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Now You Feel Like Number None [Bleach Arrancar Quest]

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Andres110 said:
"Predator on the verge of death, close to its last breath." Fuck, that doesn't sound good for Grimmjow. (Also good job on an acoustic cover. Sounds closer to Spanish guitar than normal version, which jives stronger with the arrancars' Spanish theme.)
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Actually, given the context of the song and the last two updates, I think we're going to be seeing the Yammy fight next. So you can breathe easy about Grimmjow for right now. That said, feel free to send all your worry to Orihime, Tatsuki, Ururu, and anyone who might intercede in that fight, because they're going to need it
 
Actually, if Rules of Nature was playing around Grimmjow, I wouldn't be afraid of all.

Because that is clearly a Grimmjow theme, not a Zommari one, and if Grimmjow is fighting that means he hasn't lost yet which means he's winning.
 
Andres110 said:
The music before the last update belonged to the guy who died after he was killed through decapitation.
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yeah but it was also ride of the valkyrie, the choosers of the slain. It's basically the anthom to a warrior's death. Rules of Nature on the other hand is a buttrock power ballod about a hunt that could go any which way. So regardless of who is who in this situation it's not a clear indecation of what's going to happen.
 
NSMS said:
Nemo's is obvious, to my mind:
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Not Sealed Vessel(The first part, at least), Pure Vessel (admittedly, that one may not fit quite as well) or Daughter of Hallownest (We're basically Hornet in a Vessel cloak with added void powers-some people might prefer the regular Hornet theme though.)?

There are plenty of components to the Hollow Knight soundtrack that fit better or are more exciting. The Radiance's theme is quite forgettable by comparison, even if we are a moth.
 
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I'd give her hornet's theme, honestly. Despite her aesthetics, her entire story arc is being a person with a gender and hobbies and a favorite flavor and stuff, rather than an entity defined by not having any sort of heart to falter, voice to cry suffering, or will to break.
 
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chocolote12 said:
I'd give her hornet's theme, honestly. Despite her aesthetics, her entire story arc is being a person with a gender and hobbies and a favorite flavor and stuff, rather than an entity defined by not having any sort of heart to falter, voice to cry suffering, or will to break.
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I don't think Nemo's story arc is about having a gender.
 
chocolote12 said:
I'd give her hornet's theme, honestly. Despite her aesthetics and original mannerisms, her entire story arc is being a person with a gender and hobbies and a favorite flavor and stuff, rather than an entity defined by not having any sort of voice to cry out, or will to break.
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.... How about Truth, Beauty, and Hatred?

Let's take Aizen for the Pale King (He's really more of a Radiance in the story, but the metaphor matches up perfectly for the purposes of our creation. Even so, if we take the theory below into account, he doesn't need to shift roles from Pale King to Radiance for reasons outlined in the linked lore video) He creates us, a Vessel, and then throws us into the Abyss because we're not pure (In-story, not 'interesting' or powerful). What results is a bitter, lonely arrancar with appalling, terrible manners, who is so pathetically weak by the standards of our kind that we almost die to a Gillian, of all things. Eventually, we meet up with a girl and somehow impress them with having completed a trivial task, thus obtaining a devoted girlfriend.

Assuming a most certainly overanalyzed and noncanon intensively scrutinized and well thought out theory is correct, who does this match up to the most?

Face it: We're not Hornet. We're Zote.
 
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Lair of the White Worm, III. The New Prometheus
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    • Lair of the White Worm, III. The New Prometheus

    With special thanks to @EarthScorpion, who lent me his dread powers on making this update more, well, you'll see.


    Choking dust swirled in the air. Far above rays of light painted the dust a dull grey. Down here in the deeps, it was gloomy.

    "Where is everyone!" shouted the child, frantic and wild-eyed. She coughed, trying to wrap her tattered clothes over her mouth and nose.

    Her bulky friend groaned, rubbing his enormous mask as dust and pebble kept falling onto it.

    "Mistress Nell!" the spindly Pesce said, jumping from the ground and hurrying to her. "Are you all right?"

    "Nell is fine!" the child said petulantly. "Where is errybody!"

    "Separated," Chichimaru says. He dusted off his coat irritably, and peered through the dim space. "We appear to have fallen to a lower floor in the commotion."

    There was nothing of note to the place they had ended up in, save for the damage. It was another featureless corridor stretching away into darkness. The impacts of detonations up above still reverberated through the wall.

    Dondochaka leaned down, helping Nell stand up; the little girl clutched his arm and climbed on top of it, curling up inside his elbow.

    "This place scares Nell…" she muttered.

    "It'll all be fine!" Pesche assured, boldly stepping forward next to Chichimaru. "We will find the Shinigami again and-"

    Chichimaru raised his arm, and all fell quiet. It wasn't his gesture that had silenced them, though.

    It felt like crawling. Like a blanket of live things, squirming and moist, unfurling over the corridor. It made the hair stand on the skin and choked the throat. The dust sunk down, hovering near the surfaces like bluebottles around a corpse.

    Then came a chuckle.

    "Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly."

    The voice was smooth, cheerful almost; in fact it was disturbing precisely because of this, because of edge of manic enthusiasm to it, more than simply arrogance.

    The man stepped into the flickering light of a glass-orb. And he wasn't well. It was clear to the eye that there was something rotten in his mind. His pink hair fell in unkempt locks around his face. His eyes were wide and merry, his smile empty. He had hazelnut eyes but they were a shade too close to yellow, the pupils too wide, thin red veins too apparent in the white. His white uniform fit badly on his slender frame, like the clothes of a man who had put on too much weight and then lost it all - and then some. There was just a whiff of stale sweat; the smell of a man who hadn't washed for too long. Though the long, curved scabbard at his waist was ornate, the knot in his sash was sloppy, even clumsy.

    As if this man, this Arrancar, had nearly forgotten to take his sword along with him. Madness.

    "Szayel," Pesche whispered. He couldn't still the trembling in his fingers.

    "Indeed," the man said, his waist jerking into something like a bow, "it is I; Szayel Apollo-Grantz, Octava Esp-"

    He cut off mid-sentence, his smile freezing and his eyes widening, staring past Chichimaru and Pesche, at Dondochaka - no; at his arm, even as the bulky Arrancar stepped back and cradled Nell protectively.

    "...Nelliel?" Szayel asked dumbstruck. "What are you… but… this means you are…" he rambled, looking from her to Pesche, then to Dondochaka - and then, as he looked at Chichimaru, blinked in surprise. "Who are you?"

    "Nell," the Youngest Brother said nervously, "you need to get out of here. Find the humans if you can; Pesche, Dondochaka…"

    Before he'd even finished his sentence Pesche fell into a combat stance. The gesture of a brave, doomed man. The crawling reiatsu was now so thick everyone knew how outmatched he was.

    "Shouldn't I stay with Nell to keep her safe?" Dondochaka asked, eyeing Szayel, fists balled with impotent rage.

    Chichimaru was not given a chance to answer. Szayel's smile widened further than human lips should curl, his pupils narrowing to two black pins.

    "Wonderful," he whispered, then shouted: "Marvelous! Yes, all these setbacks are finally paying off! Did you know I have always wanted to study the process through which you'd transformed? But Nnoitra wouldn't have it! Now, now you walk right into my hands…"

    "Nell, run!" Chichimaru shouted. His hand fell to his sword, but before he could draw Szayel was upon him with the detonation of a flash-step. Up close the stench of stale sweat was overpowering. Szayel's smile spread still wider and he reached out with too-thin fingers, the skin of his arm bulging unseemly-

    His hand slammed into a golden shield. He blinked, tilting his head as he slowly withdrew his hand. On the other side of the barrier, Chichimaru looked no less shocked.

    "What?" they both said at the same time.

    "Slaughter Mode Partial Release," a calm voice drifted from above. "Level Two of Three."

    Szayel's head snapped up at the bright comet headed his way, and he dashed back with another flash-step. The shooting star hit the ground a mere yard away from him and the impact of her fall exploded outwards in a burst of wind, smoke and stone. There were cries from Nell and her crew as the radiant shield protected them from being tossed away like so much straw.

    Szayel had dodged the blow, but he could not dodge the shockwave. He yelped as the rolling cloud buffeted him, blinding him and tearing gashes in his skin - and the ground broke up underneath him before he could find his footing, sending him tumbling into the depths.

    "All of you," shouted another girl's voice, "get away from here! This isn't safe!"

    Szayel spat and sputtered, gravel in his mouth, and managed to roll in the air and land on his feet in the vast room below; his yellow-tinged eyes looked up, gleaming in the dark.

    "Humans…?" he said to himself. "How did they get past the last MP models-"

    Another shooting star streaked out of the smoke; a burning aura of golden reiatsu shrouding a short girl with spikes of black hair swaying in the blast-wind.

    "We punched our way through!" she screamed.

    Her fist blazed like fire as she hit with all the strength of her fall, but Szayel's smile turned to a grimace of disgust and he raised his hand, hitting her wrist with his palm and deflecting the blow. Undaunted, Tatsuki finally touched the ground and immediately launched herself up in a knee-strike. With a contemptuous sneer, Szayel met the joint with another palm, blocking her advance.

    "Seriously?" Tatsuki barked, more offended than concerned, taking a step back only to immediately lash out with another punch. This time she hit nothing; Szayel vanished in a blur of motion and reappeared behind her, joining his fingers into a knife-stance and thrusting at her exposed back.

