not know if your allies are in reach.
But you made a commitment to yourself when you defeated these three girls.
There is no surrender. You must survive and escape.
[ ] Stand your ground. You cannot hope to defeat a Captain-class opponent, but you and Tesla might be able to hold him off long enough for help to arrive - whether that is Grimmjow winning his battle, Cirucci coming back the long way, or Ulquiorra stepping in.
-[ ] Fight. With several incapacitated allies in the way and surrounded by human dwellings, Tessai will not be able to deploy his most destructive magic. Flank him with Tesla. Release if you have to.
-[ ] Bluff. You wouldn't kill an opponent who surrendered, but Tessai doesn't know that. He believes you to be some monster, and your lies are flawless. Take Orihime hostage, and leverage it into an escape.
[ ] Run for it. You cannot hope to put enough distance between you and Tessai to escape through Garganta alone, and you can't rely on any outside help, unless you go and get it yourself.
-[ ] Join up with Grimmjow's group. They are very far from you, but also much stronger. Even if enemy reinforcements have also reached them, they can endure long enough to work out a collective escape. Hopefully you can dodge Tessai's binding spells long enough to get there.
-[ ] Find Ilforte Grantz. He is much closer than Grimmjow. But he's also alone, fighting a duel - if he has won by the time you arrive, three Fraccions against Tessai might be enough to actually force the Shinigami back. If he has lost, stumbling on a second Shinigami would be your doom.
There is a moratorium of two hours on this vote. Discuss your options. Also the actual update if you like
LXXXX. Riders on the Storm
The roar of thunder and the breath of wind. The relentless patter of cold rain, cold fingers drawing patterns on your skin. The flash of lightning, leaving afterimages in your eyes. The world is oppressive, godlike power bending the weather itself to its whims. You look at the girls ahead of you, their clothes damp, hair growing more and more matted and heavy. The one called Tatsuki looked fearsome and aggressive with her straight, spiky hair - now she just looks like a wet cat. The tall, long-haired one shivers with cold.
You shift your footing, dancing practice driven through your bone letting you find balance easily on the wet asphalt. To them, this is a hostile world, the wrath of nature punishing them for stepping outside. To you, it is the embrace of a lover.
You raise Polilla point first, her tip pointing to Ururu's head. You don't want to harm her either - to harm any of them, really. There is no need to fight. As long as both you and the girls stay out of Cirucci's fight with Kurosaki, this battle need not be theirs. You're fine with just staring warily at each other until it's settled one way or another.
"Like hell," Tatsuki says, glowering. She takes a step forward. "We came here to help Ichigo because he's an idiot who hasn't even finished his weirdo mask training before jumping into battle, we're not letting his dumbass get killed!"
You shake your head. You're not here to kill him. You almost tell them you're not here to kill anyone, but -
Well, that's not true, is it. You aren't. But Grimmjow's group, and Luppi with them, came for a fight to the death.
But that's different. They're Shinigami, like Ichigo, not like… Not like these children in front of you. What are they doing, getting involved in this kind of battle? This can't be their choice. Especially not Ururu, who didn't even choose to fight you last time. Wasn't her new guardian supposed to keep her safe, not use her as a weapon like the mist-man did?
The girl tilts her head.
"This is my choice," she says simply, her tone calm and even.
Above you another rumble of thunder is drowned out by a titanic clash, red-and-black energy engulfing blue-white lightning, the shockwave of it blowing against the wind and chasing the rain away for a moment. Ururu looks up at the sky.
"We need to hurry."
They have no idea what they're getting involved in. Do they even know what their allies are like? You've seen their sins - what they did to Ururu. What they do to your kind - and you don't mean Hollows. You've seen them use human souls as blood sport, letting them hollow out so they can hunt them. Yes, even one of their own allies, fighting in this very city - feather-eyed Yumichika. What a righteous bunch they threw their lot with.
You are an Arrancar, and Arrancars don't eat people - this isn't some righteous battle where innocent human lives are at stake. This is a battle between Soul Society and Las Noches, two distant worlds, and these girls have no business getting involved, no reason to risk their lives over it.
"I've b-been to Soul Society," Orihime stammers, and for a moment you think she's doubting - but no, she's just clattering her teeth from the cold and the rain. "I've met Mayuri. Ichigo almost fought that feathered guy! I've seen how awful they can be, but it d-doesn't matter! Ichigo is not Soul Society! He's our friend, the protector of this town, who has b-been fighting Hollows since the day he gained his powers! He's nothing to do with what you're talking about!"
"And this is the third time your lot is coming after him," Tatsuki says. "What a joke. 'Don't get involved,' you say? You gave up any right to ask this the moment you used me to get at Ichigo."
Oh. Right.
That's a fair point.
There is a sound like a dragon's roar and Tatsuki erupts in flames. She comes at you sliding across the street on jets of flame coming out of her feet, the asphalt melting in her wake, bubbling red and gold like molten lava, fist braced to hit you like a runaway train.
You let your reiatsu slam into her with all its force, and her eyes widen in shock. She trips, shuffles her feet to find her balance, comes at you again, but it was the only moment you needed. You make a back-handed slap at the air and your Bala Envolver knocks her off-course, sending her careening into a streetlight.
Your body burns with released power, but it's a good burn, a thrilling burn, like that of a warm-up exercise. Now comes the sport.
"Tatsuki!" Orihime shouts, but the one you're keeping an eye on is the silent one, Ururu. She lowers the barrel of her boxy cannon, taking aim - you raise one hand and flick your fingers. A grey-black wisp wails like a child too young to understand the death that takes him, and she falls to the earth.
"Tsubaki, I reject!" shouts Orihime, anger and fear in her voice. The dart of light comes at you again, and you don't think you can aim your Bala quickly enough to block it. Instead you push harder on your power, stretching out the storm's shadows, making the rain into great curtains casting the street in darkness. The dart of light slows down as if diving through molasses, and you kick the ground, Sonido taking twenty feet into the air. The projectile passes harmlessly below you and you twirl on yourself, uniform billowing in the storm wind as you gather power with each ballet steps.
You hear a scream and Tatsuki is charging again, sailing through the air on her wake of fire like a demented human rocket. You lean down and stretch your arm, offering your gloved hand as if to a dancing partner, and your reiatsu flows through this hand in a downpour. The barrage of Bala Envolver sings the Chorus of the Doomed Reapers, your own work twisted to accompany your performance, and embraces Tatsuki.
At least three of the projectiles must have struck her, but her power is impressive. These jets of fire sacrifice mobility for sheer speed, and let her simply ram her way through your barrage. She comes out of the smoke and wispy tendrils with bruises and tears in her outfit, but no less determined for it. You can't step back in time; she's on you, hurling a fiery fist at your face -
You arch your back and duck your head, a graceful flowing motion, and Tatsuki's fist misses you by an inch. Silken bindings wrap around her, slowing her down to your level. You raise one hand, gently press it against her flank, and push. This Bala sends her barreling madly through the skyline.
