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The Throne of Heaven - a (completed) Bleach rewrite (AU)

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Well, I did try to foreshadow it from the beginning - not sure how well that worked out, however.
 
I mean I thought it was him, especially since I was fairly sure he escaped that fight, as opposed to Yano, getting eaten and nomming on Ichigo's kills- VERY GOOD THING HE DIDN'T KILL A FULLBRINGER!
So yeah, I was in fact waiting for him.
As far as Tats goes... I smell a soul cyborging for her, maybe like that firework lady's arm? Basically getting like a cast or shell grafted on to fill in the gaps she likely just blew on her...
Alternatively...She's off to learn from the actual Second Division. Congrats Tatsuki! You're now a damsel in distress!
 
Don't worry, I have plans for Tatsuki; I didn't expand her role in the story to kill her now, that'd be cheap. As for what the plans are... you'll need to wait and see; shouldn't take too long.

Also, when I actually kill some characters, I won't leave it vague - like I did in Ginjo's case, I'll make it 100% obvious in the text that somebody actually died. We're operating on shonen rules after all, so unless the text literally says "they're dead", people won't be dead... although they might need emergency medical procedures performed on them, I'll give it that much.

Also, at this point I'd like any comment people have on the whole Auswhal business - it's one of the changes I'm more proud of making, but that doesn't mean much; some feedback on it as an idea and plot device both would be greatly appreciated. :)
 
Honestly I figured this is a setting where the afterlife is a THING, so somebody we care about dying could certainly happen, given the potential for Tatsu to show up later in Soul Society- like, I was imaging a plot where SS sends Shinigami to investigate Ichigo's squad, only they show up RIGHT at Urahara's hidden base, ready to capture the undercover captains. And when somebody asks 'how did SS know!?' that's when a ninja pops her mask off (or gets it popped off, IDC which) And it's Tatsuki. Also fun is the side-thought of Squad Two Tatsu ending up under Rukia command because she's CLEARLY shown her competence in the Shinji raid...
..Admittedly the problem is the massive fallout FROM Tatsu dying would be huge, even if she did get to come back badder and better then ever, and compromised to boot. And I'd have to have AIZEN be caught off gaurd at his schemes unravelling for Tatsu to NOT come back as a former friend gone 'evil' so to speak. Sooo...yeah.
Though that's the thing about me coming up with plot-threads while in a doomsayer mood- they tend to be grim stuff...
But yeah, Either Tatsu won and the bug girl she was fighting drops the field, in which case some healer can no doubt sense Tatsuki dying, or Tatsu lost, and Kuna's basically going to run her right to a healer and probably warn the healer that this trainee is crazy and to restrain her, if not just seal her potential outright.
 
Well, it's an interesting theory if nothing else, but I can say it's not the direction I'm planning to send the story - although if somebody else was to write it, I'd probably read it out of curiosity.

I have a feeling that, when I reveal Tatsuki's fate, the reactions is going to be "oh, of course", but then again, I know what's going to happen already, so that might just be me.
 
So, due to a number of varied reasons, there won't be any update today - the next chapter will be up next Monday.
 
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Chapter 22: Experience
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    • Chapter 22: Experience​

    Shinji's eyes widened as he felt the sudden eruption of power from a point to his left, recognizing the familiar sign of a Visored unleashing their inner hollow and allowing it to manifest in physical form.

    He dashed in the direction of the energy source, only to be confronted with a towering creature almost three meters tall, covered in black fur, with two curved red horns and a simple mask lacking particular features other than three stripes on the left side of it, departing from both the top and bottom of the eye socket within which hateful golden eyes burned with passion.

    The sight had him watch in disbelief; he'd stolen the Hougyoku specifically so that Aizen would not be able to create more Visored, destroyed all the research so Aizen couldn't make another, and he'd freed them all when he escaped, so where did this boy came from?

    "Who are you, really?"

    A dark laugh came from the mask, and it was the hollow, not the boy, who answered, the mere voice echoing with the energy of a creature that had to have several centuries of accumulated power backing it up:

    "They call me Hollow. And you will fill me up."

    And then the monster charged. Shinji hurried backwards, well knowing how much a released hollow would enhance the physical capabilities of a visored, but even so, he was surprised by the amount of speed the boy had gained, just further proof that the hollow was a old and powerful one.

    Still, he hadn't become captain for nothing, so he focused his will, sharpening Sakade as he went in for a strike. Of course, unlike the boy, the Hollow had no fear of being cut, and in fact charged into it; Shinji grimaced as he hardened his body in preparation of tanking the punch... except as the hollow went to strike, the Shinigami captain realized at the last moment that a red glow was just barely coming from within his closed fist, and aborted his attack just in time to dodge out of the way and avoid the Cero that would otherwise have blasted him straight in the face.

    His eyes narrowed as he studied his opponent, who merely chuckled and taunted:

    "Come on, you were having such an easy time with the kid before! Where's your strength gone all of a sudden?"

    Shinji considered the comment for a moment; it seemed evident that the hollow was in full control. Which meant that, so long as he didn't go overboard, he should be able to actually stop holding back for fear of killing his opponent, since the Hollow's regeneration would take care of most of the damage he would be inflicting. Overall, overpowering the hollow seemed like the best option here.

    Thus, he answered in a bored tone:

    "Here, let me pull it out."

    And, suiting actions to word, he formed the hollow mask on his face, causing surprise to appear on the hollow's face, and charged at him again.

    His enemy had expected it, as it fired two more ceros, but Shinji was ready for them now, so he used Sonido laterally to dodge while continuing to use normal Shunpo to keep his charge going; he stabbed with his Zanpakuto as soon as he was in range, to which the hollow answered by placing his arm in the way, letting the blade sink in, and then suddenly swinging widely to the side, as if trying to rip the sword from Shinji's arm. It was a trick that might have worked on a lesser Shinigami, but Shinji was both a Captain and empowered as a visored, thus strong enough to keep hold of the blade, so that the movement resulted only in the hollow widening the wound on his forearm uselessly.

    Shinji punched the beast in the chest with his other hand, sending it crashing to the ground in a huge crater; he dove after it at full speed, planning to impale him to the ground and be done with it, but had to dodge at the last minute as he sensed the buildup of power in the cloud of dust below and another red cero exploded out of it. It was getting worried - even as old an Hollow as this one should not be able to call forth this many cero, not even with the Visored connection allowing it to refuel its reserves by feeding off his host's soul.

    As the dust cleared, he saw the Hollow breathing heavily, but still standing, before it pointed its finger in his direction; Shinji didn't wait to see if it would be a challenge or another cero, instead shooting down one of about five kido he knew, a powerful beam of light that was specialized for piercing defenses and forced the Hollow to roll out of the way. Shinji landed right next to it, having anticipated the movement, and went for a punch straight at its head, hoping to break the mask since that would automatically force the creature back inside its host, but the hollow managed to dodge with its head while opening its mouth just so that Shinji's punch slammed into it; some teeth were sent flying, but the enemy had clearly expected it, and being an hollow it felt no pain, thus having no difficulty in closing its teeth over the punching hand, biting deeply into it.

    Shinji struck with a knee straight under the monster's hollow hole in its abdomen, the power managing to dislodge it and send it flying; he grimaced as he focused his Visored regeneration on his hand to regrow his three newly missing fingers, while the Hollow offered a bloody grin as it swallowed them, before charging head first in a very obvious attempt to impale Shinji on its horn.

    Too obvious, in fact. Shinji didn't knew what the creature was aiming for, and he didn't plan to find out either; instead, he used his hand to call fort on another of his kido, creating a very thick barrier, almost like a solid slab of light, for the hollow to crash into - except the barrier was a trap, allowing the horns to pierce through before tightening around them.

    The hollow was probably strong enough to get free in a few seconds even so, Shinji knew, but a few seconds was all he needed, as he struck with Sakanade, his Zanpakuto's edge sharpened to the point it cut through the barrier that was holding the hollow and one of its horns as well with contemptuous ease; it would have cut through the mask as well, but at the last minute the hollow fired a small, low power cero from its mouth that forced Shinji to change his trajectory just enough that he only managed to nick the mask with the tip of his sword, rater than slicing it off as he'd hoped to.

    Still, that was all that was required. Reiatsu started to erupt from the small hole in the mask, cracks and shakes running through the hollow's body until it started to be reabsorbed, leaving only a cracking mask through which the hollow's golden eyes glared at him for one last moment in pure hatred, before the pieced of the mask itself fell to the ground and disappeared, the Hollow once more sealed back into the body of the orange haired teenager, who fell to the ground with a look of shook on his face.