    "I am an Espada, you dull-"

    He hit her and she faded into thin air; with no resistance to his blow he stumbled forward, off-balance and confused, as the hissing sound of Shunpo manifested behind him. Tatsuki's open palm hit him in the flank, and with no solid grounding the Octavo was knocked into the air, retching and flailing. He barely managed to turn his flight into a slide and stand up. A long-haired child with cold dead eyes landed before him, her forearms and legs clad in enormous steel plates that jarred disturbingly with her black tracksuit and cat-adorned backpack.

    "You don't interest me!" the scientist shouted, outraged, as he moved into a flash-step before the girl could hit him. But her eyes tracked him flawlessly, and she was already rushing towards him as his step ended. Already furious, Szayel immediately flash-stepped away again…

    And his back hit a golden barrier, stopping him dead.

    The girl was barreling towards him like a cannonball, and the best he could do was raise his arms, focusing all his strength in his Hierro before her gauntlet struck him.

    The front plates covering Ururu's knuckles met Szayel's forearm, slamming into his Hierro. A fraction of a second later the fist behind it struck at the plate, sending out a second wave that spread through his arm, past his iron skin as if it were not there. The Octavo heard the sickening crunch of his own breaking bones before he felt the pain. The shield behind him split in half, and the shockwave sent him tumbling away.

    Something else broke as he bounced like a child's tossed ball. He came to a rest on the dusty ground at the end of a trail of dull red. Gasping for breath, eyes like needle-points, Szayel lay limp, his unwashed hair veiling his face.

    "End release," Ururu said in a flat voice, her wide pupils staring at the prone Arrancar - and quickly resolving back to normal size. She blinked, pushing a stray lock of jet-black hair behind her ear. "Is everyone all right?"

    A girl with bright ginger hair landed softly behind the other two, her eyes firm and resolved, dots of light dancing around her head like a saint's halo. Four heads were visible high above, peering down through the hole in the vaulted arched ceiling.

    "Woo!" Peche jeered. "Science that!"

    "Dondochaka approves of beating up this man we certainly don't know!" Dondochaka added.

    "Go get 'im, Tatsururuhime!" Nell shouted cheerfully.

    "...is that a group nickname," Tatsuki asked with a frown, "or does she just not remember our- heads up, everyone."

    Wheezing and spitting blood, Szayel was nonetheless rising. Nell was completely gone from his attention; his wide eyes were fixed unblinking on the three human girls.

    "Faaaa… scinating," he said in two hissing, raspy breaths. His eyes stared out a thousand yards from behind his veil of hair. His broken arms hung limply in front of him and he was slumped forwards, as if he could not bear their weight. "Humans. Who can hurt me?"

    The grandeur of the place in which they now stood only made him look more pitiful. This toneless, disheveled, crippled man stood under a wide and shadowed dome, its arches connected by many rafters holding up the corridors above. Eight tunnels shot out from the walls like a compass, pointing to further depths.

    Still, Tatsuki eyed him warily and sidled over to cover Orihime.

    "Hardened body," she said with a sneer, "huge speed, great strength, and absolutely no technique whatsoever. What a pushover."

    "Nell and her family," Orihime called out, looking up at the four pair of eyes staring from the hole in the ceiling, "I'm sure this'll be really cool but please step back and go find someplace safe!"

    "But Nell wants to waaaatch!" the child said, just as Dondochaka pulled her back from nearly falling down the hole.

    "We are going," Chichimaru said, and the other two adults nodded firmly.

    "No," Szayel said, his voice as dead as Ururu's had been a moment before. His two arms hung useless before him, fingers bent all sorts of ways. He didn't seem to care. "No one. Is going. Anywhere."

    "On my mark," Tatsuki said, and Orihime gave her a sharp nod.

    "NO ONE LEAVES!" Szayel screamed, his face twisting horribly, veins pulsing horribly as if moved not by a heartbeat but by something squirming within the bloodstream, straining to break through. His mouth wide open he howled, and a stream of pink light emerged, lighting up the cave. The air squirmed.

    "Now!" Tatsuki said, dashing towards the beam. Orihime threw her hands up in a triangle shape, the empty corner between them pointed at Tatsuki, and three dots of light closed in on her, forming another golden shield. The Cero split before it, its destructive energy scoring the ground on each side of Orihime and Ururu, doing no harm. The air screamed as it burned around the girls. Tatsuki moved forward with the shield, racing into the heart of the Cero, and in the moment it died and Szayel inhaled sharply, the shield dissolved.

    The Espada blinked in surprise as the girl stepped an inch from him, and she punched him in the face so hard his empty spectacle frames shattered. There was no follow-up blow; instead Tatsuki pulled at his waist and leaped back towards her friends… holding Szayel's sword and scabbard in her hand.

    Swaying on his feet like a reed in the wind, Szayel blinked rapidly and looked at the girls again. All the blood vessels in his left eye had burst, painting it scarlet. A crimson tear trickled down his cheek.

    "What… what?"

    Tatsuki held the sheathed sword forward, glowering.

    "Without your sword, you can't turn into a monster, right? And you're already wrecked. Just give up." She dangled the weapon in front of him. "We don't care about you. Tell us where our friend Ichigo is, and-"

    She fell silent.

    The madman's eyes shone like a wolf's in the dark, and he was smiling again, smiling wider and wider, his head twitching, tick-tock from side to side, tilting down on his neck as he swung his shoulders, broken arms swaying gently. There were things moving in his throat, new veins pulsing across his face, his jacket bulging oddly. Tatsuki lowered the sword, and took a step back.

    "Yes. Yes-yes," Szayel said to nobody. "Fantastic. I thought humans were useless. Wrong! So wrong. You are the opportunity! The test. The. Whetstone. Honing edge."

    Orihime smiled awkwardly. The air squirmed against her skin. There was another smell from the madman now. Not stale sweat. Not blood, either, for all that he was bleeding. Something else.

    "Are you… all right, mister?"

    "Yes!" the man said breathlessly, his words falling over themselves as they crawled around a bloated, bitten tongue. "Perfect! Release the cloned Fraccions, force them fight for a few minutes, collect and study the data, yes, countermeasures, mimicking these powers in the next models, yes, I-" He paused, blinking rapidly again. His head tilted further on his neck, bending like a hanged man's. "Right. No lab anymore. No clones left. No measuring equipment. Shame. Shame-shame-shame."

    "Hey, dude," Tatsuki says, furrowing her brow. "I asked you a question."

    "But I don't need any of that, do I?," Szayel said with a wide grin. "I can do it all myself. I used to be a fool who believed he had achieved 'perfection.' That he no longer needed to grow and advance. I was wrong. I was so wrong. Perfection… is a process. It is an endless pursuit, and its goal is never reached. It is only a lodestar that guides us on the endless path. It is about the journey, not the destination."

    Tatsuki's eyes flicked to Ururu, filling with concern. "He can't transform without his sword, you're sure?"

    The man looked up to the dome, his eyes filling with beatific ecstasy.

    "Sip at the well of eternity, La Lujuria Dolorosa."

    It was wrong.

    That was the first thought that filled the girls' hearts, their guts, unbidden: that whatever was happening before their eyes should not be. The surge of reiatsu that pulsed out of the man's body was colorless but it smelled of carrion and felt like maggots writhing under their skin. It grabbed the stomach and twisted it into a knot, it dried the throat and make the body itch.

    The sword in Tatsuki's hand broke down, scabbard and blade and hilt all, melting down into disgusting sludge, and she yelped and stepped back, swatting it off her hand as it dissolved into a puddle on the ground. The slime they left on her fingers burned. At the same time, Szayel's body was shaken by a terrible convulsion; his back and shoulders rolled and bloated, his head lurched forward, his eyes bulged out of his face… and he exploded. He split at the seams like an overinflated balloon, the entire back of his body flying away as shreds of skin - but no bones, no muscles, all of that had been hollowed out and left empty.

    Instead there were worms. Millions of them. A tide of worms erupting out of the body in which they had been squeezed for so long and washing over the crossroad rooms. A wall of worms, toppling forwards, falling from the air like a squishy hail. Slithering. Squelching.

    Orihime acted on instinct; she squealed and raised her shield over her and Ururu, not even thinking of any real harm the worms might do, merely overcome with disgust. Tatsuki dashed to the cover of the radiant triangle - but she was not quite fast enough. First one, then two more icy, biting wires stabbed into her skin. She slid down under the shield as it closed up in a pyramid, and immediately screamed in pain, her left hand seized with spasms.

    The worms had burrowed into the skin. She could feel them, feel each little cold tooth as it bit down; swallowed; moved on to bite again. Three pockmarks dotted Tatsuki's arm now, ashen-grey. Black veins spread out from them under her horrified eyes. She couldn't feel anything apart from the pain anymore. Her fingers weren't responding. Then her hand began to move of its own volition, fingers clenched into a claw and raising towards her throat. Something bulged under the skin of her index finger.

    Ururu stared in mute horror, her gauntleted fists clasped to her mouth, not knowing what to do.

    "Hold on, hold on," Orihime shouted in panic, "I'll revert them, hold your arm still…"

    "No…" Tatsuki whispered through clenched teeth, grabbing her left arm in her right hand, holding it at bay. Sweat beaded on her forehead, warm compared to the icy pain from her arm. "No. Screw this!"

    And with her shout, came fire. White-gold flames sparked to life around both her arms with a sizzling sound. The black veins stopped their growth. Tatsuki gasped as sensation came back to her arm. It was like pins-and-needles but ten thousand times worse, but the pain was a sign she was winning! She clutched her arm tighter, blinking sweat from her eyes, and from the three pockmarks emerged three rays of golden flame like volcanos in her flesh. The light was clean and pure and everything these squalid worms were not. Something squealed when the worms turned to cinder, and then nothing. Tatsuki exhaled sharply, lowering her hands, wreathed in crackling coronas.