You breathe in, gather your power into your horns, and take another flash-step, to the top of the buildings. You look down to aim…
The dart of light comes from behind, striking you in the shoulder plate. You let out a gasp, but it is not forceful, merely a pinprick of pain and a light push… And then the projectile lodged in your wound erupts with charged reiatsu, becomes a blade the size of a knife splitting your skin with surgical sharpness. Then it emerges out of you, circling around for another strike. You struggle to bring your charged power under control, orb of grey light bubbling between your horns.
Below you, Ururu has taken aim again. But her cannonball cannot match a Cero. She pulls the trigger and you unleash your power.
It is not a cannonball at all. Belatedly, you remember what you'd first thought on seeing her, that this boxy, square cannon must have been a different weapon than the one she used for her long-distance shot. You see a brief glint of some kind of grid inside the wide barrel, then dozens of individual missiles come out in a swarm, drawing curves of condensation through the rain as they hone in on you.
Your Cero sings the great aria, and the missiles' explosions provide a cascade of counterpoints - but ultimately, the drums prevail of the voice, a badly tuned performance. Your beam cuts a swath through the core of the swarm and expends much of its power against their explosions, but her attack is wider than your own. Too many missiles arc around you and close in without letting you room to escape. A curtain of fire and pain engulfs you, consecutive blasts wracking your body from all sides Your body is crushed on all sides by a vice of air and heat, and your lungs inhale fire, flaring all your internal wounds in one instant. You are hurled out of the explosion like a ragdoll, body limp and lungs trying to wrack their way out of your throat, blind to the world through a haze of darkness and tears. Any hope of correcting your course or being hurled far enough that the enemy will take time catching up ends when your back hits a hard membrane and bounces off, sending another flare of pain across your back. You struggle to gather reishi under you and fall to your knees in the air, catching a hazy glimpse of the shield of light that stopped your course.
The smoke of conflagration curls into the mists of Cero Triste. They form ahead of you, stretching out towards you, and you take a step to jump into their concealment -
Too slow. Tatsuki is coming back, the shield having kept you in her reach. She rides out of the mists shrouded in flame like a demon from a storybook, not any kind of Hollow or Shinigami, but it's all straight lines and wide curves, no flexibility, and you've already hit her with Envolver. She can't beat you like this - and then she changes. The fire crawls up her feet and legs, wraps around her, melds from fire into blazing golden light. Now she is surrounded by a sheath of concentrated power cutting through your reiatsu like a blade and shedding the bindings of Envolver one by one.
She's not flying as fast as she was before, but it doesn't matter, because you can no longer parry her blows. You hurl a frantic Bala and she knocks your hand aside, letting it fly off into the sky with a shout of despair. Then she brings her forehead down on your mask, knocking your head back with a cracking sound. She punches your plexus and you double over, blood and spit flying off your lips, lungs screaming. You draw Polilla to try and gain reach, but she grabs your armed wrist and wrenches it, flowing like water to be behind you, twisting your arm against your back. You open your mouth on a silent scream.
"Don't you realize what awakened my powers?" she whispers. "It was you and that boss of yours. Her power, crushing me, making me some kind of puppet, unable to move, unable to think, just letting her make me do anything she wanted, even betraying my friends. I've been made to feel like this before. Never. Again. You think you can hammer me with your aura and make me powerless?! Never! AGAIN! Now surrender!"
Your elbow creaks in protest as it is twisted beyond its limits. You think a tendon snapped. The pain is unbearable.
Or it would be, if you weren't your own guinea pig in teaching yourself medicine. You've broken each of these joints at least once before. The sound is no longer even sickening to you. The pain is an awful sting, stinging, but it is familiar. Almost a comfort. It doesn't stop you, and Tatsuki left you one free hand. You twist it behind you, lightly touching her chest, and before she can react a weakened Bala hurls her away from you.
She doesn't let go of your arm. As she flies away she tries to hold onto it, wrenching the elbow and dislocating the shoulder before finally slipping and falling from the sky. Pain comes in wave from each articulation of your arm.
You grab your own wrist to twist the entire arm back into place with High-Speed Regeneration, but before you can focus Ururu appears before you.
If Tatsuki was a demon she is a ghost, a ghost of stories, not one like you. Her pigtails are flat against her skull, her t-shirt and short heavy with rain, an abandoned child standing in the storm and uncaring of it. Raindrops shine like jewels on the steel plates covering her forearms and ankles. Lightning flashes behind you and is reflected in her eyes, a bright, lifeless glimmer.
"Slaughter Mode, Limited Release: Level One," she says in a whisper.
You feel the surge of her reiatsu, pushing back your own for but an instant, a cold breath on your skin, a predator's bloodthirsty, calculating gaze, smelling of chemicals and sterilized steel. Her pupils widen, taking up most of her irises.
You don't even try to engage her. You dive below into the mists, which form into flocks of pigeons and sparrows and swallows, into the souls of the city's mortals whispering what they lost in death, what bound them to these streets and houses. She comes down upon you like a meteor, but she is not as fast as she was in your first fight. You take another flash-step above her and wrap mists around you, and she hits only a moth-like shadow, scattering it into vapor. She pauses in the air, tracking you - in this state your reiatsu is easily felt but it blends into the mist, making it hard to tell your exact location. You gather power for a Cero…
"I reject!"
Two sparks light up in the middle of the mist, then fly away from each other, pulling light behind them and drawing a shape like an eye. The mists within disappear, a lens of pure air, reverting to the minutes before the storm, empty of even the rain. Beyond that lens, Ururu sees you with half-dead eyes.
You fire your half-baked Cero as she charges at you. Your pressure slows her down and she isn't as fast as she was before, it is a perfect shot - and then a triangle of light forms before her and your beam breaks on the shield like a wave against the rocks. The shield shatters, the beam half-scatters, but it doesn't have enough strength left to stop Ururu. She punches through it, grey power dividing around her armored fist, and then she's on you, her gauntlet slamming into your guts. In a strange moment of frozen time before the pain you experience something unlike any punch you've ever felt. Ururu is perhaps only half as strong as you remembered, but the gauntlet channels that strength, not enhancing it but turning into an intangible wave that passes through your Hierro as if it were not there. Your insides are torn by the shockwave.
It's only pain. You've felt it so many times before. Your right arm still limp at your side, you hurl a Bala at her face, pushing her back, following it with another - this time she raises her gauntlets in a block and takes it without flinching.
Is this what she's made of herself? Embraced the monster locked inside her, the one that made her almost kill innocents in her mad pursuit? The one her maker created to turn her into a weapon, instead of a girl? How can that be right?
"None of us have a choice," she says, her tone flat, the mists slowly curling up around you, rain once again breaching the window of pure air. "To stand back is to let those we care about die. Whoever started this war, all our friends are on one side. This power was not forced upon me. I asked for it."