    Shinji dismissed his own mask, letting out a long, relieved breath - he truly hated relying on that thing - before moving closer to his opponent with measured step until he was leaning over him threatening as he said, in a harsher tone than he normally would use:

    "That was a bad idea, and also didn't work. You've given it everything you had; there's no dishonor in surrender at this point. You have no hope left."

    And that was when the sky cracked.

    *****

    Rukia couldn't help but admire the craftsmanship of the reiatsu that was keeping the pocket dimension together as well as separated from the mortal and spirit realm both. It was so subtle that it would escape a normal scan with any perception senses, but one of the fundamental aspects of developing new Kido was the ability to be able to discern emotionally-charged reiatsu from neutral one, and while all that was needed to be recognized as a Master was to be able to simply tell the difference, Rukia had advanced enough past that point to be able to also discern the details of how it'd been influenced, to recognize the emotional patterns and how they were interwoven together.

    "Appreciating my work?"

    She absentmindedly nodded to Hashigen as she continued to survey her surroundings.

    "It's quite the artistic achievement. I can see how the solutions you choose make sense, but how did you come up with them? It's an effective pattern, but not one that seems like it'd arise naturally from traditional Kido; it's really quite original."

    "Well, I had the chance to study young Yukio's power, and that suggested a few paths of development that would not have come to me otherwise. It took some serious study to pull it off, but I'm really quite pleased with the results."

    "You should be, it's really a well crafted set of spells."

    The man chuckled at that, and commented, sounding found:

    "I missed this."

    "What?"

    "Teaching; there's few things which warm my heart more than introducing a brilliant young mind to the intricacy of Kido, and you look like quite the brilliant young lady, and quite knowledgeable on the art."

    That caused Rukia to stop her study of the area to completely focus on the round man with a circular patch of hairs on his head and the pink mustache, which looked completely nonthreatening, and she couldn't help the smile that came to her lip, although she made sure to keep her real emotions as hidden as she could, letting only the amusement to be perceived.

    "I read your file; you were only a rank and file member of the 13th Division, and after about two centuries retired to the Academy to teach. Wouldn't all your students have been ones with a bare knowledge of the material at all? You didn't even make it to a officer position; surely, if you are as good as your comment would suggest, you would have been recognized for it with a promotion."

    "I was offered one, but I passed it off, and when it was offered again, I choose to retire instead."

    Rukia didn't hid her surprise at that - Hachigen had no way of knowing that it wasn't simply because the decision to refuse a promotion was rare, but rather because of how personal the matter of refused promotion was to her - and asked, letting her curiosity show in her voice:

    "What position was it you were offered?"

    "One as unseated officer; while I've reached Mastery in Kido, I'm nowhere near good enough at the rest for a seated officer role, and lacking a Shikai was also a point against me. But in truth, the reason I refused is that, if I did not, I would have had to put more effort into bringing those skills up to par, instead of being able to freely study Kido the way I preferred to."

    "So you decided to become a teacher of it instead, to be able to do what you enjoy?"

    "Precisely so."

    Rukia couldn't help herself as a genuine smile formed on her lips at that. She so rarely had had the chance to discuss Kido with somebody at least close to her level since she left the 13th, she'd started to miss it; while Captain Aizen was better than her, he was the only one in the 12th division to be, and rarely had the time to indulge her on the matter. And while Momo was a dear friend and the rest of the seated officers were at least interested in what she brought to the table in term of integrating Kido into their inventions, they couldn't really keep up with Rukia when she started discussing the creation of new and experimental types of Kido or tried to explain the workarounds she had found to circumvent many of the standard rules for its use.

    "That's worthy of respect, I think. So, how is it you're maintaining the folding, exactly? I can see how it works easily enough, but I must admit that no power source for the Bakudo seems apparent, despite the fact that a spell of this complexity can't be self-sustaining."

    The man looked saddened as he shook his head and answered:

    "I'm afraid I can't tell you that, much as I'd like to discuss the technicalities. I do not think you capable of using the information to escape, but I cannot in good conscience risk it."

    "Oh? And what if I started to try and disrupt the folding on my own, without any explanation on your part? Wouldn't you like to see what I came up with, give me an evaluation of my skills?"

    "That would not be wise, either. Again, much as I doubt you would be unable to solve the problem, you could still stumble onto the solution by pure chance, and I cannot allow that."

    Rukia nodded; she wasn't surprised, nor had she really expected this to go easy, but she knew she'd made the attempt. Still, even as she knew what she needed to do now, she took a long breath to gather herself; it was going to be a tricky thing she was planning. But there was no real alternative.

    "Then I suppose I'll need to neutralize you, so that you can't interfere with my attempts to escape."

    Hachigen raised a hand to play with his mustache at that.

    "I suppose that this shall be a chance for me to get back into my teaching role then. We should call it a practical demonstration, I suppose; I must admit it's been a long time since I last had a Kido-only fight. I hope you'll forgive me for saying that I'll enjoy this."

    As complicated as this was going to be, Rukia knew she would enjoy it as well, so she opened the fight with a large circular motion of her arm while shouting "Hado 52, Peacock's Wheel!", the name of her Kido. Using the chant would give the game away too easily, since only apprentices were still limited by it, and while she could convey being on the same level of skill and still cast silently if she went through the full hand-motions, that would be counterproductive.

    Of course, speaking the name of the spells before casting, in addition to slowing the caster down (if just slightly), also made it very easy for an opponent Shinigami, or any hollow who'd faced Kido before, to react in advance, but being able to cast with just one gesture and no words at all was the required threshold to be judged a Master of Kido, and not letting her opponent know how advanced she really was in their shared discipline was key to her plan's success.

    The attack sent a barrage of a dozen beams at Hachigen; the Hado was one of the simplest to master, and once one was able to cast it without chants, the movement could easily be repeated again and again to chain a real multitude of beams one after another, potentially without limit, although for what she needed now Rukia only used it trice. The beams themselves were low powered, but they covered a large area, thus requiring the target to stop them, unless they were so fast as to be able to escape them, which most people weren't.

    Hachigen, it seemed, was not one of the few exception in this, as he raised his hand palm forward in a curt and raising a golden barrier shaped like a ship's prow, deflecting the beams away from both sides and above while still leaving him a path to retreat both backwards and to the sides.

    She decided to take care of that first, shouting "Bakudo 17, Linear Wall!" twice in quick succession, while making the same linear motion with her left hand each time she said the name; each gesture created a very thin but extremely long barrier on each side of Hachigen, each anchored to the very barrier he'd created himself. Due to casting it the way she had, there was a brief window of time between forming the first barrier and forming the second; while Rukia could have created both together by gesturing with opposite hands and only using the name once, that would risk giving the game away, and besides, Hachigen clearly wasn't fast enough to take advantage of it - that's what her first attack had been testing for.

    As he saw the walls rising, her opponent slammed his hands together, his body glowing for two seconds before sending out a pulse of golden light which Rukia recognized as a reiatsu distortion field. The Hado was meant to disrupt lesser Bakudo constructs, a traditional counter in Kido matches, yet Rukia found it interesting he'd use that over a more straightforward option like a powerful blast that'd simply make the walls explode; that suggested either that he favored spatial distortion Kido over other types, or that he couldn't really output the necessary power for the more offensive Hado variants. She needed to know which of the two was the truth, however, so even as he was charging the spell, she made her way to up above it and then called out her next Kido, "Hado 78, Light Waterfall!" as she swiped both hands in front of her in quick succession to form a long line in the sky which then erupted in literal rain of glowing gold energy.

    It was one of the most high-powered Kido in existence, using a sympathetic reaction to turn more and more burning reiatsu at once, being quite true to its name. There was no factor of control to the spell, as it merely started the process of energy production and then leave it running until it exhausted itself, which could take a few minutes; this meant it was only safe to deploy when the caster was in an area that they didn't care about seeing razed to the ground, and a sufficiently powerful but more focused kido could punch through the waterfall to give a way out, but for covering a huge, wide area it was practically perfect.