    Outside the pyramid-shield, millions of worms crawled up and down in waves, creeping up to the rafters and stone arches, throwing themselves at the barrier and sliding down, congregating into slick tumorous bulbs. The smell was everywhere - wet meat, rotting fish, the sickly sweet scent of corruption. Orihime had turned ghost pale, and was trembling like a leaf. But they were, it seemed, safe.

    "Are you… okay?" Ururu asked.

    "Planting stuff in my body to make me hurt my friends was what the first Hollow I ever met did," she said coldly. "It's never gonna work again."

    Orihime gave her a quiet look, wide-eyed and full of something distant and dream-like, something like admiration and yet not quite. Looking around nervously, she forced herself to smile with almost-convincing cheer, and raised her hand.

    "Invincible Tatsuki!" she shouted, and waggled her hand. Tatsuki looked at her in confusion.

    "Hime, I'm not high-fiving you. My arms are on fire."

    "That's no excuse to leave a girl hanging!"

    "'Hime."

    "Fiiiine." It took Orihime five more seconds to resign herself to lowering her arm.

    "Look," Ururu said, pointing to the outside.

    And look they did. The worms were now flowing inwards, slithering towards each other, a massive pillar of pallid, boneless maggot-life rising like a skeletal hand from the ground. Tatsuki glanced down at her arms, then to Ururu, who nodded sharply.

    "Hime, lift the shield."

    "Are you sure?" the taller girl asked, biting her lip. Tatsuki turned to her, smiled, and raised her thumb. Faced with such determination, Orihime could but take a breath, and spread out her hands, lifting one of the pyramid's sides.

    Tatsuki shouted a kiai, the white-gold flames on her arm flaring to new volcanic heights. She took one step out, and slammed her palms together with a deafening clap. Fire roared out in a resounding wave. The pillar of worms bent down as if it thought to crush her into the ground, but it never even reached her. The fiery blast engulfed it and thousands of worms turned to ashes in the first instant. Then more and more and more as the underlayers burnt to a crisp, with a smell far, far too much like roasting meat, each one screaming with a tiny voice. The oily column sagged, and collapsed.

    There were still countless maggots flowing like streams across the room, gathering into unseemly constructs, each trying to find an angle to drop onto the girls. But behind Tatsuki, Ururu opened her arms, and a dozen of prayer-strips, artfully adorned with Tessai's best calligraphy, flew out from her backpack. They danced in the air like a swarm of butterflies or moths, forming six rings that rotated faster and faster as blue lights sparked inside them. Ururu shivered as Tessai's presence surrounded her, like the scent of a familiar blanket.

    "Assisted Hado, Repeat Mode: Byakurai."

    Blue lightning flashed from the rings, again and again, hitting the maggot clusters and consuming them with a cacophony of squeals and the sizzling of burning flesh. Where the lightning hit the ground it radiated out in erratic pattern, tracking scattered worms and turning them to cinder as they writhed. Over and over the azure bolts streaked, fending off the tide, until it ran: the worms fled, burrowing into the ground, into the stone walls, into the arched ceiling. They even burrowed even into the air itself, their eyeless heads wriggling holes into nothing, disappearing into black cracks of reality that sealed shut after them.

    In a moment, the girls were alone. Tatsuki sighed and shook her arms, blowing away the smoke that had lingered after she'd expended her flames. For the first time, she had time to think and the smell registered. She gagged, forcing down the nausea that took the chance to creep up on her. Orihime looked similarly ill.

    "There are still a large number of worms," Ururu said calmly, clasping her hands together. The spinning rings slowed down and scattered and the prayer-strips returned to her backpack. "We should be wary that they may attack us again. Orihime, please maintain your shield."

    "Yeah…" Tatsuki said, rubbing her hair. Her left hand barely hurt anymore; the fire had closed the puncture wounds as it had flared, leaving only three pink dots on her skin. "Turning into a gazillion body-snatching worms? That's a really nasty power. Guess that's why he was an Espada even if he was a wimp."

    "Oh!" Orihime said, clasping her hands. "I get it! That's why he's only number eight!"

    "Hime?" Tatsuki asked, puzzled, turning to her friend. The ginger smiled, very proud of herself.

    "All the Arrancars are always shouting about their 'iron skin!' Turning into tiny worms that have to break the skin to take you over may be scary to us, but it'd be really useless against other Arrancars! That's why he's so low in the Espada! I'm honestly surprised he's even number eight…"

    Tatsuki blinked as she processed this - then glanced at Ururu, who returned her a very serious look. They both nodded.

    "This isn't his real power-" Tatsuki started, and the ground broke up underneath her.

    A pale hand snapped at her ankle like a rabid dog, but she was already moving, leaping back to Orihime and falling into a defensive stance. Ururu raised her gauntlets, slamming them together. Cracks spread out of the ground as the hand lashed out blindly, then took hold of the broken stone and pulled itself up, dragging behind it a misshapen body.

    It had the slender, toneless frame of the Espada they'd been fighting; but it had no features, no clothes, no hair, no bones. It was a worm in the shape of a man: its flesh soft and ridged, barely holding itself into a figure with four limbs, a torso, and a blank face. No mouth to bite, no ears to hear. No claws on its oozing, stubby hands. Its head swayed from side to side. A hypnotic dance? No, it was as if it could not see the girls but could smell them.

    Each footstep squelched on the ashen ground. The residue of the worm's siblings clung to its pale skin. It lurched towards the trio. No terrible speed. No feral grace. Just the shambling of the gravely ill.

    "What is that?" Orihime breathed, one hand going to her mouth. "It's…" she gulped down a breath. "Do you think we… stopped him?"

    "No," Tatsuki said grimly, staring at the eyes the thing didn't have. Its head flopped around bonelessly. Like a lure, she thought to herself. A worm impaled on a fishing hook.

    "Save your strength," Ururu said, "its power is low." Tatsuki immediately took a step back, the girl moved up, and as the worm-thing reached out with both hands as if to claw at her face she punched once. The knuckle-plate slammed out with her blow, and she did not even touch the thing: a blue-tinged shockwave erupted out of her arm and the creature exploded like a water balloon, only its skin was not rubber but flesh, tearing, screaming, weak muscles torn to rags, the blue blood within splattering away from Ururu, filled with squirming debris of colorless meat. The girl lowered her fist.

    "Its body might have been poisonous," she said. "I used a shaped shockwave to blow it away from us."

    "Good thinking," Tatsuki said, eyeing the shadowed room around them. "You think that's his real power, turning into an army? We could take a hundred of these easily…"

    "What about a thousand, though!" Orihime said. "And even a hundred would kill me from the sheer grossness!" She wrung her hands together. "Seriously, remember that time we found that dead cat by the side of the road and there were all the white things inside it and…"

    "If it's a thousand we'll just run," her friend said with a shrug. "They're really no threat…"

    The ceiling cracked and she fell quiet; Ururu and her spread out while Orihime crossed her wrists, reinforcing her shield and already bracing herself for another disgusting thing to appear.

    With a slither, the next worm fell from above, hitting the ground with a wet smacking sound. Pale meat rippled with the impact. It looked like a bag of flesh, much bigger than the one before, and just as shapeless; it reared up, ham-like hands clenched into fists, and Ururu dashed forward to meet it with another blow.

    Her fist hit its skin with a disgusting squelch. Pus oozed out between her fingers, but the translucent skin didn't give way. The shock of her blow flew out into the body, which rippled grotesquely, forming into fat-like mounds.Then the flesh snapped back and Ururu bounced away, yelping in confusion, as the hulking worm-man propelled itself on its hands after her. She hit the ground and rolled away, bouncing up onto her feet; a fist as big as her whole body hurtled down towards her and she met with an armored hand. Again, her fist sunk into the soft, oozing skin, her blow stronger than the beast's but wasting away in its rubbery flesh - and again backlash sent her reeling back.

    Tatsuki blurred into existence above the thing, and shouted defiantly as she fell on its and punched its exposed back with machine-gun speed. Whitish-yellow fluid splattered off the fungus-like flesh, sizzling on the ash-covered ground. With the lesser individual strength of her attacks she was not bounced off, but her blows achieved nothing. The creature raised its hand, and it twisted 180 degrees on non-existent joints, snatching Tatsuki off its back - then slamming her into the ground with the awful groan of cracking stone, once, twice, three times until she screamed, going limp. It lifted her up for a fourth slam…

    A brilliant trail crossed the air as fast as an arrow, punching through the arm with a back-splatter. For a second, the creature's eyeless face stared at its limb, and nothing happened; then a shining barrier stretched out within its own limb, slicing it in half with a spray of vile liquids. The hand that held Tatsuki fell without force to the ground. She wriggled out of the severed limb like she was a worm herself, clutching her chest and sputtering. The thing tried to snatch her with its good arm, its oozing stump flailing uselessly. The bright arrow circled around it and struck at its chest.

    With the sound of a finger on a wine glass, a blade-like barrier cleaved it apart into two perfect halves. They slid away from from each other, disintegrating into fatty chunks and pus that pooled on the floor.

    It smelled like the back alley behind cheap takeaways that don't ask too many questions about where their meat comes from.

    "Good work, Tsubaki!" Orihime shouted, high-fiving the tiny arrow-fairy as it came back to her. Tatsuki painfully rubbed her bruises and took a glance at Ururu, who was staring at her fists in confusion.