That's when Tatsuki comes from below you, eyes mad, her sheath of light having unraveled all your Bala's bindings. Panicking, you try to parry her punch, but it was a feint; she whirls in the air, coming at your flank in a spinning kick. You hear the crack of your ribs, the wave of fire spreading across your left side, and you are hurled out of the cover of your mists, into the rain.
It feels so uncaring now. Where is its embrace? Above you distant blades clash, a fight so far beyond your strength.
Rain wraps in tiny whirlpools as you form platforms beneath your feet and steady yourself. You see the light ahead of you, move to parry it, but this time again the dart slip past your grasp and this time it is no glancing blow at your mask. It hits your chest, pierces your Hierro, and becomes a blade of light inside your skin, tearing a line of blood through your torso. It flies away as your feet slide in water. Lightning flashes closer this time, the smell of ozone tickling your nose, and its illumination casts Ururu above you as a human darkness, a hole in the sky.
Her fist impacts your jaw and her gauntlets drive her power past your Hierro again. The blow does not crack your mask nor bruise your skin - it hits the skull, fracturing your jaw.
This time there is no recovery course, no catching yourself, no air-steps. You come down limp and broken, hitting a roof at an angle and breaking the wall. Tiles screech and shatter, coming down on you like a wholly different rain. Your body stops at the far end wall of a room you can't make out. You are numb, bleary-eyed, breathing haltingly. All you can see is the blurred grey of concrete around you, and the great gash opening on the raging sky. You sputter blood and black bile onto your chin, try to lift your arm, and fail.
Three distant, rain-shrouded figures come down from these torn skies.
***
Madarame Ikkaku was the first to fall, and the last to rise again.
Shawlong and Nakeem had closed in on him at the same time, speed on one side and strength on the other. The agonized faces of Nakeem's shell turned to whimpering tendrils that bound him just long enough for Shawlong to slice him open with three great strokes. The hole in the Reapers' defenses allowed a laughing, manic Luppi to dart into close range of Matsumoto, whose shikai was best suited to ranged combat, and to overwhelm her with sheer strength. This in turn meant Grimmjow could charge Captain Hitsugaya head-on while he was winding up one of his more powerful attacks.
The master of ice hastily broke out of his charging stance to counter the attack, scrambling for a defense against the shock and surprise of the assault. That's when Luppi gave a twist of his aura and a cheerful call, and the one Arrancar everyone had forgotten appeared behind the captain.
Wonderweiss struck Hitsugaya in the back, leaving his guard wide open. Then Grimmjow took off his arm. The fortress of ice Hitsugaya had been shaping to attack the group exploded with his scream and a sound like a thousand crystal glasses shattering, ice turning to water and joining the rain again.
Yumichika, one arm broken and lacking in strength, found tendrils of doubt wriggle into his mind, poisoning it. He had no fear for his life, and yet he hesitated, unsure which ally to help, unsure if he should reveal his true power, just long enough for Shawlong and Nakeem to abandon their first prey and converge on him. Then he was never given time enough to release his power.
Hitsugaya was a genius, a wonderchild of Soul Society, with decades of experience in battle, for all that his body was a child's. Within a second of losing his arm he had sealed the wound shut with ice, keeping himself from bleeding. But the Arrancars were older still, creatures centuries his elder, and they outnumbered him within moments. The strength of his Bankai could hold back Grimmjow and Luppi, hurt them even, and now crippled he was too weak to hold on forever. When Nakeem, Shawlong and Wonderweiss came at him on all side he had not strength and speed enough left to wound three foes at once, and they opened his guard again.
The music that was in Luppi's soul was no longer a marching anthem, but a dirge, a mourning wail, and he was all too happy to play the undertaker. He spoke a command and Trepadora's many hands struck all at once from Hitsugaya's back, bringing him down in a shower of icy shards.
The child-captain fell beneath the trees, and perhaps in another life his opponents might have forgotten him, but there was no one else left. Trepadora slithered down the trees like the vines of a heartless jungle to pick up his half-conscious body and crush it in his coils. The breath was squeezed out of him, his consciousness faded, and he would have died in that grip, had it not been for another's sacrifice.
Madarame Ikkaku was the first to fall, and the last to rise. He was a man without death, one who seemed to endure any wounds, any suffering, and to always rise again.With all his companions unconscious, with the understanding that his mistake had doomed them, he laughed madly and surrendered himself to the only ending he'd ever wanted, the only way to cleanse his fault.
He unleashed his Bankai, and Grimmjow met him in single combat.
Wonderweiss had already wandered off, his one task fulfilled. Luppi let a still-alive Hitsugaya slip out of his arms, for there was now greater entertainment than his death, and Nakeem and Shawlong rose from the ground, and all watched, none making a move to aid Grimmjow, for they knew what the king desired.
That power so rare and yet so familiar stirred Yumichika out of his unconsciousness. Broken and limp against the stump of a tree, the Shinigami watched his friend fight his last fight, and wept in grief, but also in admiration. He believed he would be the only one to understand.
He was wrong. The Arrancars stood and beheld, and they remembered, and his last stand was to be written in the legends of Hueco Mundo.
***
"Oh god oh god oh god. Look at what we did to her! She's all broken and bleeding and-"
"Hime, calm down. You don't have to look at this. In fact, you should go back to the street. If we can keep the enemy in the sky you have less chance to get hurt."
"Hurt? But she can't fight anymore! She can't even move…"
"Arrancars have the ability to enter a released state which heals their wounds and heightens their combat power. The enemy should not be considered safe until we have shackled it. Where is her sword?"
Polilla? God, where is Polilla… Your hand claws at the ground, finding no purchase. Where is your sword…
"She dropped it when I pulled her in an armlock and snapped her elbow, I think."
"This is good. Miss Orihime, do you have Mister Urahara's manacles?"
"I - yes, yes, they're right here… God, this is awful. She didn't even want to fight…"
"She didn't want to surrender either, and we had to stop her from helping her allies. You did what was right. Remember your training? Focus. You didn't kill anyone. We can just take her in - you can even heal her, if you like. All that matters is that she's put out of the fight and we can go help Chad and Glasses Guy and then Ichigo if he hasn't already gotten his dumb ass killed by then."
"Okay, I have the manacles, remind me how you activate them-"
"Please hand them to me. It is not safe for you to approach the enemy. I am more resilient, and less injured than Miss Arisawa."
"A-all ri-"
Then there is silence.
Even in your half-consciousness, you can feel it. In fact you can feel it even more, with your body numb to all sensation, drifting in dark waters, leaving your mind's eye open wide to all that is beyond the material.
There is a beast at the heart of the sun, a wolf coiled inside a black star, raging and clawing at it. There has been since this battle started, a demon-god fighting in a battlefield of clouds and nascent lightning against a princess of the storm. But now at last the beast roars in triumph as its claws tear through the fiery darkness of the star, devour its heat, its power, and become a new sun, grinning with its mask of bone and shadow.