    As her opponent was now unable to see her, Rukia quickly cast an eyesight enhancing Kido on herself with no more than a tap to the side of her temple - so that she could see through the energy... and what she saw was Hachigen placing his hands over his face, which was then covered by a hollow mask with huge teeth, two huge tusks sprouting from the corners of the mouth, a large mane of feather-shaped yellow bones all around it, and weird eyes that bulged out of the mask's eye-sockets and seemed to have levels of concentric structure to them, instead of the usual glow.

    The mask was what caught the attention immediately, but Rukia could see that, along with it, a paper-thin film had covered the man's body, and underneath it, over said body, was a flow of reiatsu that seemed to originate from the mask; she could see how it made his movements faster and more powerful, but what he used it for instead was a means of propulsion, by willing a single small opening to form on this cover that let the reiatsu erupt out at great pressure and push him forward in a sudden burst of speed. It was so fast that Rukia almost lost him for a moment, and enough to get him out of the area of effect of her light waterfall.

    Rukia guesses that this had to be the power of Visored, covering themselves in hollow's reiatsu and using it to reinforce their spiritual body as well as mimicking Hollow's power; it was a powerful trick, but seeing it with her own eyes, it was clear that it wasn't sustainable. The hollow reiatsu, as it was its wont due to being naturally corrosive, would slowly destroy the soul it was in contact with, and while that wasn't visible to the inexperienced eye due to how much faster it replaced it with itself - making it look like the user was regenerating, much the same hollows would - what it was truly doing was slowly replacing the original soul with the Hollow's. Such a process would likely reverse itself if the connection was broken, but letting it go on for too long would be akin to letting a Hollow ate you alive; which meant that Hachigen would soon need to drop the transformation, and once he did, be unable to recall it for a brief time, to give his soul the time needed to purge the hollow reiatsu from itself.

    So, the moment he stopped from his acceleration - which she also noticed had the clear weakness of only pushing him along a singular line, depending on the direction he'd released the reiatsu in - and removed the mask to take a breath, Rukia raised both her hands together even as she flexed her fingers in a specific order, calling out her next kido before he had time to use the mask for a further boost of speed again.

    "Bakudo 87, Hungry Pillar Cage!"

    Several pillar of glowing light rose from the ground as she gestured and spoke, surrounding the man; the pillars hummed with power, and a careful eye would notice the slow shaking of each pillar, as the energy making them up was slowly rotating on itself. It was a very advanced spell, though enough that a mere disrupting kido like Hachigen had used against the walls wouldn't work against it, while the rotating movement was so that anything touching the pillars would get scoured until destruction by it. And of course, the space between bars was far too small for any Hollow or Shinigami to slip through it.

    Once more, Rukia had forced Hachigen in a situation where he had to choose between a high powered counterattack and a space-warping one, and this time speed would not allow him to avoid making the choice either. He looked at the cage with appreciation, before looking up to Rukia and saying, his tone clearly impressed:

    "This is one of the few Kido I have not really studied enough to be able to use it - I know the theory and what it does, but I wouldn't be able to cast it. How come you decided to learn it?"

    Rukia considered for a moment, then decided to go with the truth, although one coaxed in just the slightest bit of misdirection as she answered:

    "I didn't, not specifically. I've just learned every Kido under 80 in each category, and am on my way to learn the remaining ones; I just happen to have gotten to that already. After all, a Shinigami can compensate for lacking skill by having a wider variety of options."

    The man smiled at that.

    "That is smart thinking, and with such a library, you certainly know vastly more Kido spells than most Captains, I would think."

    Rukia accepted the compliment with a smile, even as she knew that it didn't really mean too much. Due to the sheer amount of Kido in existence - just the Hado ranked between level 50 and 60 of complexity were almost two-hundred in total, and the Bakudo were even more numerous - it would have been impossible to meaningfully rank the ability of Kido users by the spells they'd mastered. Instead, it was the overall ability of using Kido itself, as a process, that mattered the most.

    Kido had been invented by studying Hollows and realizing that their impossibly varied powers were a result of the emotional state at the time of their formation permanently imprinting itself on the Hollow's own reiatsu, and thus that, if one was able to consistently imprint the same particular emotional state over reiatsu properly shaped to be receptive to it, it would reliably reproduce the same result. That was what the names, gestures and chants where for; the chants and names helped the caster to reach the precise emotional state required to produce a certain result, while the gestures were meant to shape the reiatsu properly to receive said emotional imprint correctly, and the three different categories were about which type reiatsu you were working with, whether it be reiatsu recently released from a soul, generally the user's own (Hado), ambient reiatsu lingering in an area (Bakudo), or the reiatsu that was still inside the soul of a creature (Kaido).

    Which meant that, once you were good enough at the shaping, you could leave out more and more of the gestures until only a single hand motion was needed, while as you better learnt how to summon the proper emotional state, you could shorten the chant until you didn't need it any more, and finally leave out the name as well. At which point, you were recognized as a Master of Kido, something required to be nominated Captains... but understanding how to apply the process did not grant you knowledge of every Kido out there. It just meant that, when you were finished spending a couple of months (or more, for those of higher complexity) of intensive study to learn precisely how the Kido worked, you would then immediately be able to use it with only a single gesture and no more complication than that... but most people just didn't have the inclination to devote that much time to learning different Kido, so even Captains, who theoretically had the ability to use any Kido they knew fast enough to be relevant in battle, only tended to know less than a dozen of them.

    Thus, Rukia limited her answer to a satisfied smirk and saying, trying to keep as much smugness out of her voice as possible:

    "I guess they just have more demands on their time; I just don't like not knowing stuff, you know?"

    "I know. Which means you're aware there's some Kido I could use to escape this trap, right?"

    Rukia crossed her arms at that, trying to hide that this was exactly what she wanted as she shot back:

    "That's only if you know any of them, though. Do you?"

    Rather then answer verbally, Hachigen merely twisted his fists together, causing the air around him to ripple and the pillars of light to bend, allowing Hachigen to simply walk out of it, unknowingly giving Rukia the answer she needed. If he could have used a simpler if more powerful Hado, he almost certainly would have in this circumstance, which meant he really wasn't likely to be empowering the spell that had formed this dimensional pocket with some high-powered Kido battery or anything like that; instead, he was almost certainly using something else, related to spatial distortion.

    Now that she had a narrower field to search, it was a matter of getting a sense for what kind of solution he would favor, which meant taking things a step faster and see what Kido he would use if he was under pressure; thus, before he'd even made it out of the cage, she shouted "Hado 37, Golden Bull!", her favorite kido, moving both of her hand into a circle and pushing forward to send the huge sphere of light barreling toward Hachigen.

    Sadly, the half a second wasted on the chant, as well as the fact that it gave her opponent perfect knowledge of what she was doing, give him the time to answer, which he did by countering with the very same Kido she'd used, the two spheres smashing into each other hard enough to sent them bouncing sideways. She frowned even as she made a few horizontal motions with her hands, this time shouting "Hado 58, Squirrel Path!" as a multitude of golden lasers sprouted from her hands, more than the Peacock Wheel would unleash, although these were all in a straight line and thus would be easy to avoid.

    Which was the point; Hachigen dodged easily by kneeling under the attack, but when the beams hit the ground the bounced off of it in different directions, sometimes bouncing on each other to make their own path even more unpredictable; the Visored looked around himself with surprise at the attack, and Rukia fancied perhaps even a bit of awe at the sort of trap she'd sprung on him. He didn't took long to make smile button-hooks motions with his hands to generate small round shields around his figure to bounce the beams back, but Rukia simply grinned, copying the motions as she said "Bakudo 12, Compact Shield" again and again, proceeding to place her shields all around him to redirect the beams back at him and around his improvised defenses.

    Seeing that he wasn't making any headway with that, he once more used a dimensional folding Kido, although a different one from before, further confirming Rukia's read of him, this one being a reactive one that allowed him to straighten up all the beams and make them all head away from him and into the area that was finishing to be ravaged by the Light Waterfall, from which they couldn't bounce out of.

    As far as disengaging tricks went, it was a good one, but even if he'd not spoken the Kido's name and used only the minimal amount of motions possible, Rukia had expected him to use that particular one and recognized he was going through with it the moment he started it, so she'd already started, and fired off another Golden Bull as fast as possible, except that unlike the last, this time she pumped it with as much power as she could manage.

    Empowering Kido was tricky, and something most Shinigami, even in the 13th division, never learned to do. The fact of the matter was that, while the emotional component of each individual Kido was always the same, there was a certain amount of tolerance within the spells themselves for the quantity of reiatsu that could be affected by it. It wasn't much, and for most Kido the different between a upper limit and a minimal required amount manifestation was very small, and thus most Shinigami just settled on an amount that was comfortable for them, and never bothered varying it.