    The air split, and a mound of flesh collapsed to the earth, immediately unfurling itself into another rubbery giant.

    "Orihime to the rescue!" she cried out triumphantly, holding an open hand forward with fingers splayed, her arrow-fairy streaking towards the beast.

    "Orihime, no-" Ururu started, but too late. This giant was even more deformed, more tumorous. Its shoulders were heavy with writhing flesh that exploded the moment it stood out, releasing hundreds of gnawing worms. These worms themselves exploded, tearing away their own ridged skin from the inside to emerge as horrible, metallic insects with buzzing wings, dagger-like proboscises and a dozen compound eyes. Tsubaki darted away amidst a cloud of humming, armored missiles. His blades flashed left and right as he tried to desperately fend off a hundred monsters that did their best to eviscerate him.

    Tatsuki and Ururu had no time to save the flying fairy. The worm-giant was hopping forward much too fast for its clumsy gait, and one look at the younger girl told Tatsuki she had no idea what to do. That was fine. Having no idea what to do was what Tatsuki was there for. She closed her eyes for a second, focusing on her gift, her inner light, her spark of challenge. She crosses her arms and slashed the air with them - and black steel flowed down from her elbows, covering her forearms and hands down to the nails.

    The thing brought down a fist that could have crushed her bones, but she was no longer there when it hit, she was a foot to the left; she stretched her fingers like a blade and chopped at his knee like an axe at tree-trunk, splitting its cushioned, soft flesh in half. The thing toppled on its stump leg, pressing its left hand to the ground to keep itself up, and brought its face in range of Tatsuki's fist; with the same knife-hand she punched through its head.

    The creature exploded into blue blood and white goo, splattering her, and only then did she realized what she'd done, what horrid soft matter now slid off her fingers. Flesh sloughed off cartilage, crawling on the floor as it choked to death. Meaty, wet chunks of squirming fat-caked arteries gasped for life, trying to find something to grab. Blood. They wanted blood. Anything to prolong their existence. She cringed heavily and stepped back as it finished dissolving, taking a look above - the insects popped one after the other like a gunned-down balloon parade. Tsubaki flew away, finally released, zig-zagging in his flight. He was bleeding from his face, and his black jumpsuit was torn and bloodstained.

    "Is your fairy o-" Tatsuki started, and then a rafter exploded under the fall of the next beast.

    Its limbs looked far more like tree-trunks, now: plates of rugged, bony armor covered its rubbery flesh, with proper joints, even fingers. Its shoulders and back were honeycombed, a new swarm of hunter-seekers already flying away. Its face was covered by a single blank plate, but now it had an opening, a jawless circle of a mouth circled by rows upon rows of tiny teeth.

    "It's adapting to everything we do," Ururu whispered.

    "Not just that," Tatsuki said. "It's becoming more… coherent?"

    She looked down at her steel-covered hands. No way she'd break through this armor with-

    "Tatsuki! Ururu!" Orihime shouted. "Combo attack!"

    The two bruisers looked at each other, then nodded solemnly.

    "Partial Release, Level One of Three," Ururu said, her voice turning calm and monotone.

    The bullet-swarm shot out of the hive-body, the air whistling at their passing, and Ururu braced herself low on her knees, then punched the air. Her reiatsu flared dark blue and the gauntlet funneled it into a wave of air, knocking the swarm off course, smashing dozens of bugs into the ground and walls. It could not stop the beast.

    The bone-clad giant loped forward with a guttural cry, bringing both its enormous fists down on the girls. The shield nearly cracked - nearly. Bone knuckles slammed into the radiant barrier, and it shuddered, but held steady. Tatsuki slipped underneath the shield, under the thing's broad chest; she stretched her hand back and Ururu leaped, taking it. Tatsuki spun on her heels, momentum growing nearly out of control, and let go of the girl just as she kicked the air.

    One plated boot slammed into the giant's chest, shattering its armor plates and knocking it back and of balance. Shards of bone cracked and shattered on the floor. Ururu kicked off into the air rising to the darkness of the rafters. At the apex of her jump she reached down. Tatsuki had already leapt to join her, and their hands touched. Then the tiny girl's tremendous strength went all into throwing Tatsuki right back down.

    Her linked hands hit like a bolt from heaven.

    She went through it like butter, shattering the plates on its back from the inside, spreading her arms out in a cross slash as she emerged and landed on her knees. Tatsuki slammed down one ichor-covered hand, skin crawling, and tried not to think about where she'd just been. Behind her, the thing stood for a second with a hole in its chest, as if too stunned to realize it was dead. One arm fell off. Then another. Skin and armour plating peeled away to expose tumour-flesh, which pulped in turn. It rotted where it stood, falling apart into the sticky filth that coated the floor of the battleground.

    With a squelch, one of the arms reared up. Its fingers were growing longer, longer, no longer fingers and now spider legs. There was a mouth in the stump, sucking in gasping breaths, and in the mouth there was one yellow eye, that-

    Ururu landed on the arm with a final, wet splat. Tatsuki finally exhaled. Behind her, Orihime was already pumping her fist and shouting.

    "Don't cheer," Tatsuki gasped, trying not to get any in her mouth as it dripped from her hair.

    "Oh yeah, you do need a change of clo-"

    The air split open like a gaping wound, and the thing that emerged was not just a giant. It had twelve pairs of arms, and a more slender build betraying speed and agility the ones before had lacked. Strange, fatty growths reached down from its scalp, like a worm's idea of hair, framing soft indentations in its faceplate. The distant memory, perhaps, of eyes.

    "How many times…" Tatsuki said to herself, and then she didn't have time to speak anymore.

    The thing had disappeared from where it had stood before she even realized it. She heard the report behind her and turned on her heels, but she was not the target - Orihime screamed in fear as a dozen fists bore down on her. She hastily brought up her shield, and Tatsuki silently thanked Urahara's gruelling lessons for the fact that it came out in a heartbeat and in perfect shape, a wide triangular barrier blocking each of the blows.

    The arms spread out, stretching over too many joints. Orihime's shield couldn't be everywhere at once - not when almost boneless limbs were always finding a new angle. Meaty fingers tried to grasp Orihime as she frantically backed away; then they pulled in, closing on the shield from all side, and ripped it apart like paper. Tsubaki shot out to defend his mistress, but the swarm immediately surrounded him, darting on all sides, and he could do nothing.

    "Help!"

    Tatsuki did not pause to think. She hurled herself at the monster, ignoring the dozen of bullet-bugs that punched hole after hole into her skin, drawing trickles of blood. Its back was turned to her, she had an open shot - until five arms twisted all the way on their elbows and met her with relentless hammering and she had to stop in her tracks, frantically blocking and punching back at limbs too plentiful and too fast. It was like fighting a willow-tree. A wet, oozing willow tree with too many hands that only wanted to get a hold on her.

    The steel melted off her limbs, boiling white-hot, and turned to flame. The bugs that tried to hone in on her fell charred before reaching her skin, and the fire gathered at her elbow, propelling her fists like rockets. Each blow that landed was accompanied by a thunderclap, and meat sprayed from the fist-craters she left. She screamed in fury as she unleashed a barrage of punches, her fist and strength finally overwhelming the horror until it had to turn wholly against her, its jawless mouth gaping and rattling with a single, endless breath. Slender arms broke and burst as they sacrificed themselves to protect the head.

    But they just grew back. The limbs shattered and new ones ripped themselves out of the stumps with a rain of blue fluid, immediately striking again. She was stuck in a dizzying stalemate, blow-for-blow to keep the thing from reaching Orihime with no way to attack its body.

    And then Ururu appeared, prayer-strip halos spinning around her right arm, closer and closer until they latched to the gauntlet and glowed bright azure.

    "Assisted Hado, Combined Mode!"

    Four limbs punched at her and she met them with a single blow, lightning flashing out of her fist. All the force of that punch went into the crackling electricity, and it struck true. The many-jointed hands broke like twigs, and a blue bolt carved a hole in the thing's shoulder, half its limbs gone.

    It screeched and kicked off. It had only two legs but they were far too strong, taking him to the rafters in a single step, dozens of feet above. It perched onto a beam like a gargoyle from the mind of a madman and fanned out its remaining hands. Each one held a bright orb of power. Already, a brighter glow was forming in the centre of the rough circle the many hands made.

    "Spread out!" Tatsuki yelled, dashing away.

    And not a moment too soon. The orbs linked up and with a whine that became a scream an overwide Cero scoured half the floor of the crossways. It spilled out from the impact point in waves of caustic energy the color of wilted roses. Blasts of white-gold fire launched her forward, but it was still catching up…

    She saw a hand and caught it without second thought, and was jerked up into the air so quickly her shoulder nearly snapped. Swallowing a yelp, she looked up - and there was Orihime, eyes wide with panic, mouth spouting gibberish rambling too fast to follow. She rode a sharp triangular platform which radiated warmth in the midst of the damp, creeping pressure that was everywhere. Orihime was twitching like she was on caffeine, looking every which way. Still, she had a firm hold of Tatsuki's hand as she dragged her through the air along the circular walls of the room.

    She dipped down and Ururu kicked off the ground to a wall, then to Orihime, and the girl let out a scream of surprise and pain at the weight of her two friends. Startled out of her surprise, Tatsuki immediately grabbed the platform and released Orihime's hand while Ururu did the same. There was a whine and a growing pink light behind them, and Orihime jinked aside. Rose flames billowed underneath them, and the thing in the rafters tracked them with more orbs. Orihime took one glance at it, gritted her teeth, and joined her two hands in an empty circle.