Then it opens its mouth, and draws in the storm. The wolf rules the sky, or perhaps it is a coyote, less a feral horror and more a deadly trickster; it has become the sun and so it gives orders to the tempest. The storm is overwhelmed, beaten back out of the sun's sky, her dress of rain and clouds torn to ribbons, the flashing whip of her thunder thrown back in her face… And it seems as if it will now tear at the heart of her true self to reveal the secret of lightning, the storm's greatest treasure, and steal it for himself. The demon-wolf-coyote laughs, and rips away one last curtain.
And the storm smiles. For in her cleverness she has substituted in the lightning's hiding place a pebble, a stone, an idol carved in the image of God; and now the demon is looking upon God's own face, a thing which is forbidden, and his mind is struck with wonder and awe and terror.
In that moment the clouds close in on him, embrace him with thunder and triumph, and the demon is cast down from the heavens where it dared tread.
"Ichigo!" shouts a girl's voice, you know not which.
You smile. Your gift saved her again. Your gift…
Ah…
Why are you fighting? You scold and shout at these children for fighting the Shinigami's wars, and they shrug off all your cries, become angrier at each one.
Do you fight for the Arrancars? For Aizen? For the order of Las Noches, so wild and cruel? Is this a fate you wish to see forced upon the world? No, you care for none of these things.
Do you fight against the Shinigami? To end their tyranny, to avenge the wrongs they have done to your kind? No, not in truth. You yourself have slain Hollows to save mortal souls before. You care only that they do not see you as different, that they would hunt you down like a monster, when in reality you might be willing to fight Hollows at their side - but only those who embrace their madness and hunger, not those who can be shown another way.
You fight for your freedom, and that of Cirucci, and that of your friends. Small things. Personal lives. No great design. You fight for La Marana, so that you may teach your art to all, and bring people together. You fight for the ways Cirucci taught you, art and culture and nobility and honor, that they may be spread to all the other Arrancars.
You fight for the same reasons these girls do. How blind you were, to try and rise above them. To lie to yourself and make this a war of worlds where they should just stand aside. You care no more for Las Noches than they do for Soul Society. You care for Cirucci as they do for Kurosaki, and each of them likely has their own passion, their own art they want to pursue, just as the tailor's craft is for you.
You are the same. Another day, you would like to talk about it. To make them see your way. To try and see theirs. To perhaps reconcile your difference and work for a better path.
But not today. Today your desires are in absolute opposition. And that means you must fight them with all your heart, and treat them as equals, not children. As worthy of your respect.
As worthy of your strength.
It's time to stop holding back.
Your jaw is cracked and dislocated, your right arm is a useless mess, several of your ribs are broken, and you have open wounds in your chest and back.
Your legs are fine. You stand up and blink the tears out of your eyes. Your vision is clear and lucid. Before you are only three shocked and frightened girls.
You reach into your soul and bring the screaming cohorts of your self to heel. You bring out more power than ever before, a wave of darkness that washes over your enemy. The shadows of the room twist in your image and hail you as their queen.
You grab your arm in your good hand and wrench it into place, tendons snapping back, bone relocating. You slide your lower jaw and it reconnects. Blood slides down your stainless uniform, leaving it pristine to reveal your unmarred skin. You inhale deeply, once, lungs inflating your ribcage, and all the ribs mend. You don't do anything to help your torn guts heal; they wriggle against each other like great fat worms, bubbling with new flesh before settling again.
Ururu drops the engraved steel manacles she was holding and charges at you, and you meet her with a punch that makes the entire roof quake with the shockwave of Bala. She is sent prone on her back, gasping, and you wait for the move you're expecting.
Tatsuki is already trying to reach you, and the Bala you launch at her is only meant to slow her down a few seconds, so that Orihime's dart of light reaches you first. You let it slam into your shoulder, your guard wide open but her aim lacking, and slide back to the wall. Again the dart becomes a blade slicing your skin from the inside, then fading.
You know the little missile will leap out of you and come back again later. This time you won't let it. As the barrier-blade in your skin disappears, you slam your open palm against your own shoulder, firing a point-blank Bala at yourself, then another. New waves of pain wrack your left side as your collar bones shatter. You groan and let your hand fall.
A tiny little fairy, black-clothed and winged, falls out of your grasp, shattered in its flight. You grasp your left shoulder and ram it home in its socket, high-speed regeneration mending it in a second.
"Tsubaki!" Orihime shouts with dread you did not expect. Is it a person you just broke?
No time to think about it. Tatsuki is already on you, but you simply flash-step past her, letting her fist finish destroying the wall. Tatsuki is behind you, Ururu is only now getting up, and you're alone in front of Orihime, their shield-bearer whose sword you just broke. She yelps in child-like panic and crosses her arm before her, her barrier already forming. But your reiatsu is like a combattant of its own, laughing as its dark tendrils pluck at her reiatsu, poison her strength, making her just a fraction of a second too slow to gather her defense.
It almost resembles Luppi's.
Your hand slips through the unformed center of her shield and your Bala hits her unprotected, human body. She is sent hurtling out of the same hole in the roof through which you enter. The other two are shouting, already rushing you, but Sonido takes you higher, level with Orihime's flying form, and a second Bala sends her down into the street below.
You won't have to worry about her anymore.
You are in the storm again now, and it feels like home. Only your doubts made it seem cold and distant. Lightning and Balas against the dark clouds and rain cast a chiaroscuro which only makes you more powerful. Ururu and Tatsuki reach you in the air and it's like diving into a sphere of water, their every motion slowing down a little, losing in strength. Tatsuki's aura intensifies, slicing through your reiatsu to let her move unimpaired, so she reaches you first instead of flanking you alongside Ururu. Still, she's too fast and strong for you to have any chance in close combat.
You smile to yourself. The beads of glass around your neck shine. You have found peace in resolve, in your respect for your opponents, in letting out your full power. You let your reishi platform dissolve to nothing and flow with Tatsuki's blow, gliding on the wind with ease, far more graceful in the air than she is. You use your newfound speed to fly backwards, leading her away from Ururu who still struggles against your spiritual pressure. Tatsuki's fists strike again and again and only graze you, knuckles as hard as steel drawing shallow cuts on your chin and shoulders.
Her power seems to adapt to whatever advantage you have on her. In moments, her sheathe of light protecting her from your reiatsu and your Bala Envolver will likely make her as agile in the sky as you are.
You don't give her moments. She's guided by reckless anger, which makes her miss the reason you are just dodging without striking back. The rain swirls around you, great spinning vortices leading up to your horns, a black flower blooming. Ururu finally catches up, her Hierro-bypassing fists ready to smash you to bits, and even the necklace's gift can't let you dodge the two of them at once.
It's too late. You take one flash-step past them, your motion marked by a single trail of black light, and open your arms, floating on the wind. They turn to face you and you unleash Cero.