    Rukia wasn't most Shinigami, however, and one of the reasons the Golden Bull was among her favorite Hado to use was that it reacted more noticeably to variations in what reiatsu was used for it, since the Kido itself simply collected energy and arranged it at fully equal distance from a central point. Which resulted in a huge yet empty balloon, kept together until it was punctured but mostly filled with air, and thus much more effective as a low-power, high-impact weapon that pushed targets around rather than as something meant to actually hurt them.

    At maximum power, the Golden Bull was almost the size of a house, and since she'd verified by now that Hachigen didn't have the skill to increase the power of his spells, she knew he would have to either dodge or reveal some more of his space warping capabilities, which Rukia was going to need to know if she was to trap him in something he couldn't just escape from.

    Instead, he reformed the hollow mask on his own face, and then let out a bright red beam that ate through the Kido as it it wasn't even there, and Rukia just let herself drop to the ground to avoid being in the Cero's path. As she fell, she saw her opponent had dismissed his mask as soon as he'd destroyed her Kido with its power, so she just called for "Bakudo 87, Reactive Hungry Pillar Cage!", the raising arm movement the same but the flex of her fingers just slightly different as she called upon a variant of the spell that she'd designed herself.

    Hachigen tried to warp his way through the barrier once again, but the moment the pillars started to twist, they fired out a fusillade of beams that forced him to interrupt his casting; the Visored barely managed to dodge, then looked at the cage with an interested gaze before turning to Rukia.

    "I've never heard of this variant before."

    Rukia shrugged, making sure her pride didn't show at all on her face.

    "You've been away from Soul Society for a long time, and the 13th division is always researching new variants, you know?"

    He nodded, then looked at this cage again and asked:

    "So, you think you've now captured me, and will be able to look for a way to break free from here, right?"

    She crossed her arms, almost feeling curious to see what he would pull to get free of this. He looked around again, and then summoned his hollow mask - except this time, he didn't stop at just the almost invisible layer he'd worn before. Instead, Rukia saw, the mask was outputting far more reiatsu, and rather than keeping it contained around the body, it was being allowed to run free, continuing to erupt as it took the form it would more naturally coalesce into: the body of the Hollow the mask belonged to.

    In Hachigen's case, that was a small, octopus-like hollow, who charged straight at the pillars; the beams struck him and, when he came into contact with the pillars, those started scouring him as well, but as was normal for Hollows, Kido just wasn't effective at counteracting their natural regeneration, as he managed to get out simply by ignoring the damage and forcing his way through.

    Still, just by seeing it happen Rukia could tell that this status was even more damaging than the mask just would be - it would keep the body underneath from being hurt by external force, even making it recover from wounds, but it made the process of being replaced by the hollow that much faster, to the point where Rukia knew he would need to dismiss it even faster than with the mask or risk permanent damage.

    Thus, seeing as it was clear by now that he would make it out of any Bakudo she could cage him into, she decided to try a different tactic, charging in with Shunpo while he recovered from removing the mask, while closing her left fist over the right wrist as she called out "Kaido 72, Thundershock Touch!", which caused her opponent's eyes to snap at her; the number of Shinigami that bothered to learn Kaido other than the healing types, which were over three fourth of the category, were extremely rare, which gave her enough of a surprise element that she was able to smack Hachigen in the face with it before he could dodge out of the way.

    She landed in front of him even as the Visored fell to his knees, shocked by the repeated currents of electricity which flew through him; the Kido was one of the trickiest, feeding on the reiatsu escaping from the user body to feed it back into it converted into electricity. It was almost impossible to counter unless one specifically knew how it worked.

    Which was why it was Rukia's turn to be surprised as Hachigen slowly stopped shaking, and then slowly got up, which allowed her to see how he was actually using the electricity feeding into his body as an energy source... and suddenly, Rukia smiled and asked:

    "I see. You're a Kaido specialist, aren't you?"

    The man chuckled and answered:

    "Indeed I am; in fact, I'm the healer of our little group, none of the others can do anything more than heal small bruises without my help. Well, unless they use the power of their inner hollow for regenerating, that is. You really are brilliant to have figured that out, my dear, although now it's too late; you're already too close to me to get away, and as much as you know, using Kaido in battle is simply unfeasible when you need to call the name of every spell, since that'd just telegraph your attacks and, as you can see, I can counter them if I know they're coming."

    Rukia shook her head, smile widening at that; his confirmation was what she needed, and a glance at the spells holding the pocket dimension together confirmed it to her. She locked eyes with him then, and explained, finally letting her smugness show:

    "You've misunderstood me. What I meant to say was that, if your focus is Kaido, then you would be using something like what you just did to keep your spatial warping spells going; maybe even the very same one I just used on you, collecting the wasted reiatsu and feeding it back into the spell to keep it going?"

    Hachigen's eyes widened at that, final proof that she'd read him correctly. Then his face turned serious and somber as he said, losing the joviality he'd kept for the entire encounter:

    "That is a brilliant deduction, but now I will need to put a serious stop to your actions. I am sorry, but you're leaving me no other choice."

    "No, I only let you think you could; you didn't realize because I made it easy, but I kept you on the back foot the entire battle."

    "What are you talking about?"

    Rukia answer was just a flick of her fingers upwards, and Hachigen found himself trapped into an advanced version of the Hungry Cage she'd used multiple times in the fight, except this one was barely large enough for his body to be contained within. Meanwhile her other hand created a set of strings among the pillars that made it impossible for him to move without smacking into them and being shocked by it, and the very moment he turned into an Hollow to power through them, she immediately poked him through the bars, pushing all of the reiatsu out of him and into the pillars of the cage. He was left astounded at that and then said, fear slowly creeping into his voice:

    "You... you're a Master Kido user too? And that last one... I don't know any of these kido you've trapped me, and they could all be new, but the last one that's just perfect for containing a visored like me and nobody else... did you just create a new Kido on the fly? Who are you?"

    Rukia let a note of apology enter her voice as she answered:

    "I am Rukia Kuchiki, currently fourth seat of the 12th Division, after having refused a promotion to Lieutenant of the 13th; and the progress I've made into mixing multiple Kido together were enough of a breakthrough that Captain Ukitake, Unohana and Aizen all recognized it as something unprecedented in the field of Kido, meaning I'm Soul Society fourth Kido Grandmaster, even if it's not been made official yet. From the very moment you decided to make this a Kido battle, you had no real hope of beating me at all. But I can promise that you will be treated fairly; Hirako Shinji is the only one that will be punished for what happened, we know you're all just his victims. And now, it's time to put an end to this."

    That said, she closed her eyes for a moment, focusing on the two Kido that would better serve her in this situation, and combined them into a new one, slamming a foot into the ground to launch a sudden blast of overcharged reiatsu that would also rip through the dimensional folding, the combination of the two effects causing the spells Hachigen had put up to fail while the ones that were supposed to refuel them and prevent a catastrophic breakdown were overwhelmed and unable to do their job.

    Rukia watched as the scenario around her changed to reflect their return to the mortal realm while feeling a number of new pressures blinking into existence, and felt a moment of satisfaction in herself. She might not have the skill and ability to lead others, but at least she could confirm to herself that, as part of a team she wasn't leading, her contribution was still worthwhile. In this if nothing else she could live up to the expectations and trust that her Captains and Kaien had put in her, and the certainty of it filled her with warmth.

    *****

    Ichigo was looking up at the Soul Reaper Captain with disbelief - he couldn't remember much of what his inner hollow had been doing when it'd been loose, but he had some recollection of the feeling of astounding strength and speed, and yet he also still remembered the hollow's fury at being defeated - when he saw the red cracks spreading through the sky, cutting through the drabness and stillness of the pocket dimension for a few seconds before there was once more the sensation of vertigo as his surrounding warped around him.

    He took a long breath, enjoying the way they air filled his lung in a way it hadn't in the other place, and chuckled as a sudden gust of wind ruffled his hairs, the hand behind him grasping at grass that felt dirty and wet instead of fake. He could see a lot of people in the park now, and as he expanded his spiritual sense he confirmed what his eyes were telling him - that everybody was back with him.

    Ichigo looked up at the disbelieving Captain, and then told him, with a smirk:

    "It seems that I have some hope left after all, Hirako Shinji, don't you think?"