    They disappeared. Orihime's platform only lasted long enough to launch them up into the rafters, and as the three girls latched onto a narrow stone beam and hoisted themselves to safety, five dots of light spun around them, shaping a bubble out of which the whole world was washed out and muffled.

    The orbs died in the thing's grasp. Its eyeless face turned this way and that, looking for its prey, but finding none.

    "I never want to do that again," Orihime whimpered. Tatsuki tried to smile, clasping a hand on her shoulder, and opened her mouth to comfort her - then she spotted the bullet-bug buzzing away inches from the bubble's surface.

    The swarm was spreading across the rafters. Buzzing, countless metal legs skittering over the stone. Hunting.

    "Thank you, Orihime," Ururu said, eyes watchful, "but stealth won't last. Do you think from this vantage Tsubaki might get him?"

    "M-maybe?" the girl said, eyes flicking from monster to bug to friends to fairies in a daze of panic. "I don't-"

    "It'll just come back stronger," Tatsuki said ruefully. "We have to find a way to-"

    "We don't have time for that," Ururu said darkly as a bug grazed the bubble, sending a ripple through its surface.

    "Okay," Tatsuki said, trying to calm her breath, but unable to do anything about the pounding in her chest. "Okay. Orihime, I'm going to open a way for Tsubaki."

    The redhead nodded hesitantly, and her last dot of light danced over to set on Tatsuki's shoulder; from up close it was a very tiny man with black hair and a knife-sharp face covered in a scarf, with scolding eyes. His injuries from before were clearly troubling him, even if somehow he had found a tiny bandage. Tatsuki gave him a worried look, but he waved it off angrily. So she slumped down, bringing her elbows close to her chest, and focused her fiery strength to the utmost, until the flames had become two shimmering, thrumming dots of heat. Orihime and Ururu spread out around her to avoid backblow, and she took one breath.

    Then she let it out and the dots exploded, rocket-boosters of spiritual energy launching her through the bubble and shattering it. She wasn't even aiming at the thing's back, more at its flank - not that it mattered anyway with its pivoting limbs. Angle didn't matter as much as speed. Stone cracked and lit up on her path, a smoldering trail behind her flight, and the monster spotted her instantly but was not fast enough to bring its full body against her. Six fists punched at once and she punched back. Bones shattered, blasting open a path, and she slid past the broken limbs to a stop, her rocket-charge ending inches from the thing's ringed mouth.

    This close, its spittle was in her face. And it was finally turning the rest of its limbs towards her.

    But Tsubaki was inside its guard, too close for its spread-out swarm. The tiny fairy cried out a challenge and leaped off Tatsuki's shoulder, bat-like wings stretching out from his lower back, and he formed a sharp, bullet-shaped shell of energy around him a heartbeat before it slammed into the thing's faceplate. The monster screamed, bringing two of its hands down on its face to dig the fairy out of the crack - too late. With a sound like an unsheathed sword, a shield of light split its head in two. The headless beast stood stunned for a second, swaying on its thick legs, and then fell down from the rafters, to the smoldering floor below, dissolving into disgusting fluid as it went.

    It splattered. Meat wriggled on the ground, trying to pull itself back together. Fat crawled up the walls. Then Ururu ended its existence in flame.

    Thick, greasy black smoke added another vile note to the air. For a second, there was silence.

    "Orihime, bubble!" Tatsuki shouted. Ururu grabbed her friend and carried her to Tatsuki, and Orihime shaped the isolating shield around them.

    The air rumbled and strained at the other end of the dome. Cracks ran through nothing, sending out iridescent ripples in the shadows above the wall-set lamps. Spindly arms stretched out of a great, howling darkness, and something squirmed its way into the world.

    Szayel Apollo-Grantz sighed with delight, a dreamlike smile on his face, purple arabesques underlining his eyes. That face was human, and it was the only thing about the abomination that was. That face connected to a neck that bulged with worms, to a torso so emaciated one could count the ribs over a hollow space covered with taut skin where the guts should have been. And on every side of that torso, reaching out from behind that thin veil of humanity, emerged the worms. The many worms, the countless worms that were the Espada. The worms, bulbous and thick, whose blind maws opened on more and thicker worms who did not have mouths, but instead melded into the many dozens of arms, radiating out from that torso. Giant clubs of bone without hands or wrists, just soft enough to absorb great shocks without breaking, meant to challenge Ururu's armor. Tendrils crackling with electricity, with odd tumors linked by blue nerves over their surface, crackling with electricity - these half-brains made them move on their own will, scouring the perimeter around Szayel to thwart flash-steps faster than he could think. There were arms that ended on mouths that dribbled foam-like drool, hardening as soon as it hit the stone - and covering it with frost; fire and lightning would not work again. There were limbs so thin yet so heavily armored, the only explanation was that they were made of metal all the way through; and these ended in sickle-claws the size of Tatsuki's arm and had no other purpose than to gut the prey once thwarted. And there were hives at every elbow, if something like this could still be said to have elbows.

    It did not have legs. It moved on its spindly arms, shifting this way on that on its pivoting joints, clutching at the rafters and moving through with the easy, unnerving grace of a squid, or a centipede.

    "At last," the face said, smile stretching past his cheeks. "To see with my own eyes. To speak with my own tongue. To glory in my new flesh. Long live the new flesh."

    "Oh," Orihime whimpered. "Oh, dear."

    "Is it… is it his final form?" Ururu said hesitantly. "He has a face in this one - if we kill him will he stay…"

    Tatsuki wanted to say 'probably.'

    One of the things Urahara had taught her was to listen to the brightness inside her. Because it knew how to counter tricks, how to make any fight fair, it could see what she could not. If she had enough focus, if she listened to her Heart, it would tell her what games her foes played without her having to throw herself at their cheats first. And she wanted to say 'probably.'

    "No," Tatsuki said with absolute certainty. "He doesn't have a final shape. If he dies, he'll become even worse."

    "So… we run?" Orihime said, her voice quivering. "He, he hasn't spread out his swarm yet; if we make a run for it he won't find us…"

    "Yeah," Tatsuki said, nodding. "Yeah, that's about all we can-"

    A hundred eyes popped open across the joints and limbs of Szayel's Resurreccion, staring wide at the world, staring in ways incomprehensible to humans, in heat and electricity and waves and spiritual patterns.

    It took two seconds for these eyes to narrow down on them.

    "Thank you," Szayel said with a grin, his hands opening on orbs of light.

    "Jump!" Tatsuki screamed, grabbing her two friends by the arms and leaping down from the stone beam. A wilted-rose Cero swept the space where she'd stood, shattering the rafters, and the stone arches groaned and whimpered their demise. Half the crossways came down above them, and Szayel scurried down across the opposite wall.

    "Shield up!" she shouted as they hit the ground; a triangle of light appeared above them a second before hundreds of tons of stone collapsed upon them. Orihime yelped under the strain, and her shield flickered for a second, but held true; the cacophonic rumbling of stone falling upon stone drowned out any attempt at coordination, and then they were in the dark, entombed.

    But the rocks were still shaking - rhythmically now, as if worried at by a many-armed digger. Tatsuki swallowed nervously, which only made the thick, dry taste of chalk and dust coating her throat worse. "Ururu?" she asked, and the girl swept her gaze around the tiny corner of breathing room they'd secured in the rubble.

    "He's coming from here," she said, pointing at a point slightly above them that was shaking faster now. "There is a path there," she added, pointing to her right. She turned to Tatsuki in expectation of a signal, and the teenager nodded. Her eyes empty of concern or fear, Ururu turned to the spot she indicated, braced herself, and punched. The rocks blew outwards, opening a path out of the rubble-heap, into a long corridor. The hole immediately began collapsing again, but Orihime waved her hand and the shield stretched to hold it open. Tatsuki grabbed her by the hand and took off running, Ururu at her side, Orihime desperately clutching her shoulder to follow their speed.

    Icy dread clutched Tatsuki's heart as she saw what their 'escape' was: one of the height tunnels stretching out of the compass-room, lit by dim glass-orbs, stretching, it seemed, infinitely. She had no idea where it would take them, if even it would take them anywhere.

    "Ururu, can you sense anyone?" she asked breathlessly, her lungs lancing in protest at having to supply sprint and speech at the same time. The younger girl shook her head.

    "My lock on Szayel blinds me to-"

    Behind them, the rubble heap finally erupted under the last effort of the digging Szayel, A dozen arms ripped out man-sized chunks of stone and tossed them carelessly around, opening the path for him to skitter into the corridor. His manifold limbs moved with erratic, knitting motions. He creeped on the floors, the walls, the ceilings with no concern for gravity; his smile shone in the gloom, ever closer. Orihime's hand tightened on Tatsuki's shoulder so hard she winced in pain.

    Then the bullet-bugs shot out, and Tsubaki took off to ward them off - but they were not aiming at the girls. Scattering around them, they hit the wall with the sound of shattering glass, and one by one the lamps ahead and behind them went out, plunging the corridor into total darkness. The smile stopped shining. They could not even see their pursuer.

    Only hear the patter of its legs, and feel its breath upon them. Only hear his breath, and his soft chuckle.

    Maybe it wasn't a chuckle. Maybe it was the rasping of his legs. Ha-ha-ha they went. Ha-ha-ha.

    Orihime shrieked, her voice so shrill it was like a drill in Tatsuki's ears. She took one hand off Tatsuki's back and threw her palm up, and three points of light turned to torchlights - a triangle-shield stretched out across the corridor, piercing into the walls to not leave a gap. The thing behind them was starkly cast into light as it slammed against the barrier, its limbs folding in at the unexpected impact.