Tatsuki's eyes widen, but the cold assessment in Ururu's own is a dreadful thing in a child. She hurls herself in front of her ally, curling up into a ball, presenting armored gauntlets and greaves together. Your Cero laughs and laughs as it hits her, the laugh you gave Unohana in your play; it shatters her armor into a million pieces and the girl falls - her reiatsu gutters out, but does not disappear. Still alive.
She saved Tatsuki. The girl looks at you, horrified at what you just did, at the turn the fight took in mere seconds. When she was charging you like a beast she seemed invincible, impervious to all your attacks. You can now see all the bruises, all the burn marks on her skin, the blood from her lips and eyebrow.
The mists of Cero Triste form into an arena around you, and the forms they take are all the formless shadows of your sea of souls. Even here, at the end, you couldn't bring yourself to use the glove and drag out all the pain a child warrior must have suffered to be brought here today.
You can't stand that horror in her eyes. The lights of your necklace fade, and gravity resumes its hold on you. You must form the air-steps again, and face her.
You bow, with honest respect.
"Fuck you," Tatsuki says, no strength in her voice.
You both come at each other in the same instant moment. You use your right hand to deflect part of her punch, weakened by her injuries. It finds your ribs again, hits them hard enough to crack them again, but too much of its strength was lost. It does not take you down. You strike at the same time, a jab at her head, your last Bala sobbing for its half-second of existence, and her skull bounces away from your hand.
She falls. You dart down and catch her body before it hits the ground. You form a stairway of reishi one step at a time, healing your cracked ribs again, holding the unconscious Tatsuki in your arms. When you reach the street, you lay her down.
Your reiatsu wanes like a seat at low tide, pulling back inside you. Your hands are shaking. Healing so many wounds, flaring so much strength, exhausted you more than the repeated Ceros and Balas did - although they played their part. You have no strength left. No drive. Nothing. You sigh and look up the street.
Orihime is still conscious, though the way she holds her chest tells you how badly you hurt her. She is in no state to fight. Instead she is leaning over Ururu, a shield of golden light shaped like an eye surrounding her.
You stagger over to her, and she looks up in fright.
"Please, I - I can't fight. Anymore. I'm just trying to heal her. I'm not… I can't do it fast enough for them to come back at you, o-okay? You don't have to worry, I'm just… Please. Let me heal her."
You look down at Ururu, the tiny girl, her arms covered in purple marks all along the spots once covered by the gauntlets. Her eyes are closed, her breathing harsh. But even now, under that gentle light, you can see these bruises slowly fading.
You nod wearily, and Orihime sighs with relief.
"C-can you… Bring me Tatsuki? So I can help her too? P-please."
You hesitate, for a moment. You think distant thoughts. Could she heal your wounds? Should you care that the enemy has a magical healer?
You have neither the willpower or time to consider these things. You just shrug and go fetch Tatsuki's unconscious body.
***
Cirucci pauses to catch her breath.
"I'm impressed," she says, and breaks out into a low, pained chuckle before she can finish her sentence. She stops almost immediately - even this subdued a laugh feels like it's tearing her chest apart. She clutches the wound in her flank, the only serious injury she had in this fight - a long, scorches cut across her torso, fading into a thin, shallow wound across the height of her face.
"That was a really neat trick you pulled off. It could almost have beaten me! Too bad I could answer it with one of my own."
Kurosaki Ichigo tries to rise, and falters. His black sword strikes the rooftop of the building she sent him crashing into, and he uses it to prop himself up - but can't do more than kneel. His blood and Cirucci's both drain with the rain, washing the entire rooftop in a widening motif of faded red.
"That amulet was a… dirty move, Arrancar," he says panting, blood dripping from his eyebrow and the many cuts in his long black coat. "Not fair at all."
"Oh please," Cirucci says, shrugging. "Your mask is exactly the same. You're not actually stronger than me, you can just spike higher for a few seconds and take your opponent by surprise. I just countered your trick with another trick, making us even. My victory was well-earned."
"Yeah?" The Shinigami chuckles too - and, just like her, immediately stops, wincing in pain. "That's cold comfort when you're about to kill me, uh?"
"Please," she says, rolling her eyes. "If you really thought I was going to kill you you wouldn't be cracking wise about it. No, on the contrary, I have no intention of harming you any further. You can barely move - so my job here is done."
"What the hell are you talking about."
Cirucci twirls the handle of her whip, sending Golondrina's disk over her shoulder, hanging at her back in a casual pose. She smirks.
"My goal was not your death, Shinigami. Only your capture. Ulquiorra!"
The last word is shouted, and a voice answers.
It is not the Cuatro's.
"I gotta hand it to ya, Ichigo," says a drawling voice up above them. Cirucci turn on her heels, Golondrina leaping back to her hand, to face a blond, straight-haired man, tapping the flat of a sword against his shoulders. "You lasted a lot longer than I would have thought. Did you enjoy your impromptu training session?"
"You asshole," Ichigo hisses, trying to push himself up on his sword again - and, again, failing and falling to his knees.
"Who in God's name are you?" Cirucci says, narrowing her eyes and falling into a combat stance.
"Now why would I tell you that, Arrancar?" the newcomer says tilting his head, an odd smile showing his upper teeth.
"You're one of the renegades." Cirucci frowns.
"Is that what they call us now?"
"I've met Kisuke Urahara, and their wizard. You-" She blinks, tilts her head. Gives one glance at Ichigo. Smirks. "Of course. You've come to save your son, haven't you - Kurosaki Isshin?"
There is a moment of dumbstruck silence.
"I'm sorry WHAT-" Ichigo shouts, eyes boggling, while the blonde bursts out laughing.
"Now that is the funniest I've heard all week. Lady, you're off by eighty years of exile and about forty pounds, not all of it muscle. Man kinda let himself go around here." His laughter dies out, turning into a chuckle, then a mean, mean smile. "Oh, Arrancar, you really don't have a clue… You're in way over your head here. You got two choices: you step away from my pupil, or I kick your teeth in."
"Come and get me, you-"
Then when the light of God comes down from the pierced heavens.
***
There is an empty man.
In emptying everything but the shell of his self, he has made himself invincible to the world, for there is nothing past that shell which anyone could hurt. And because he is empty, his vision is untroubled by the chaos of distractions which fill an ordinary man's soul and occlude their sight.
Or so the empty man believes.
His vision can reach across worlds and see the base truth of all things. He sees the chains of matter which make up everything that exists. There is nothing beyond these chains; all thoughts of things immaterial or elevated are only delusions born of the fact that others have not made themselves empty, and thus have their vision occluded by the chaos in their inner selves.
At this moment, the empty man stands in an infinite darkness on a platform of light. The darkness is alive and full of voices, but these voices fear him, and so he stands in blessed silence. His hands swipe at the air, sliding pictures from another world in front of his eyes. He watches as battles unfold, as enemies are laid low and objectives are achieved. He watches, too, as reinforcements make their move, delayed by events beyond his ken - or, rather, beyond his ability to care.
When his name is called out, he swipes away most of these visions to focus on one. There, the upstart has finally proven herself of some use. But one of the reinforcements has reached her, and she is too weak to be trusted with another battle. Besides, the primary objective has been achieved.