    The blonde Captain let out a long sigh, shaking his head as he answered:

    "It really doesn't matter that the rest of your team is with you now - I can take down all of you myself, I just really didn't want to have to. But circumstances being what they are, I shall. Starting with you, of course."

    "How about, no?"

    Hirako stilled in whatever he'd been about to do, his eyes going to the female voice that Ichigo didn't recognize, coming from behind him; before he could check who it belonged to, he felt a friendly hand ruffling his hairs, and then the figure come into sight, revealing a stunning woman with black skin and wearing an dark orange over-shirt over a black undershirt and pants, a large beige scarf around her neck that matched the large belt around her waist and dark hairs collected into a ponytail.

    Hirako took a step back at the sight, and for the first time since he'd met him, Ichigo saw fear show into his eyes as he murmured "Yoruichi..." while the woman patted Ichigo's head once more and said, her tone and posture both brimming with absolute confidence:

    "Good job, Ichigo; I'll take care of the rest now."
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Visord Ichigo! Much more straight-forward this time around, though I note Shinji seems to be assuming the Hollow to be centuries old based off his power. Unfortunate, given how Ichigo was empowering him? I think? Not entirely sure which is annoying, I didn't see the episodes explaining who THAT GUY was, so I don't have that much of a clue who he is/was.

    Rukia on the hand, it was amusing to see her trying to hold back her own smug, and I suppose that's the kind of thing that would be a solid confidence booster- that she is indeed a GrandMaster by definition, if not offically recognized (Which sounds like she's just one glorious TRANSFIX CREATION away from being deemed as such.) At least until the end where she got to fully display her rightfully accumulated ego.

    Aaand now Yoruchi is here. And Shinji is going 'oh crap not this, not now.' Let's hope that he's also the type to go quietly...
     
    Zaealix said:
    if not offically recognized
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    She's not yet been recognized as such because Aizen is holding back on reporting the results of his examination, which he's doing at Rukia's request because, if it was made public, she thinks she'd not be able to refuse the promotion Ukitake wants to foist off on her anymore. Aizen mentioned it during their discussion a few chapters ago.

    It will be revealed eventually that a Grandmaster could potentially be made Captain without having Bankai, since those are the grounds by which Kenpachi is Captain in this continuity (he's a Zanjutsu Grandmaster), so Rukia has all the reason to worry that it being made public knowledge would be the final nail in the coffin of her effort to not be given a command position.

    I have plans for Ichigo's inner hollow which will be severely divergent from what its actual origin story was in canon, but those will be revealed in due time and, unlike the above, I don't feel comfortable putting that surprise under spoiler.
     
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    Chapter 23: Skill
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 23: Skill​

    Hirako shook his head.

    "I rather think there's no need for that; I'll just be taking my leave and say we can call this a draw. No need to get violent, right?"

    Yoruichi's smile turned quite predatory as she answered, voice getting threatening:

    "Oh, you wish. Rukia, now!"

    Rukia appeared right next to Ichigo, a fat guy with a pink mustache hovering behind her inside a golden crystal prison while wrapped into strings between pillars of light, and as she did, she nodded to Yoruichi and made a long, complicated motion with her arms, before spreading them over her head in a movement as if she was throwing rice around; and as she did, everybody could feel the sudden pulse of power washing over the park, which caused Hirako to frown and ask, seeming confused:

    "What's that?"

    Yoruichi glanced at Rukia, as if giving her the chance to explain, and she took it with a smug smile as she answered:

    "It's a set of trap mines; damage them, touch them, or even get close enough, and you'll be trapped. Maybe not long enough to hold a Captain, but long enough for Captain Yoruichi to catch up to you. And since they're not sentient, your Bankai won't let you trick their senses the way it would if you dove into a crowd, allowing you to escape in the chaos and confusion. I've been working on this one for a while, just to stop you."

    "Ah. That's... unfortunate."

    Hirako grimaced, before refocusing on Yoruichi with annoyance on his face.

    "So, it was you hounding me the whole time, not Aizen? I really hoped you'd manage to see through his and Urahara's deception by now."

    "You really should stop touting that line out. Aizen isn't the type to betray anyone, and Urahara is a friend and never would. Besides, I saw you turning your current followers into Vizards with my own eyes - I'm not sure how you managed to make them believe it was Aizen's work, but you can't fool me."

    He put an hand to his temples, massaging them as if to head off an headache.

    "I've told you already back then, that's not what was going on, Aizen staged that whole thing, I just don't know how!"

    "Right. And next you're gonna be telling me that, when Gin managed to have me exiled for having tried to prove he was helping you, that was Aizen's doing too?"

    Hirako looked surprised at that, then relieved for a moment.

    "If Gin took my side against you, that means he, at least, doesn't believe I'm guilty; it's good to know I've at least one friend left in the Gotei. He always did was a good boy, very idealistic."

    Yoruichi raised her eyebrows at that, as if disbelieving he would even say something like that.

    "You're still gonna pretend your spy didn't keep you in constant contact with him, and that's not how you managed to keep evading us?"

    "...I really have no idea what you're talking about. Which spy?"

    Yoruichi let out a long, annoyed breath.

    "I suppose it was a long shot anyway to hope you would make a misstep and reveal your spy's identity. I'll just capture you, and we'll get the truth out of you once we have you unable to escape."

    Then, between one heartbeat and the next, Yoruichi was moving, darting forward toward Hirako, who for his own darted backwards and upwards himself while running a hand over his face to call forth his mask again. The increase in speed as he did was visible to the naked eye, and yet Yoruichi still managed to reach him, her arm turning into what looked like some sort of scaled gauntlet with claws that Hirako managed to parry with his sword, although the sheer impact sent him flying... while Yoruichi, Ichigo realized with shock, had not been cut, the scales covering her arm looking completely unblemished, despite having just smacked into the edge of Hirako's sword.

    The man himself, meanwhile, taking advantage of the distance, made a gesture with his arms and what looked like a multitude of sword-sized needles flew out of him toward Yoruichi, much to dense for her to parry, yet instead of dodging out of the way, she stood her ground - however that applied when being midair - merely scoffing... before suddenly disappearing as the needles went through the place where she'd been standing. The very moment the last of the needles was past her position, she reappeared exactly where she'd been standing before, as if she'd not moved at all, with a grin on her face that communicated how little that kind of attack had worried her.

    Still, it seemed Hirako hadn't actually been hoping to hit her with it in the first place, as instead he'd spun his sword into his hand as he called out, loudly:

    "Collapse, Sakanade!"

    The sword transformed in a flash, the pommel at the end of its red handle turning into a silver circle far larger than the hourglass crossguard, while the blade straightened somewhat, while five holes formed along its length. Next to Ichigo, Rukia frowned and commented:

    "That's gonna make things harder. His Shikai allows him to mess with perceptions - now Captain Yoruicihi will need to fight him without looking at the sword at all, else it'll mess with her sight; if she perceives an attack coming from the left when it's coming from the right or something else like that, she could get hurt."

    Ichigo frowned, eyes focused on Yoruichi's grin, which had just grown larger.

    "She doesn't seem worried about that."

    Yet, something was strange about Yoruichi; while she did look the same - her arm also having reverted back to its early normal look, no longer looking scaled and provided with claws - there was something different. He frowned, trying to pick up if it was some details he was missing, before he realized he was being an idiot. While his eyes were helping interpret the information, it was his spiritual sense that let him actually perceive what was going on; he just needed to refocus his senses on what was going on. He sent out a pulse of energy at its thinnest, to give it more range and penetration, and this time, when it came back, tried to focus it through his eyes rather than merely letting his brain interpret it - and what he got was that there was a shell over her body; he wondered how that could help her.

    Then Yoruichi charged forward, and he could see that the way she was using Shunpo was on another level from how he or Rukia did - instead of merely lightening her body and lengthening the amount of space her steps were covering, almost the entirety of her lower body seemed to almost dissolve in a haze, reform in the furthermost point her feet were into, only do dissolve and reform again at the new furthermost point, and that all while continuing to also move forward herself. The level of control she had to be capable of keeping over her body to avoid it simply dissolving into pieces with such loose connections while also moving it about was well beyond what Ichigo even thought possible, and that was without considering that she was also using Hakuda to propel herself further with what looked like microscopic explosions propelling forward her every step, almost as if she had miniature rockets attached to her feet. And the way she was doing it, almost relaxed, made Ichigo suspect she could pull even more tricks, were she to need more speed, were she to be facing a faster opponent.