    "Look at you," said Szayel, face pressed up against the glowing barrier with manic glee. "Look at what you can do. I love it. L-l-love it. So many new things." He slid along the barrier, to stare up close at one of Orihime's fairies. She squeaked, and the barrier flickered. "How will you taste, little thing?" A pink tongue licked out, to rub against the glowing light with a squeaking sound. "How. Will. You. Taste."

    "He's just trying to freak you out! He can't get through!" Tatsuki said, more to try and help Orihime out of her panic state than because she expected it to do anything. Szayel was already unfurling its horrible body - and, not even bothering to break the shield, smashed through the wall to his right and disappeared out of sight.

    "He's using the bugs as chaff," Ururu said, a tone of concern creeping into her flat voice, the simple sound of which made Tatsuki's stomach curl. "I am having difficulty tracking him."

    "It's okay," Tatsuki said, watching her right, the direction in which Szayel had gone and from which he must be following them; waiting for the right moment to break through the wall-

    The arm emerged from above, one of the spindly metallic claw-limbs, and it was not aiming for Tatsuki but for Orihime, defenseless on her back, her shield-fairies still hurrying back to her. Tatsuki did not even think; she hurled Orihime off her back and threw herself in front of her, bringing up her arms in a guard. Bone-plates wrapped around her forearm to thwart the claws. But one of the far too numerous joints of the arm bent this way and that as it swooped, and the sickle-claw slashed at her gut. Tatsuki gasped, a line of fire digging into her skin, and faltered for a second. In that moment a swarm of bullet-bugs emerged from the hole the arm had punched in the ceiling, all of them aiming at Orihime.

    The bone plates shattered, no longer wanted. Tatsuki shut her mind off the pain of her wound and moved into a frenzy of strikes, index and middle finger joined into a knuckle-blow that punched five, ten, fifteen bugs out of the air; she was moving faster than any human should, the after-images of her strikes seeming to become shadow-arms of their own.

    Three bugs slipped through and hit Orihime as she was standing up, drawing blood and voice out of her. Tatsuki turned to her, rushed to her side as she almost fell, and the beast squirmed its thicket-body through the tiny hole in the ceiling, expanding like creeping ivy onto the ceiling.

    "I'm… okay…" Orihime said through clenched teeth as Tatsuki shouted her name, looking over her injuries as if she could do anything to help.

    "Level Two of Three," Ururu said, moving to meet him alone. She punched up with tremendous force and he punched down with one of his bone-clubs, the two limbs meeting with a shockwave that made the whole tunnel quake and Tatsuki's teeth rattle like they were going to pop out of her mouth. Ururu punched up with her other hand, and another club met her with the same reverb.

    Then, in that moment where both her hands struggled to hold up Szayel's pillar-arms, he produced two more and hit her in the chest, slamming her through the ground with such abrupt speed she did not even cry.

    Tatsuki grabbed Orihime under the arm and leaped off into that hole before Szayel's writhing mass of flesh fell in on the floor where she'd stood. Wind whipped across her face, cold against the warmth of her own blood on her chest, and she landed down in the gloom.

    It was another domed crossways. The exact same room as the one they'd left hundreds of feet above and hundreds of yards of tunnel away, a blank canvas waiting to be decorated with ash and blood and filth. It was in that moment, looking up at another domed ceiling, at more rafters, at another compass-like spread of corridors, that Tatsuki understood. There was no escape from this wall. There was no understanding its geometry. It was a place to become lost. It was a labyrinth.

    Ururu struggled to push herself up on the knuckles of her gauntlets, blood staining her mouth, her breathing raspy and slow, but her focus was unwavering. She immediately looked up and Tatsuki's gaze followed. Szayel was squeezing himself through the hole in the dome, spilling down onto the rafters, sliding off with flailing limbs. He fell down a ways from them like a cluster of worms, and immediately unfurled back into his horrid star of a body. A dozen eyes fixed on the girls, filled with malevolent joy; a hundred more fixed on Szayel's human face, filled with self-adoration. Ha-ha-ha went his bushel of limbs as he jittered from side to side.

    "I never understood, before," he said with a soft, distant voice. He was not talking to them, Tatsuki knew this. He was using them as a sounding board, a prop; a justification for his monologue. "I never understood the joy, the thrill others found in fighting, in hunting, in the contest, the challenge. It always was a dull, dangerous, bothersome necessity. But now? Oh, now. Now I understand. To live. To die. To live again. To come back ever stronger, to fix every mistake, to correct every flaw. What could be a better existence than this?"

    Tatsuki had nothing to say to this madness. But Ururu did. She stepped forward, clutching her chest, and spoke.

    "You're a scientist." It sounded like an accusation. "You did this to yourself. 'Improved' your own body."

    The human head at the heart of the hydra looked down on her, smiling condescendingly.

    "I am Szayel Apollo-Grantz, Octava Espada, and y-yes. Head scientist of Las Noches."

    "The girl," Ururu said. "Nell. You talked as if you knew her. As if you'd done something to her."

    "Me?" Szayel chuckled. "No, never. It was Nnoitra. I just lent. A helping hand. A useful tool."

    "She was not a child, was she?" Ururu said, a wistful tone in her voice.

    "She was… so great," Szayel said softly. "Strong, proud, beautiful. A relic of the old times. But there was naivety to it, you understand? She refused to see how the order of things had changed. Being a child… suits that delusion."

    "I see," Ururu said. "This is what your kind does. Decide how the world should be, and shape others to that design. You made her this way. Like he made me this way."

    "He?" Szayel asked, smiling quizzically.

    "Look upon your works." Ururu spread her arms wide, then brought her fists together with a clap like thunder. "Slaughter Mode, Full Release. Assisted Hado, Aura Mode."

    Tatsuki raised her hand, opened her mouth, about to ask her to stand back, to tell her that they needed a tactic, to focus on escaping, that 'killing' him again would achieve nothing, and had no time. It all happened too fast.

    Ururu's power flared black and blue, cold and intent and thirsting for blood. A scalpel of power, cutting through the writhing, damp, moist air that Szayel exhaled. Clinical. But the clinical lines of the bullet or the knife, not of the hospital.

    The paper strips clasped on her arms and legs, shrouding her in flame. She crossed the space between them in a single step. The lightning-tendrils lashed, scoring her exposed face and upper arms with branch-like patterns of burning, and she ignored them. They writhed back in pain as the fire scorched off their tips. Ururu threw one punch, he met her with a club-like arm, and the shockwave spread outwards into the limb, shattering it into flying chunks of shrapnel.

    Mouth-hands spat white foam, smothering her flames, hardening into a stone-hard shell. She moved and it broke like glass, leaving her free - but her skin was blue-white now, caked with frost, her breath coming out as vapor. She threw another punch and Szayel met it with two of his bone clubs at once, and it was not enough. The bone cracked, the joints snapped, the limbs fell useless to the ground. Three sickle-hands twisted around her back, tearing blindly through muscle and tendons, scraping bone, and she moved through them undeterred. The last bone-club tried to smash her into the ground, and she met it with a kick, her boot punching straight through the blunt head, sheer force ripping it off its joint and sending the enormous limb spinning away into the air. Burned, frozen, splattered in her own blood, Ururu stood at the heart of the thorn-bush. She took one breath to gather her strength, and her fist struck at Szayel's exposed face.

    The sickle-hand slipped through her guard as she opened it for the blow, Szayel ducked his head to the side. Five claws stabbed at her chest and threw her off balance. Her gauntlet grazed the human cheek and the shockwave spread out uselessly behind his face. She opened her mouth on a silent gasp, blood spilling down her chin.

    For a moment they formed a silent tableau. Then the sickle-arm wrenched her up into the air and tossed her aside like an old rag.

    Tatsuki moved to catch her, and Orihime screamed before she could. Tatsuki looked down, and widened in horror at the sight of bulging skin, of something moving inside Orihime's flesh. Then blood sprayed out as a dozen worms tore themselves out of her friend. Their maggot-flesh spit open at unseen seams, bullet-bugs shooting off into the air and darting back to attack her and her friend, to lay more eggs into their-

    She moved with a dozen arms, shadow-contrails snapping the insects out of the air and crushing them in an instant. Metallic shells fell in pieces to the ground. But Orihime's eyes were closed, her body shuddering in pain, and Ururu was not moving.

    The forest of limbs, half-broken and bleeding and numb to its own pain, skittered towards her, smiling brightly. It had lost so many arms and it still moved easily.

    She was alone.

    "You," he said, cloyingly sweet. He was bleeding, shattered arms lying on the ground, and he didn't care. A more dextrous hand picked up one of the discarded club arms and idly played with it, manipulating its joints. "You are the most interesting of all. Adaptive powers? Oh, how I wish your friends hadn't been here. We could have danced, you and I, girl; developing power against power in beautiful symmetry until your strength ran out. Ah, but it is not too late."

    'Until her strength ran out.' He was right, wasn't he? For all her power, she only had so much strength, and he had enough to come back again and again. Forever? No, but it did not matter. Longer than she could fight.

    But her friends were there, defeated and defenseless. So she had to fight still. No matter how pointless.

    He skittered closer, with a ha-ha-ha. "Tell me, tell me, tell me, how did you get this power? So interesting. So fascinating. So close to me. Did you study for it, human?" There was something terrible in his pinprick eyes - not fear, hatred, or contempt, but pleasure. The honest pleasure of a man doing what he loved. The back-alley-garbage smell of the Espada washed over her. "Did you train? Did you cut yourself time and time again? How much did. Did you hate what you were? Were and didn't want to be? Tell me, tell me, while we fight."