The empty man flicks away the picture, and slides his hands across the darkness. It opens up into the dim lights of the storm, the flash of lightning illuminating his abode.
He steps out, and all present turn to face him. The empty man feels no pride in this. It is only as it should be.
"Ulquiorra!" shouts the upstart. "You need to extract the-"
"Who the heck are you-" the half-Hollow Shinigami above them begins.
Irrelevant chatter. He ignores it. He waves his hands again, and sends out a summon none other can feel.
A shaft of golden light touches the rooftop, blessing the upstart and the incapacitated target with its holy touch. It seals them off from this world, into a fragment of another, where none may harm them until their journey is done: for this reason it is called Negacion.
"What are you doing!" the Shinigami shouts in sudden comprehension, as the young man he came to rescue is taken out of his grasp in a mere second. Understandably, he becomes angry and comes down at him, blade swinging, even though killing the empty man would avail him nothing right now - the Negacion is underway, and cannot be stopped by any power but God's.
"You droopy-eyed painted mother-"
He blocks the blond man's sword with his hand, a bored expression on his face. It is not contempt, though it looks like it; the half-Hollow was once a Shinigami captain, and is incredibly strong. The empty one believes he could crush him utterly, but such a battle would take a long time and cause him to level much of the town, which he has been ordered not to do. Instead he steps like lightning twice, first to feint, then to flank the man, and knocks him off the rooftop with a sudden wave of power.
Not enough to incapacitate or even hurt him much, just enough to stun him and be rid of him long enough to leave again.
"What are you doing? Let me go! LET ME GO!" the target says, banging fruitlessly at the walls of light around him, and finding no purchase - they are not a barrier to be broken; he exists within a shard of Hueco Mundo, and so his fists only lash out at empty air. Behind him the upstart lifts the handle of her whip and smacks him on the back of the head, sending him sprawling.
"Ulquiorra," the upstart says, standing above the boy, her voice worried. She is rising further and further into the sky now, soon to disappear into the hole of darkness from which the light reached out. The empty man deigns to look at her.
"Congratulations on your successful mission," he says. "Please deliver Kurosaki to Lord Aizen in person as soon as you arrive."
"Ulquiorra," the upstart says, eyes wide and filled with fear and anger, speaking through clenched teeth, her hands clutched into tight, white-knuckled fist. "Why is there only one Negacion?"
The empty man looks around him at the city, and then at the upstart again.
"Did you forget there were two parts to this mission? Capture Kurosaki, and break the back of the Shinigami forces in town. You have done well. Now it's time to see how far the others can get."
"You bastard!" she screams, her tension exploding into sheer rage. "Didn't you see there are more of them than we were told? You're leaving Nemo alone against their reinforcements! You're leaving all of them-"
"Your Fraccion is resourceful. I am sure she will manage. And it should make a much better test of Tesla's abilities than the pitiful humans he's been handling so far. Besides - your servant wrote such a beautiful piece about doomed last stands. I would hate to deprive her of a chance to live one for herself."
"Ulquiorra, you-" she cries out with anger enough to shake the sky.
But then she is swallowed up into the sky, and he hears her no more.
Blessed silence.
The half-Hollow is coming back already, and the empty man is of no mind to fight him. He waves his hand and enters the black passage again, shutting it behind him.
***
The park lies in ruins. Torn-down trees are scattered over wide trails of upturned soil, which rain has soaked into long rivers of mud. Constructs of ice rise to meet the sky, slowly melting. Withered plants even now turn to dust, gone into the wet earth. A lightning-struck tree burns slowly, the rain carving away at the flames.
In the middle of the devastation is the last man to add to it. Ikkaku's body lies in a crater, shattered blades sticking upright where they fell around him, many gravestones for one man.
"That guy," Grimmjow says, breathing heavily. "That guy was pretty fucking good. If he hadn't waited 'till he was half-crippled to use his full power, he'd probably have forced me to release."
Blood drips down the Sexta's body. His jacket is gone now, long shredded in the heat of battle, and there are wide gashes in his hakama. Each of his limbs and his face and torso are marked by deep cuts, and one of his eyes is half-closed - yet he still stands.
"That was a really nice show," Luppi muses, his voice wistful. "I'll make it into a song, I think."
"What shall we do now, boss?" Shawlong says, his long-clawed hand holding his own chest - the deep cut in it is surrounded by purple-blue, frostbitten flesh.
"Well, now we finish them off, obviously," Luppi says, shrugging with eight tentacles at once.
Grimmjow flinches.
"What?" Luppi adds, frowning, and the Sexta shrugs as well.
"Killing unconscious people doesn't feel right, I guess."
Luppi raises an eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"
"I've just never done it!" Grimmjow spits. "Not that I've tried to avoid it or anything. Just so happened everyone I ever killed was standing up and looking me in the face."
"Yeah, like that meant they stood a chance," Luppi says with a chuckle.
"I've killed plenty of weaklings before. In fact, when they're weak is the best time to kill enemies, so they don't get a chance to grow strong. It's just, they were still able to fight. I've never knocked someone out, gone off to fight someone else, then come back and stabbed the first guy while they were still out."
"Yes, well, I suppose we can slap them until they wake up if that makes you feel better about ruthless murder, but we have orders, and the orders are 'kill everybody.'"
"I know that!" Grimmjow snaps, unconsciously flaring his reiatsu - Luppi flinches back, eyes wide. "Fuck me, I still don't like it."
"I'm going to be honest with you, Arrancar," comes a voice at the edge of the ravaged battlefield. "Neither do I! In fact, I believe I should absolutely prevent this."
All eyes turn to the edge where some trees still stand whole, and all are silent for a moment.
"We're too late for one of them," a woman says somberly.
The Arrancars are reminded of Nnoitra, briefly, from the sheer weight of this spiritual pressure and its blood-scented tinge, but everything else about the man is different, save one thing: the absolute danger of his presence. And though the one at his side sheds not one hint of reiatsu, not one trace of her power, they know her to be the same, for the exact reason that her strength is so perfectly invisible.
The storm almost blows the hat off his head, and he slams it into place with one hand, twirling his cane in the other. The hat shadows his eyes and nose, but do not hide his smile. The woman besides him tugs on her ponytail, squeezing the water out of it, unworried by her enemies.
Urahara Kisuke and Shihoin Yoruichi step onto the battlefield.
***
You pick up Polilla from where she fell, planted tip-first into the curb, next to the river the street is turning into. Gutters overflow with rain, a handful of trees planted along the street lying broken by the winds.
You raise your head to look for Cirucci, and see the golden beam kiss the tallest building in the neighborhood. For a moment you don't understand. Then you see her rise up, hear her scream of rage over the sound of the wind, feel her reiatsu surge in anger, and then - she's gone. And so is the living void that called down the Negacion.