    As it was, despite how much faster than Ichigo himself Hirako had been, Yoruichi was on him literally before Ichigo could blink, and as she went to strike, he saw weird, huge blade-like claws sprouting from her fingers, almost as large as her entire hand was. Hirako reacted by striking upwards with his blade, as if to impale Yoruichi's arm, even as she formed half a gauntlet like the one she'd had before - and that was when Ichigo realized it wasn't armor, it really was just scales, formed out of the coat superimposed to her skin morphing into it - on the wrong side of the arm... only for the blade to bounce off of it, while Yoruichi's claw hit straight into Hirako's chest, leaving a gouge in it.

    It took him a moment to understand - he was under the power of Hirako's shikai as well, and he'd seen the sword move from the opposite side because of it, but Yoruichi had somehow been able to tell, and parry properly. Even as he realized this, he watched her dodge a counterattack by moving her head back at such an angle it should have broken but didn't, her neck somehow turned more flexible, then strike with a kick at Hirako's shin when he tried to retreat, the leg turning into a octopus tentacle to wrap around the leg, locking him in place as Yoruichi smashed her forehead into Hirako's mask, which survived the impact without breaking even though, at the last moment, the woman's hairs had turned into the curled horns of a ram, giving the hit much more power behind the impact.

    And as she smiled at it, her eyes flickering for a moment to gold with a twisted pupil before resetting in their normal hazel, Ichigo had a sudden epiphany.

    "She's using her shikai."

    Rukia looked surprised at the comment, and answered, frowning:

    "I don't think so? One of the things Captain Yorouichi is famous for is that she's the only Captain who can fight barehanded against people wielding Zanpakuto; in fact, I don't think I've ever seen her use her sword at all, not even carrying it around, but that's sort of standard procedure for the 2nd Division, as it helps with stealth. And it's not like I've ever seen her fight seriously anyway, at least until today."

    Ichigo, however, had little doubt that was what was going on - Yoruichi's shikai was like a second skin she was wearing, that transformed as she needed it and which, most importantly, was acting as a filter between her senses and the external world. By having the sword see things on her behalf, she was able to ignore the confusing effects of Hirako's power, and since her very skin was actually her zanpakuto, she could sharpen and harden it in the same way Hirako could his, allowing her to keep him at bay easily.

    And of course, he realized after he saw her suddenly grow a whip-like tail like that of a rat, but with a scorpion's stinger erupting from its end right as it smacked Hirako in the chest, it was also how she maintained her cat disguise and kept the blade itself hidden - the sword power had to be to transform into animals, apparently not just in full but also in portions.

    For all that her attacks all seemed to miss at first to Ichigo's eyes, it was soon evident that Yoruichi was actually hitting with every attack she made, while all of Hirako's strikes were either missing or parried; she was overwhelming him with a mix of the quickness of her strikes, using her advanced Shunpo to the fullest, and very reactive use of her shikai to morph her body as needed to ensure her attacks hit and those of her opponent missed, with tentacles, claws, stings, spines and all manners of scales acting as armor appearing on her body as needed to keep up the pressure.

    Clearly seeing that he was not going to beat her, Hirako suddenly stopped defending himself, letting a strike with a tail hardened with Hakuda to pierce him straight through his guts in order to grab him, pinning his faster opponent in place just long enough get off a twirling gesture with his hand, creating a cage to trap Yoruichi in. Then he jumped backwards, grimacing as he placed a hand on the point where blood was flowing freely from his wound, making the hand and wound grow for a moment; Ichigo saw that it was slowing the blood loss, but compared to the healing Rukia had showed him after their first fight, where she'd patched herself up from being impaled, it was clearly a pretty pathetic effort.

    Of course, he didn't seem to need it, as his regeneration quickly caught up to the slack, as Hirako glared to were Yoruichi was watching him from behind bars, an amused smirk on her lips. She tapped one of the bars experimentally with a claw she'd grown on her finger, causing sparks to come off of it, and then looked up to him with a grin as she said:

    "Is this really the best cage you could come up with? You really should brush up on your kido, this will only last for ten minutes."

    He let out a laboured breath, then answered, sounding annoyed:

    "As if you could do any better, you know just as little Kido as I do. In fact, didn't you said once you only knew a handful of Bakudo? At least I have a couple Hado and Kaido tricks as well."

    Yoruichi nodded, completely unfazed, and when she answered there was clear arrogance in her tone.

    "Well, I am good enough with Hakuda and Hoho to make up for that; you, on the other hand, are pretty patethic, so looking for ways to get better should be your priority."

    Hirako glared, the expression clearly visible despite his mask, then visibly mastered himself and said, clearly fed up with the discussion:

    "Right, I'll be looking to do that, thanks for the suggestion. Meanwhile, keeping you trapped for ten minutes will be enough for me to escape, so if you'll excuse me..."

    As he spoke, Yoruichi raised an eyebrow in polite disbelief, and before he could finish speaking, she turned into a dragonfly, flying through the bars in a fraction of a moment - apparently, Ichigo saw, she had no problem at all using Shunpo even when her body was lacking proper limbs - to return at her human form once out of it as she said, amused:

    "You seriously thought that was gonna hold me? As I was saying, you'll need something better than that if you want to do it."

    "So I will. Alright then."

    There was no visible movement from Hirako, yet his body seemed to explode as reiatsu started to pour out of his form, solidifying in a moment into a hollow-like one. His upper body was bug-like, a hardened carapace with two thin, segmented limbs that ended in hands sprouting to the sides, the right one still holding his zanpakuto. Small, membrane-like wings vibrating at impossibly high frequencies sprouted from his back, and in place of a lower body there were what looked like seven separate tails, each one long, thick and tapering into a sharp point at its end, and each covered with what looked like hundreds of long, thin and needle-likes quills like a porcupine would have.

    Yoruichi didn't waste any time to study him, instead charging at him immediately, clearly planning to take him down before he could do much with his new transformation.

    Hirako counterattacked by slashing with his tails repeatedly, showing absolute control over each one, and each time he did, all of the quills on the tail were flung forward as a hail of projectiles. It was pretty much the same as the attack he'd used when opening the fight against Yoruichi, except that, since he had so many tails and each one regenerated the fire quills pretty quickly, he was keeping up an endless barrage of these attacks, lashing out with them withing stopping. Despite this, the attack didn't even slew Yoruichi down, as she turned into a fly - and Ichigo realized that this was how she'd evaded the first attack at the beginning of the battle - and then charged forward like it, once again mixing Shunpo and Hakuda to accelerate to a speed matching a bullet in less than a second.

    Even at such a diminutive size, one or two of the needles still managed to end up in Yoruichi's path, but instead of slowing down or stopping to dodge, she barreled forward without pause, using an Hakuda variant that Ichigo wouldn't have thought possible as she mixed the feeling of relaxation that turned reiatsu into a flowing water-like liquid with the rage that would ignite it like fire, resulting in what seemed like an armor of liquid fire surrounding her body that allowed her to simply melt her way through any of the giant needles that she needed to, moving through them without even slowing down.

    Still, the fact he could fire his needles just by using his tails left Hirako free to use his free hand to use Kido, which he did to summon what looked like solid, large slabs of glowing light, enough to form a veritable wall that Yoruichi slammed straight into as she got past the onslaught of needles.

    The golden substance seemed to slow down her advance for a moment, clearly giving in to her initial advance only to harden more and more as she proceeded through it, but then she suddenly grew herself into an elephant, literally bursting the wall apart as her still running coat of liquid fire burned away any pieces of the barrier that had stuck to her, while the sheer impact from her size change broke the rest apart.

    Still, the mix of obstacles had given Hirako enough time to spin his sword in front of himself once more in a complex pattern, calling out "Erupt, Sakanade!" as he unleashed his Bankai.

    Visually, the only difference in the sword from its Shikai state was that the metal had changed from silvery to a blazing pink, and that now two more, smaller rings sprouted from the two ends of the hourglass shaped crossguard; in addition to that, pink smoke was slowly coming from the five holes along the blade's body, which trailed after it as Hirako moved it in front of himself into a guard position as Yoruichi darted forward.