    Tatsuki closed her eyes, and found her inner light. She sunk into it, bathing in its light, and breathed it into her tired and aching body. The fear, the fatigue, the disgust, the sorrow faded. She knew peace. She clasped her hands, and a dozen shadow-arms spread out around her. And suddenly they were not shadow. They were bronze. She was bronze. She was a beautiful, brazen statue, a goddess with a hundred hands, stepping down from her shrine. She unclasped her hands, opened a hundred palms and a golden halo surrounded her.

    She walked forward, slowly, and Szayel smirked as he brought down his sickle-arms, his lightning-tendrils, his spitting-mouths, his bullet-bugs all around her. Tatsuki's arms moved to meet them with graceful speed, effortlessly blocking each one as she advanced. The smirk turned to a frown; he struck faster and faster, a crescendo of hard impacts as each f Tatsuki's hands met each of his limbs and swatted it aside like a petulant child reaching for treats. She pushed through and his limbs broke, his tendrils were ripped off their sockets, his claws shattered, and his eyes widened in surprise and fear.

    She stood before him as Ururu had moments before, but this time he had no trick, no winding attack left, his entire hydra of a body already striking madly and being warded off with idle strength. She clasped her two true hands, and bowed her head, not knowing why.

    His face was a portrait of fear, for a moment; then it bled away, and he smiled again.

    "I will come back," he said.

    "I know," she answered, and struck with both hands, shattering his famished, fleshless chest, destroying it in a blast of brazen light.

    The hydra collapsed, its core severed, its limbs writhing erratically, then slowly coming to a stop and dissolving into white ichor.

    Tatsuki sighed, and the light guttered out. Her arms became faint outline of light, and faded into the halo, which dimmed until it was gone. Her bronze skin softened back into flesh, and she fell to her knees, and the pain, the fatigue, the dread came back.

    She was alone in the gloom…

    A hand rested on her shoulder. She looked up, and had to blink tears out of her eyes, so blinding was the glow of the angel above her. Her red hair trailed in the wind of her aura, her body shrouded in light, and her face was full of pained love, of kindness and distress. In one arm she held Ururu, the girl curled up against her, her armor seeming to weigh nothing in that moment. She was stained red, but her wounds glowed with soothing light, they mended before Tatsuki's eyes.

    "Hime..?" Tatsuki whispered.

    "I'm sorry," the angel said. Her wings were an oval of light, wrapped around herself. "I should have been stronger. I couldn't see my heart."

    The air shuddered and whimpered and ripped, a jagged wound in reality bleeding shadows as another form birthed itself out of nothing. It moved like a swaying field, ripples going through its limbs as they sought ground and dragged their fractal mass into the world. The thing had no face now, though it had a thousand mouths and a thousand eyes; it had outgrown its core, such that it was now three winding branches connected to one axis, each one splitting into three more, and three more again, creating a hydra with a thousand arms suited to all that had ever killed it, a threefold symmetry that could be torn apart and keep moving as three bodies, as nine, as twenty-seven.

    Orihime held Ururu tighter, her hand on Tatsuki's shoulder grew warmer, her eyes filled with sorrow and resolve.

    "Why?" she asked. "Why did you do this to yourself?"

    The thing looked upon her, any human expression lost to its new flesh.

    "Is this power not answer enough?" answered a hundred mouths speaking in unison.

    "But you die," she said. "You die again and again. How can it be worth it? The pain. The hurt. All to just be stronger? All so you can kill better?"

    "It is evolution," the thing said sagely. "Endless iteration towards greater fitness, with no end goal, no finishing line, only the endless pursuit. Perfection as a dream, never achieved. I wouldn't have thought of this once. Back when I was a fool."

    "Who made you like this? Who hurt you so badly that you would just… crave more hurting?"

    He chuckled. "Only one person could manage this. I did it to myself."

    Orihime looked down with sadness. She let go of Tatsuki's shoulder. Tatsuki reached on instinct, voiceless, wanting the angel to stay, but Orihime lifted her hand, her palm towards the horror.

    "Then I can't fix that. But I can fix all that we did to you. I can take it all back. I never wanted... to kill anything. Not even you."

    "But death is the gift that I want from you," the chorus whispered, "for as long as you can give it."

    "Then no longer," Orihime said. "Santen Kesshun."

    Three darts of light flew out of her golden aura, spreading a great luminescent veil between them; they spinned dizzyingly around the room, a great dome of light encasing the thing. Its eyes looked on curiously.

    "This barrier will not hold me," it said.

    "It is not meant to. Soten Kisshun..."

    Two more lights flew away, and the aura that sustained her dimmed; she looked no more than an angel, but only like a girl, almost falling to her knees as the pain of her wounds flared anew. But she gritted her teeth and held her hand steady as the two lights formed an eye-shaped lens before her.

    "Koten Zanshun," she said hoarsely, and her last light drifted towards the lens.

    The shield was already cracking, the fractal hydra straining against it with casual strength, sending web-cracks throughout the dome. Orihime closed her eyes.

    "I reject."

    A blast of heavenly light streamed from the one light, through the lens that widened it, into the dome where it refracted a thousand times. A torrent of soothing, peaceful power engulfed the crossways and the whole of the hydra, whose eyes all turned to Orihime in confusion.

    And then, it understood. As the six points of light began to spin and reshape the dome and stream into a great sphere of blinding gold, its mouths screamed outrage.

    It was too late. Tatsuki shielded her eyes from the blinding light, even as the mere waves of it, the aftershocks of the great mercy it worked inside the sphere, soothed her aching body and warmed her skin and gave her the strength to stand again.

    The light faded. She lowered her arms.

    Orihime wiped a tear from her face, her eyes circled with deep, dark circles, her cheeks bloodless, her whole body shuddering. She had to lay down Ururu as gently as she could. She barely had the strength to stand. As Ururu's feet touched the ground the girl blinked her eyes open and looked up, and Orihime smiled.

    On the ground before them was a worm in the shape of a man: its flesh soft and ridged, barely holding itself into a figure with four limbs, a torso, and a blank face. Its head swayed from side to side, as if it could not see the girls but could smell them, and its boneless fingers clutched at thin air, trying to grasp something that had abandoned him.

    Then it lunged at them, frantic, fury visible even its featureless face, and Orihime simply waved her hand to call forth the simplest shield, a triangle of light against which its limp fists beat again and again, to no avail. Even tired as she was, she could hold it. Perhaps she could even have done it with her bare arms. It struck blindly, madly, fruitlessly, until at last it laid its tired hands on the barrier, and slid down to its knees.

    "That's his one weakness, isn't it?" Orihime said sadly, shivering. "It doesn't matter how many worms he has buried in the world, or how much power he has left. He was so convinced the world would always try to hurt him, that if you simply choose not to, he can do nothing."

    She took a deep breath.

    "The only way to win… was not to play. His endless cycle of violence. Of pain. Of suffering. Of victimisation." A tear rolled down her face. "I reject it."

    Tatsuki stared speechless as the worm touched its cheeks, and knew that it wanted to cry, but had no eyes to shed tears.

    Tatsuki put her hand on her friend's arm, and Ururu clasped her hand on the other side.

    "Hime, are you…"

    "I'm cold," Orihime said, "and tired, and hurt, and sad. And covered in blood. Some of it mine. And things worse than blood. Let's just go, okay? Let's… find everybody."

    Tatsuki nodded slowly. "Yeah," she said weakly. "I… I really need a shower. And fresh clothes."

    "I told you that your clothes always get ruined when invading this kind of place," Orihime said, with a catch in her voice. "Maybe we can go back to the stash."

    Tatsuki laughed, because it was that or cry, and turned away. But Ururu did not; she stared back. Orihime tugged on her hand, and the girl shook her head.

    "Look," she said.

    There was a sound like torn silk, and they turned to see. The maggot-flesh split apart like old cloth, and Szayel, naked to the waist down and covered still in worm-skin below, wet with blue-blood, hair matted against his scalp, stared at them with distraught eyes.

    "Don't go," he begged. "I was so… beautiful… I was… so strong... Please. You can't leave. You can't leave…"

    "You ended your release just so you could talk?" Ururu asked evenly. Then she raised her fist. "That was stupid."

    Orihime winced at this, and Tatsuki gave her a look; she put her hand on Ururu's gauntlet, slowly lowering it. The girl looked at her curiously and she shook her head.

    "There's nothing you can do to us now," she told Szayel. "We didn't come here for you. Find someone else to be your 'whetstone.'"

    "You can't leave!" the Espada screamed, trying to stand up, tripping on his own skin and falling down flat on his chest. Sobbing, weeping, he pulled himself up on his elbows. "This is not how it was supposed to end! I am enlightened! I was about to show everyone!"

    "Maybe you shouldn't have fought alone in dark vaults underground, then," Tatsuki said with a shrug.

    "Please…" Szayel said, clawing at the cold stone under his palms. Crawling like a worm on the dusty floor.

    And then the others arrived. One by one, preceded by their footsteps in the dim corridors. Rukia from one side, the top of her black uniform turned into bandages around her chest, followed by a blonde Arrancar. Hiyori from the other, her tracksuit torn and bloodstained, one of her two pigtails undone, followed by two more.

    "Hello, brother," the first Arrancar said coldly, looking at the whimpering mess on the ground.

    "...Ilforte?" Szayel said, wide-eyed. "How… why are you with them… why is everybody…"

    "Sorry it took us this long," Rukia said, her voice a little hoarse. "Clones. It was bad."