You blink, too stunned to react at first. He… left you behind? You look around you, frantic, but there are no other beams, you can still feel reiatsu all around the city, you're not alone - all of you have been left behind.
But you're winning, right? You can just withdraw through Descorrer…
You see a thin blond man fly away from the very rooftop Cirucci just left, and his power is crushing, a twisting of the senses making you feel vertigo; but before you have time to fear him he's already gone, either not having noticed you or not caring about you.
Okay. Okay. You're fine. You turn to where Orihime is crouching, her face strained in pain and effort, healing her friends. Should you just… Leave? Go help Tesla? Meet up with the others?
Where is Tesla? He had his own fight going, and if you managed to win it seems unlikely he'd lose, but… You try to scan the surroundings for his spiritual pressure.
Then you see the plume of fire rising above a house down the street, and hear its shockwave, feel it rattle your bones. You take a step back instinctively. There is the stroke of lightning, not from Cirucci's storm but from earth-borne source, and…
A giant man-beast, a colossal creature with the head and fur of a boar but the limbs of a man, comes sliding in the water flow from the corner of the street, electricity still crackling around his shoulders. Tesla. He turns around, sees you, and one flash-step takes him to your side - you didn't expect this speed or this reach given his size.
He's panting, burn marks across his furry chest. You can see now, up close with the eyepatch gone, that the star-like pattern of scars around his eyes was no mere cosmetic wound. One of his eyes is an empty black hole. The other stares at you with depths you can't read.
"Has the Quinta extracted the target?" he asks, deep basso voice rumbling like a forge's bellows. You nod quickly. "We need to leave, then. I don't think we can handle-"
Then you see his opponent.
He's a giant too, though a lesser one, human in his proportions - if only barely. Taut muscles ripple beneath his skin, pull his shirt tight around him. His hair is pulled back against his scalp, the front of it shaved and the back half pulled into a tight, thin braid, contrasting with his luxurious moustache. His thin glasses are covered in rain, and he awkwardly wipes them as he walks towards you.
The gesture is awkward because he is carrying an unconscious body on each shoulder: the white-clothed man and the dark-skinned giant.
Tsukashibi Tessai, former Captain of the Kido Corps of Soul Society. The man who almost captured you the last time you were on a living world mission. His power burns brighter than any of the flashes of lightning above; a whispering flame of colors not known to this world calls to you from within his souls, tempts you with promises of forbidden secrets.
"Orihime," Tessai says sharply. "Can you heal Uryuu and Chad?"
The long-haired girl looks up at him, eyes wide, surprised of his arrival.
"I-I can stabilize them, make sure they don't get worse, but I'm already at my limits…"
"That will be fine," he says, and lays down the bodies next to Tatsuki and Ururu.
You breathe again. You hadn't realized you had stopped.
"Nemo," Tesla says, urgently, and you turn on your heels, slice apart the threads of reality to open the Garganta…
Five square pillars come down from the sky, and you must duck back to avoid them, stepping away from the portal; they fall in perfect alignment, locking the Garganta.
You turn back, heart pumping, all too aware of your exhaustion.
"I will never understand Ururu's fascination for you," Tessai says, slowly and deliberately walking up the street towards you. Part of you notices that his feet do not break the surface of the water, but walk upon it. "Having met you only once, she believed you had a kindness inside you, and could be turned to good. Yet both times you have come to our town, you have left her broken, in pain. Do you enjoy this, Arrancar?"
You swallow harshly. Tesla stands up straight next to you, ham-like fists clutched tight.
"I will make sure now to remove the source of that sick fascination," Tessai says, cracking his knuckles, "that you may not hurt her again." He pauses. Distant lightning is reflected in his glasses, making them shine a cold white. "Unless, that is, you surrender immediately."
Tesla turns his one good eye to you, and you look up at him, anxiety twisting your gut.
Cirucci is gone. Everyone else is still fighting. You do not know if there is any extraction to be hoping for. You do not know if your allies are in reach.
But you made a commitment to yourself when you defeated these three girls.
There is no surrender. You must survive and escape.
[ ] Stand your ground. You cannot hope to defeat a Captain-class opponent, but you and Tesla might be able to hold him off long enough for help to arrive - whether that is Grimmjow winning his battle, Cirucci coming back the long way, or Ulquiorra stepping in.
-[ ] Fight. With several incapacitated allies in the way and surrounded by human dwellings, Tessai will not be able to deploy his most destructive magic. Flank him with Tesla. Release if you have to.
-[ ] Bluff. You wouldn't kill an opponent who surrendered, but Tessai doesn't know that. He believes you to be some monster, and your lies are flawless. Take Orihime hostage, and leverage it into an escape.
[ ] Run for it. You cannot hope to put enough distance between you and Tessai to escape through Garganta alone, and you can't rely on any outside help, unless you go and get it yourself.
-[ ] Join up with Grimmjow's group. They are very far from you, but also much stronger. Even if enemy reinforcements have also reached them, they can endure long enough to work out a collective escape. Hopefully you can dodge Tessai's binding spells long enough to get there.
-[ ] Find Ilforte Grantz. He is much closer than Grimmjow. But he's also alone, fighting a duel - if he has won by the time you arrive, three Fraccions against Tessai might be enough to actually force the Shinigami back. If he has lost, stumbling on a second Shinigami would be your doom.
There is a moratorium of two hours on this vote. Discuss your options. Also the actual update if you like
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- Location
- Britain
[X] Run for it. You cannot hope to put enough distance between you and Tessai to escape through Garganta alone, and you can't rely on any outside help, unless you go and get it yourself.
-[X] Find Ilforte Grantz. He is much closer than Grimmjow. But he's also alone, fighting a duel - if he has won by the time you arrive, three Fraccions against Tessai might be enough to actually force the Shinigami back. If he has lost, stumbling on a second Shinigami would be your doom.
A Ford Fiesta isn't the most dignified of getaway vehicles, but when needs must...
EDIT: OMI I VOTED BEFORE YOU PUT THE MORATORIUM IN PLACE IT COUNTS >:C
-[X] Find Ilforte Grantz. He is much closer than Grimmjow. But he's also alone, fighting a duel - if he has won by the time you arrive, three Fraccions against Tessai might be enough to actually force the Shinigami back. If he has lost, stumbling on a second Shinigami would be your doom.
A Ford Fiesta isn't the most dignified of getaway vehicles, but when needs must...
EDIT: OMI I VOTED BEFORE YOU PUT THE MORATORIUM IN PLACE IT COUNTS >:C
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Jesus Lord Storm, could you at least pretend to not be posting in less time than it physically takes to read the update
Now you get to wait out the discussion period with everyone else!
- Location
- Britain
Jesus Lord Storm, could you at least pretend to not be posting in less time than it physically takes to read the update
Now you get to wait out the discussion period with everyone else!
The correct address is 'Your Highness, Lady Storm', thank you very much. I'm certainly not the lord of Jesus.
