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.
I
love how you've managd to convey he's at his wis ends with just a bit of prose.
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.
heh, tries to compnesate for no skill aginst miss "fuck your tricks" it ended badly for him.
"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.
yeah! stop being a killjoy. let the kid watch the super dangerosu cool magic fight.
"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.
and now you make him
creepy he's super distrubing even when he has his cloths on.
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.
I'd just like to take a second to point out, this is continuing the theme of everyone and their dog considering stoping your opponents super transformation a valid and effective tactic.
"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 not about the journey, but the destination."
oh shit, he had his epiphany. this is
not going to go well.
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.
just taking a moment to appercaite the fucked up prose. I love how we get vivid restsu descriptions.
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.
jebus, that is a nasty trick. won't work on anyone with herio though.
"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.
and he gets hard counted by little miss walking hard counter. suck it worm boy!
"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."
oh yeah, that. I wonder if that ties into her powers? Her first brush with spiritual combat was getting taken out by a cheap mind control power.
"Fiiiine." It took Orihime five more seconds to resign herself to lowering her arm.
oh god, this entire exchange. Orhime is great.
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.
oh that's not a
good sign.
"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…"
its funny because he's number eight because he used to suck.
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.
AAAAAAAA!
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.
Tsukaki hits hard the more orhime wants something dead, so I suspect he's getting a boost in this fight.
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.
ah, ok that is a
very him power. you kill him, and he gets a counter to what you killed him with.
"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."
hahah ha, this is even creepier if you know about Videodrome.
"No," Tatsuki said with absolute certainty. "He doesn't have a final shape. If he dies, he'll become even worse."
well that just seems
deeply unfiar. also, huh. Tatsuki really is the anti trick type. she can even intuit how a trick works.
"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."
bad touch! bad touch! bad touch! ew ew ew we ewwww! the rapey overtones just add another layer of ew to this.
"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?"
yes, a
very him ability.
'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.
ah, so kill him enofhg times and he runs out of gas. still, its a
nasty power. you'd need an overhwleming advantage or an easy nonlethla take down to beat him.
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.
my god, she got ichigo's bullshit shonen powerup! she really has surpassed him and become the main character! but its kind neat her power-up comes with a mindset of acceptance. which is interesting because her power is pretty much "
no fuck you!"
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.
gaaaaaaaaaay! 
but really, this was a great scene. they
both got a power-up. I really like how orhimie is still very much not a violent person, even as she's now a lot stronger.
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.
oh sweet Jesus, its yog soggoth.
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.
godam, she beat him with healing. she undid what she saw as horrifying self-harm.
"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."
well, I mean, it was true up until
very recently. granted, he was mostly true of late because he one hundred and ten precent had it coming.
"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."
The best fight scenes have an elemetn of phiosphy to them, and Orihime totally won this with her.
"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."
heh, this is a great cool down bit.
"Szayel," Shawlong said evenly, "Nemo and Cirucci started this rebellion. They recruited everyone. They planned for you to die today."
oh wow, you can
see the exact second his heart breaks. man, now I legit feel sorry him. Which is an accomplishment and a half.
"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.
ah crap. goddammit. Of course, he sets murder yami on a rampage. I mean, I kinda can't say we don't have this coming. which is not something I thought I would say.