    Her punch slammed into the sword with a sound like thunder, causing a lot of pink smoke to erupt out of the sword, then she grinned as electricity erupted from her fist, discharging onto the entirety of Hirako's body even as Yoruichi was fully unhurt by it. Ichigo could see she'd actually focused it so that her knuckles, the only place on her body the lightning was touching, were covered by a thin coat of reiatsu that was clearly isolating her from it somehow, even if he didn't know which sort of emotion would achieve that effect, but Hirako clearly had no ability to do the same, as the lightning erupted all over his body, the continuous damage fighting with his hollow regeneration as more and more of his flesh regrew only to be burned away by the electric currents that continued to ravage his body without pause.

    It was clear that Yoruichi wasn't planning of letting on with the attack until her opponent was incapable of moving at all, but then the pink smoke overflowing from the sword seemed to take a life of its own, suddenly exploding forward toward Yoruichi, forcing the woman to dart backwards to avoid it, finally interrupting her attack and giving Hirako the time he needed to recover for a moment.

    As soon as he was no longer being seized by continuous convulsion from pain, the pink mist reshaped itself around Hirako in the form of a large sphere, making it impossible to approach him without going through it. The mist obstructed Ichigo's view somewhat, but even so he could tell that, much as Hirako's regeneration was slowly removing the damage Yoruichi had inflicted on him, his body was still scorched horribly by electric burns all over and many plumes of dark smoke were raising from the most charred of his flesh and mixing with the mist.

    Yoruichi shook her head, taking in Hirako's defense as if intimidated by it not at all, and said:

    "You're no better at controlling the hollow now than you were last time; all it does is make it so you can take a couple serious hits, but that's not going to win you this fight, Shinji. Your Bankai couldn't stop me then and won't now either, and you've no trick left, nor anything I couldn't beat. Give up, and I won't make this as painful as it would be otherwise."

    Hirako let out a long, raspy chuckle at that, his voice clearly broken by pain in addition to being distorted due to how he was releasing his hollow.

    "If you're... so sure... about that... then come... and we shall see.. whether I have... any tricks left."

    Yoruichi shook her head in disappointment, then her head turned into that of a turtle, and she took an extremely long breath before clamping her newly acquired beak shut and diving into the pink mist. Ichigo noticed that the head wasn't all that she'd done: her skin changed colour, going from dark brown to a full black dappled white, clearly fully insulating her body from any need for transpiration at all, and once again she had grown claws on her fingers, although this time they seemed smaller and thinner, unlike any Ichigo had seen before.

    Hirako turned to use his tails in a parry, smacking Yoruichi's attack around; however, she used Hakuda for a split-second at the moment of impact, causing it to extend well past the end of her fingers while also turning both steel-like with control and burning with range at the same time, with the result that the two tails who'd done the parry were severed by it as if burning hot metal blades just cut through them with the ease that would be expected to have.

    Even as she did, her other hand went straight for Hirako's head, but just before the strike would hit, he moved to the side with such unexpected quickness and suddenness that her attack whiffed, as Ichigo saw that he'd somehow pushed reiatsu out of his body to accelerate himself to the side, dodging without moving or any tell for Yoruichi to note and counter. It was in fact enough of a surprise for him to strike with his sword at her, and even as Ichigo saw her moving to dodge, his arm had another sudden acceleration, clearly using the same trick as before to push his arm forward faster than it would otherwise be able to move at.

    But while the strike hit, it did not actually hurt Yoruichi. The moment the tip of the blade reached her skin, she used Hoho to once more spread all of the reishi so far apart that all Hirako struck was the reiatsu in between, which parted for it so that he cut none of it; then, without returning her body back to normal but rather still maintaining the Hoho, Yoruichi turned the reiatsu the sword had hit into a sticky and magnetic substance, locking the blade in place, while the outer layers turned hard as rock in determination to prevent it from being retreated. Then a kick, but with her feet turned into a hoof for superior impact power, slammed into Hirako, sending him flying while, by pulling her arm back, Yoruichi ripped the zanpakuto from his hand, before flinging it away behind herself as she once more charged forward at Hirako.

    The visored waved his hands in front of himself, and Ichigo realized he was shedding what were looking like small spheres of reishi, none greater than a small marble, as if the hollow was shedding parts of its own body, holding them on its hands. Just as Yoruichi was close enough, he once more unleashed a burst of reiatsu, but rather than using it to move his own body, it erupted from his hands to shoot them out at his opponents fast as bullets. They still weren't fast enough to actually hit Yoruichi, as she moved her arm, suddenly armored with scales that had been coated with steel-hard reiatsu, to interpose itself; however, rather than bouncing off, the marbles all exploded with the power of grenades, and Ichigo realized Hirako had been filled with reiatsu as he created them, in much the same way as Ishida's Ginto worked.

    While the explosions looked powerful, they didn't get past Yoruichi's defense, but did stop her, which was apparently all Hirako had needed, as he waved his tails afterwards, causing all of the quills he'd fired before, which had scattered all over the ground, to suddenly fly upwards and back, almost all of them converging on Yoruichi from everywhere for a multidirectional attack impossible to dodge, while a few managed to lift Hirako's Zanpakuto and lead it back to his hand.

    Yoruichi transformed into a turtle as the needles converged on her position, retreating all of her limbs inside the shell just before forming the armor of liquid fire surrounding her entire body once more. The quills melted as soon as they impacted her, but due to the omnidirectional nature of the attack, they were kept on her body as a super-heated slag as more and more of it added up over it, while Hirako watched in silence as he kept up the attack, shooting new needles from his own body as all the ones he'd spread across the battlefield before were slowly used up.

    Even as the attack continued, if lowering intensity now that he had to create more needles himself instead of relying on the preexisting ones, Hirako growled, sounding angry:

    "You really forced my hand here, Yoruichi; of course I did learn a few tricks over a century, I just didn't want to use them because I was hoping to solve this without any deaths. I'm not going to run out of ammo here, and the regeneration will take care of my wounds eventually. You can't win."

    "That's a lie."

    Hirako, and Ichigo as well, turned to Rukia, who smiled smugly even as she glared at the Visored.

    "You can only control the needles telepathically when you're in this fully released form, and you can't keep this up forever; you might have the Hollow under control, but it still hurts you to use its power. I bet that's why you're asking Captain Yoruichi to give up, because you're nearing your limit, isn't it?"

    "No. You might be right that I have a limit, but it's not so short that I'm running out of it yet; she'll tire before I do, endurance was never her strong suit. And she has no counters left."

    Just as Hirako finished saying that, suddenly the molten slag covering Yoruichi erupted into a blast of overheated rock aimed straight at Hirako, whose eyes widened in disbelief as he was forced to suspend his attack to dodge the one directed at him. The stream moved after the Visored as he continued to escape until Yoruichi was completely free from it all, and as he watched, Ichigo realized how she had done it - she'd let as much slag accumulate as her reinforced body could support without harm, before turning a small portion of it to be repulsive while using the rest to funnel it to the repulsive spot, turning into a sort of high-pressure cannon.

    Once she was fully free from the results of Hirako's attack, Yoruichi turned back to her previous turtle-headed configuration as she charged at the Visored again; he defended himself by shooting powerful streams of pink smoke straight at Yoruichi, but she dodged most and headed head-straight into those that it would slow her too much to dodge, clearly still holding her breath from before without any reduction in her combat capabilities.

    This time, as she closed on Hirako, she was ready for his accelerated dodges and attacks, and while he did manage to dodge far more than he had at the beginning, and even managed to land a few hits back, he couldn't really interrupt her offensive, and even what hit he did get in didn't seem to really hurt Yoruichi, judging from how little she reacted to them. All that he was managing to do, quite clearly, was delaying Yoruichi's clearly unavoidable victory.

    Something which the female Captain clearly became annoyed with as, suddenly, she switched from her normal size to that of a squirrel to dodge an attack, getting within Hirako's guard to then swing a two-handed smashing hit from overhead into his face, turning into an elephant, if one with elephant-sized human hands and a turtle head, just as the hit connected, which it did with a suddenly mix of electricity and fire at the point of impact that created a titanic explosion upon hitting. Hirako plummeted to the ground, body wrapped in dark smoke, and cratered the park's ground as he smashed into it.

    Yoruichi landed a few moments later, while Hirako slowly made his way out of the crater on his knees, coughing and breathing heavily; he was back into his human form, not even with the Hollow mask on anymore, but it seemed being in the released state had him protected enough that he only looked like he'd been through a very heavy beating, battered and bruised, rather than burnt, cut up and bleeding the way he would be if the wounds taken in his hollow form had translated properly to his human one.