TheLurker
Random Omnipotent Lazy-As-Fuck Being
- Location
- The space beyond the stars
Hm...with our speed crippled, I don't think we have a chance in hell of reaching Grimmjow.
On the other hand...I also don't think Ilforte can beat rukia.
Ironically our best bet seems to be bluffing this out, but that ruins our future prospects.
On the other hand...I also don't think Ilforte can beat rukia.
Ironically our best bet seems to be bluffing this out, but that ruins our future prospects.
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Hahaha, congratulations Ulq, for successfully risking starting an actual blood feud out of petty egoism.
Then again, when you get down to it, the Arrancars were never meant to actually win
Shame we don't actually have the option to surrender here. though given what we know, there's no reason to expect us to not be Accidentallied in Captivity anyway. Hostage exchange be damned.
But running away is a good way to actually be "lost, presumed killed in the crossfire"
Then again, when you get down to it, the Arrancars were never meant to actually win
Shame we don't actually have the option to surrender here. though given what we know, there's no reason to expect us to not be Accidentallied in Captivity anyway. Hostage exchange be damned.
But running away is a good way to actually be "lost, presumed killed in the crossfire"
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The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
Not sure running for it will work. Especially given the existence of a number of unknown and monstrously powerful newcomers on the other side, and that both we and Tesla are exhausted with him already having popped his Res and thus used up his free heal.
At the same time, fighting probably ends poorly for us and locks us into powerleveling Resurreccion if we want it to still have enough narrative significance to be useful when we inevitably have to pop it during the invasion of Hueco Mundo. Which is an XP commitment I can't guarantee the thread will make.
Thus, by elimination, we're left with bluffing our way out. Which honestly doesn't give us a much better chance, but at least it's something we're still capable of, and in the event that it fails it at least might so so in the narratively interesting way of the other side realizing we aren't willing to murder the helpless rather than the less interesting failure state of getting beaten into the ground that the other options present.
At the same time, fighting probably ends poorly for us and locks us into powerleveling Resurreccion if we want it to still have enough narrative significance to be useful when we inevitably have to pop it during the invasion of Hueco Mundo. Which is an XP commitment I can't guarantee the thread will make.
Thus, by elimination, we're left with bluffing our way out. Which honestly doesn't give us a much better chance, but at least it's something we're still capable of, and in the event that it fails it at least might so so in the narratively interesting way of the other side realizing we aren't willing to murder the helpless rather than the less interesting failure state of getting beaten into the ground that the other options present.
- Location
- London, England
Huh. So that's what taking the 'annoy Ulquiorra' actions ended up doing. Cool.
- Location
- Here & There
Well, things have gone south, again.
The empty man is a petty one.
- Location
- ⇙
Man, for someone who's supposed to be above all these useless emotions Ulquiorra sure is a petty jerk. Glad to see that Cirucci made it out mostly intact, despite Ichigo's surprise power up. That Ikkaku died is sad, but dying fighting is exactly how he would have wanted to go.
Not really sure what to do here. All options have major downsides, but could potentially work out. It's bad that Tesla already released, since that means he won't get a free heal for this anymore.
Not really sure what to do here. All options have major downsides, but could potentially work out. It's bad that Tesla already released, since that means he won't get a free heal for this anymore.
[jk] Surrender immediately
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Real good question to ask here is.
Where the fuck was he earlier?
Talks about how we're ruining everything, but so far, literally in every showing, he only shows up after she's hurt.
Then he pulls out this big spell formation out?
Sounds like he was more invested in winning a war than giving a damn here, if he had time to set all this up, he's had time to intervene sooner. Awfully rich of him to wait until the fighting is almost over and then act all righteous and indignant when he could have stepped in sooner and limited the damage.
For all that you're made up of soul eating monsters, at least you're not conscripting kids, teaching them to fight and kill, and then relying on them to be the first wave to battle. He doesn't get to claim to be the good guy here under the circumstances.
So, stand our ground. If we want to be cheeky, surrender to the Ichigo Crew's custody. Because at least they're not in this to count coup or take heads.
Where the fuck was he earlier?
Talks about how we're ruining everything, but so far, literally in every showing, he only shows up after she's hurt.
Then he pulls out this big spell formation out?
Sounds like he was more invested in winning a war than giving a damn here, if he had time to set all this up, he's had time to intervene sooner. Awfully rich of him to wait until the fighting is almost over and then act all righteous and indignant when he could have stepped in sooner and limited the damage.
For all that you're made up of soul eating monsters, at least you're not conscripting kids, teaching them to fight and kill, and then relying on them to be the first wave to battle. He doesn't get to claim to be the good guy here under the circumstances.
So, stand our ground. If we want to be cheeky, surrender to the Ichigo Crew's custody. Because at least they're not in this to count coup or take heads.
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- Location
- PA
...Soo. We won the first round. Tessai is here now, and we're probably not going to get to fight him and win...
Running for it? Could work. We'd probably sacrifice Tesla assuming we can even get away in time though...
Illforte...Do I think Grantz is a popsicle, because that's what this comes down to. I...Don't like his odds, frankly.
Fight?...Might. MIGHT. Work. If only because...Well I'm not talking about that for a reason. I think it MIGHT work.
Bluff...I dunno. I actually DON'T like this option, since if we get seen through, and Tessai looks like he might just press the issue- then we'll be captured AND non sympathetic.
As for the others. Can Grimmjow beat his foes? Perrrrhaps. I think that was enough of a stomp that he'll at least be able to retreat, assuming Soul Society doesn't send further reinforcements, AND Nemo&Tesla get out alive...It might be close but I'm not concerned about the Sexta.
So. Nemo&Tesla.
Bluff. Best option for getting both out. Of course if it fails I imagine we'll be in for bad times like ending up on Urahara's tables.
Fight...I think I know what reinforcements could be called. I can garuntee that if we go this route we can expect to see things escalate, whatever happens.
...I'm going in circles. lemme just highlight my visably doing so and stop here.
Running for it? Could work. We'd probably sacrifice Tesla assuming we can even get away in time though...
Illforte...Do I think Grantz is a popsicle, because that's what this comes down to. I...Don't like his odds, frankly.
Fight?...Might. MIGHT. Work. If only because...Well I'm not talking about that for a reason. I think it MIGHT work.
Bluff...I dunno. I actually DON'T like this option, since if we get seen through, and Tessai looks like he might just press the issue- then we'll be captured AND non sympathetic.
As for the others. Can Grimmjow beat his foes? Perrrrhaps. I think that was enough of a stomp that he'll at least be able to retreat, assuming Soul Society doesn't send further reinforcements, AND Nemo&Tesla get out alive...It might be close but I'm not concerned about the Sexta.
So. Nemo&Tesla.
Bluff. Best option for getting both out. Of course if it fails I imagine we'll be in for bad times like ending up on Urahara's tables.
Fight...I think I know what reinforcements could be called. I can garuntee that if we go this route we can expect to see things escalate, whatever happens.
...I'm going in circles. lemme just highlight my visably doing so and stop here.