    "You got an Arrancar buddy too, uh?" Hiyori said, her voice dark - the lanky man behind her was helped up by another, bulkier one as he walked.

    "Next time, Ilforte," the tall one said, "let's not split up."

    "You're okay," Ururu said, a childish smile on her lips.

    "They're not okay!" Orihime said, raising her hands to her mouth in shock. "Look at them! They're all hurt!"

    "Yeah," Tatsuki said, "but they're alive. We all are."

    "Even him," Ilforte said, staring at his brother.

    "Have any of you seen Nell and her family?" Orihime asked. Rukia and Hiyori looked at each other, then shook their heads.

    "I don't understand," Szayel whispered.

    "How could you?" Ilforte said, his cold turning to anger. "You never look past yourself. You just think people are toys to pull apart to see how they work. Las Noches is coming down, the Espada are rebelling against Aizen, and you didn't even know it was happening because your world stops at the tip of your fingers."

    "That's impossible," Szayel said feebly. "Who could… why would they…" His eyes stared up at the vaulted ceiling, towards his God. "He was going to give us Heaven."

    "Some Heavens aren't worth dying for," Nakeem said with a shrug.

    "Is this the guy who made the clones?"Hiyori asked, frowning, then raising her sword threateningly. "Hey, what happened to my crew?"

    But Szayel was not listening to her. He was staring at empty air, with empty eyes, his hands grasping at the ground rhythmically.

    "Are you one of the Visored?" Ilforte asked. "Because I can answer that question," Ilforte said. Hiyori immediately lowered her sword, her eyes snapping to him, and he raised a conciliatory hand. "After we're out of the wall and somewhere safer. All right?"

    Hiyori's mouth curled in frustration, but the fatigue had taken much of her combative spirit. She sighed and waved her blade in Szayel's direction. "Sure. Let's do it quick-like, then. Should we kill this guy?"

    "Orihime would prefer not to," Tatsuki said, gently squeezing her friend's shivering arm. "He's helpless anyway."

    "Then I guess we're done here," the tiny woman said wearily. "Let's find our 'guides' and move on."

    Then Szayel opened his mouth and spoke.

    "Come," he said, and his voice carried like a great horn, echoed across the dome and the corridors and the wall, it made the very stones shudder and the air grow cold.

    "...the hell?" Tatsuki muttered, instinctively pushing Orihime behind her and raising her guard. But Szayel himself was just the same: on the ground, on his knees, swordless, helpless.

    But smiling now.

    "You're wrong, you know?" he said, his eyes finding Ilforte in the small crowd and staring feverishly at him. "I changed. That was the whole point. I changed! I finally learned to see beyond my own grasp. I saw someone, and recognized in her a kindred spirit. I found someone I could value as a person. Someone I could respect. A… a friend."

    "Who are you talking about?" Ilforte asked, looking earnestly confused.

    Somewhere at one end of the compass, past the dim corridor, and another, and more, stone walls began to groan and strain. There was a beating down here. A beating in the deeps. Like a heartbeat. Like footsteps.

    "All of you…" Szayel said, "all of you are alive because of that. Because I was waiting for her! Because I thought she'd come when the wall would start breaking, when I would be fighting for my life! Because I hoped she could be there to see it! To witness our work! Our creation!"

    "Oh," Ilforte said, realization dawning on his face. "Oh, God, you poor fool. You're talking about Nemo."

    Pebbles and dust fell from the rafters above. The walls pulsed. Orihime clutched Tatsuki's arm, and Tatsuki stepped back, looking every which way.

    "She deserved to see what we achieved together. And you've robbed her of that…"

    Ilforte said nothing. His expression was strange; half sadness, half wonder that he would even be sad.

    "Szayel," Shawlong said evenly, "Nemo and Cirucci started this rebellion. They recruited everyone. They planned for you to die today."

    Szayel smiled silently for a few seconds, as if the words had not registered. Then that smile froze, and slowly faded, his face sinking, his eyes wide with dawning shock.

    "...what?"

    "I never thought I'd say this," Ilforte said, one hand resting on his sheathed sword, "but I am sorry, brother."

    The dome echoed with distant thunder.

    "We should be going," Rukia said nervously, her hand grasping and releasing her scabbard unconsciously.

    A wall cracked twenty feet up, a stream of water surging out and spraying out into rain.

    "...do we even have plumbing inside the wall?" Shawlong asked, confused.

    Then they heard shouts, and from the corridor behind Szayel, three figures emerged - Pesche and Dondochaka, with Nell on the latter's shoulder, all of them flailing their arms as they ran and screamed.

    "A monster!" Pesche called out, "there's a monster coming! We need to go!"

    "Where's Chichimaru?" Ururu asked as they entered.

    "He's holding it back!" Nell screamed as the group staggered into the compass-room. "We have to go! He'll join up with us!"

    Another stream of water pierced the stone above, with more pressure this time, closer. Drops fell over everyone.

    "Orihime," Tatsuki asked, turning to her pale, bloodied friend. "Can you…"

    Orihime did not answer; she closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and joined her hands in an empty circle. The Arrancar family almost stumbled as they reached them, and then she breathed out, her Isolation Bubble spreading out…

    And they disappeared.

    Szayel was alone in the dark.

    He did not remember the last time he'd cried. He thought he'd removed that bodily function at some point; yet there were the tears, staining his cheeks. He stayed there as the wall creaked and cracked, as water spilled, as the ground quaked under his knees.

    Oh no, he hadn't, his mind - now brilliant like a cracked diamond, all edges and flaws - remembered. He'd kept tears to get dust out of his eyes. Didn't seem worth it. He rubbed his legs together, and didn't laugh.

    Something lithe and pale, blonde and bloodied, rolled out of the tunnel's mouth into the room. Stood up, panting, one hand curled up against his chest. His face visible in full, sharp and striking with the purple paint outlining his eyes. Szayel looked up at him with distant curiosity.

    "So it was you..? How did you even find Nelliel? You only disappeared a few months ago…"

    The Arrancar whirled on him, and Szayel was surprised to find anger in his purple eyes.

    "You," he said. "You did this? To Yammy? How could you do this to another Arrancar… To an Espada!"

    Szayel smiled weakly. Something sparkled in his mind.

    "You are naive too. Like Nelliel was. Like I was. You still think the world works according to a King's values. But none of you… None of us have any value, save as tools. Go… be with your friends. You don't have much time left. None of you does."

    A heavy step shook the floor behind Szayel, and the other's sharp eyes looked up, his lips twisting in a sneer of outrage and contempt. He raised a deformed arm, a stream of water splitting stone along the floor, and was answered by a deafening roar. Spitting a bloody clot, the blonde Arrancar turned and fled into the corridors.

    The looming shadow behind Szayel braced for a great leap to catch up to its feeble quarry, but Szayel raised a closed fist, and the thing immediately relaxed. He beckoned silently, and heavy steps made the pebbles and dust around the Octavo dance amusingly. He smiled to himself as the thing stopped, casting a mountain's shadow over him.

    Waiting. Patient. Obedient. Mindless but for the anger - but he had a leash on that anger. It could never hurt him, could it?

    Szayel breathed the smell of blood, sweat, bile, tears, burnt flesh. The salt and copper, the spilled guts.

    The mountain waited. Szayel sighed and waved his hand.

    "Kill… just… everyone," he said peacefully. "Carve my legacy into these stones. Release all target restrictions: Thunder, Tailor…"

    He paused for a moment, not so much hesitating as turning the thought in his head, contemplating it from all sides, full of wonder that he even had the thought at all, let alone that he was committed to it. He really had changed, hadn't he?

    "...and Demiurge," he finished.

    There was a pause one breath long. It was the mountain's breath; its chest had stopped moving for a handful of second. When it resumed, it was a deeper breath, like a legion of bellows stoking a furnace to all-consuming intensity. Szayel chuckled and tilted his head back, looking up.

    A single, tiny, red, smoldering sun of hatred stared back.

    "What better fate can we hope for," the Worm said, "than to be outlived by one's-"

    He died in a single blow.

    The mountain walked away without looking back.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Why the hell did Szyael decide that he and Nemo were friends? I don't think they interacted more than two or three times in this entire Quest! And i'm pretty sure that Nemo hasn't enjoyed any of those conversations.
    Seriously Szyael, just because YOU respect someone doesn't mean that THEY respect and/or like you in turn.
     
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    They worked closely together rebuilding Yammy. Even if only a single major encounter was shown in the Quest a lot of background collaboration went on. It makes a lot of sense that Szayel would hold special feelings for Nemo as she is quite probably the only person that he ever worked with as a peer.
     
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    Damnit, Ilforte! Why did you have to shake his faith in Arrancarkind, Ilforte? One last dig before turning your back on the past?

    He turned off the target restrictions, Ilforte! THIS IS YOUR FAULT.

    Edit: It seems I misread that, it was mostly Shawlong's fault.
     
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    Spot the lovecraftian influence on the writing! Wait. It's all of it.

    Might be more fun to try spotting parts with proportionally less lovecraftian influence.
     
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    Shador said:
    Why the hell did Szyael decide that he and Nemo were friends? I don't think they interacted more than two or three times in this entire Quest! And i'm pretty sure that Nemo hasn't enjoied any of those conversations.
    Seriously Szyael, just because YOU respect someone doesn't mean that THEY respect and/or like you in turn.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    To be fair, Nemo has a perfect poker face. If she acts like she's your friend, it's impossible to tell otherwise.
     
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