    He looked up from the ground to where Yoruichi was standing with her fists on her sides, glaring down at him and back into a fully human form as she said, sounding very annoyed:

    "Do you want more? Because I'm ready to keep going if that's what it'll take. Do you have any tricks left you want me to prove are useless?"

    Hirako chuckled at that, and then answered, tired:

    "Just the one."

    Then, suddenly and before anybody could react, he flickered his arm, sending what looked like long sticks of white wood into the air. Yoruichi immediately darted back from them, avoiding them easily, only for Hirako to reveal it wasn't an attack as he pulled out something else from his other sleeve, a small orb that looked like it was made of pure darkness, roiling in shadows while somehow keeping itself in the shape of a perfect sphere. He pointed it to the sticks, his eyes narrowing and going black for a moment, before lines of black energy appeared between the orb and the sticks for a fraction of a second, with a flash of darkness that had everybody feeling blind for just one moment, and then each of the sticks broke, spiderwebs cracks forming over their surface for a brief moment before they exploded, each one revealing a different hollow.

    Yoruichi glanced at that with barely disguised contempt as the creatures which seemed to be reorienting themselves after being released, before she turned her gaze back at Hirako, disappointment showing clearly within it.

    "Really? Is this rabble all that you can-"

    Her sented was interrupted as a different sound propagated through the park, and looking up, Ichigo saw a rip opening in the sky, not unlike he'd experienced back at Orihime's house, except this time it didn't stop at a single hollow, as more and more continued to fall from the sky; it was so many, he was still trying to count them when a mournful howl echoed through the area, and the rip in the sky grew as an hollow unlike any other he'd ever seen before appeared. The monster was huge, as tall as a skyscraper but far larger and solid, with no visible legs and a body that more resembled a huge cowl wrapped around it, except for arms so large that Ichigo was smaller than a finger on the hands at the end of them. Even its mask was strange, being more humanoid than the bestial ones he was used to, with a long hooked nose and prominent teeth being its only features, and in place of the normally glowing eyes most hollow sported, this one had merely a dark void within its deep eye-socket; yet somehow, the emptiness there was more haunting and scary then the pure hatred from normal hollows ever had been.

    At his side, he could feel Rukia go stock still, murmuring "Menos Grande...", but perhaps the scariest thing of all was that Yoruichi had completely refocused her attention from Hirako to the titanic creature.

    And for the first time since Ichigo had met her, she looked genuinely worried.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • So, I guess in this fic, if Yoruichi is worried about a Menos, the Vasto Lorde are Captain-Killers who require multiple released Bankai to beat?
     
    néocorvinus said:
    So, I guess in this fic, if Yoruichi is worried about a Menos, the Vasto Lorde are Captain-Killers who require multiple released Bankai to beat?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    It'll be explained in detail in the next chapter, but to summarize, for this story Menos Grande and Vasto Lorde are on the same level of power; the Menos Grande are mindless but with more versatility, while the Vasto Lorde are intelligent but with a more focused powerset to make up for it. The Vasto Lorde are the greater threat, since they know how to use the power they have, but in terms of sheer destructive capability, they are more or less equal.

    Keep in mind that, as I mentioned before (see the Informational threadmark), I have no Adjucas in this story - it goese Base Hollow > Menos Grande > Vasto Lorde. Having only three steps to the ladder makes it easier to scale things to make more sense.
     
    Yoruchi:I'll dance through the danger!
    ...
    To explain, Yoruchi apparently has Shantae-like transformations as her sword power, and actually has a sword albeit one in the Ichigo school of full-time released shikai.

    shinji's Hollow was...Eh? Cool trick with needles he can scatter before converging on a foe which sounds right for a cautious personality. I'd say it's the trouble of a bad match-up for undercover cop Captain.
    His poor shikai :(

    Aaaand there's that Menos Grande/hollow invasion scenario Ishida kicked off in canon!
     
    Zaealix said:
    To explain, Yoruchi apparently has Shantae-like transformations as her sword power, and actually has a sword albeit one in the Ichigo school of full-time released shikai.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Her Shikai is actually an item on her person, but she's dressed specifically so that it is hidden from sight.

    I mean, in canon she's the only person to have a weird power like transforming into a cat that is completely unexplained in any way, AND her shikai is never revealed at all, not even hinted at. And every other character who's not hollow or using silly science gadgets has such unique powers justified with "it's their Shikai" (fullbringer for the non-shinigami). It just seemed like the most logical way to make things make sense, that Yoruichi's unique power too should be the result of her Shikai... I just made sure that it was actually well suited to a barehanded fighter. I even had Hiyori foreshadow that "transformation type Shikai" were a thing, in the hope that'd make it a more palatable surprise.

    Or at least, that was the thought process. Did it work, or did it felt too silly?
     
    Nah, I actually mistook crazy chimera transformations as some kind of stupid advanced Hoho? Haho? Flash-Step skill tree mixed with Emotion-Magic Power shenanigans at first until I realized it was more literal.
    And once Ichigo spelled it out, I kind of understand the spread Yoru displayed.
    Fly is Speed but can Bullet right through you.
    Elephant is Power with some ability to tank through size.
    Turtle is pure Defence, though that zipping head strike is a thing in it's own right.
    And when not using focused transformations Yoruchi's like a Battletoad, with the uhh, Buster-Moves? I forget what those big attacks they did as a finisher were called...
     
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    More or less, yeah; although Yoruichi's favourite is, of course, the cat family of transformations, which she uses for agility, and in general she can turn into any animal she wants. The power is versatile enough, and she good enough at using it, that it's very hard for her to run out of options - which makes her a very difficult opponent to beat in direct confrontation.
     
    ...My attention was drawn back to this thread due to being like-bombed, and I revisted that Tatsuki issue.
    I think she's going to end up demonstrating/introducing Mod Souls somehow, and that's going to be the X factor that 'completes' her.
    I imagine the idea is 'Tatsu you literally blew yourself up, like in multiple pieces blew yourself up. You're only okay because I, Urahara Kisuke, am a GENIUS! And also can reverse Time. That helped. But once Yoruchi saw you blew yourself up, she agreed with me that you cannot be trusted to fight anymore. Not until you get good.'
    So we whipped this special seal up for you!
    It's half-armor so you don't get hurt next time, half- auto pilot because you like playing suicide bomber. All you have to do is activate it is try to use your powers! And that's the catch- do anything with your spiritual powers and it activates. You don't get control back until it decides the threats are eliminated or that you are safe.'
    'So I'm just stuck in a tin-can suit forever!?'
    'There's an on-board combat simulation suite that's varied and diverse, that Kana girl volunteered her own experiences to help fill it just to be sure that, and I quote 'that trainee isn't going to bring suffering to her family from being insane.' The idea being if you can clear ALL the trials inside it WITHOUT losing any of the fights, you should be good enough to cut it in reality. Maybe. Until then, enjoy the video games!'
    ...
    So yeah, why Mod Souls?
    Hollow Tatsu is tempting but doesn't feel quite right given she's probably at least going to get plot-armored, in the sense that she seems all too likely to massively drag down the plot if she becomes a self-made casualty, between her friends being depressed, Rukia in particular goes right back to square one with her therapy, and also I don't think becoming a Hollow long-term ends with anything other then Tatsu getting buried by someone and sent to reincarnate in SS.

    Meanwhile, while Tatsu COULD survive with no real changes this seems like as good a point as any for her to go under the knife, and I don't really dig the idea of her getting a Fullbringer Weapon of some stripe or a Shinigami Zanpaktou since the former just makes her a lamer Chad while the latter leaves her still 'competing' with Ichigo which drives her to do the Meteor Fist again and blow herself up. Besides, it kind of feels like Tatsu hits hard enough, and is fairly mobile, she just can't take hits well nor does she have a proper thing to truly tie her powerset together. So, needs...A Something, but not really a Weapon. Armor maybe? Some sort of Kido Wand or Quincy Bow so she can Cast Fist at a distance instead of moving into stabbing range?
    I'd say something like 'shady drugs' but uhh...Tatsu's already rocking the forbidden technique style of 'power that hurts herself', so that's ruled out. And dedicated healer Tatsu, while possible and funny, seems like it'd just go over with her like patronizing.
     
    You are not wrong, but you are also not right... still, it's some interesting speculation. :)

    As I said, I really feel that, once I reveal what's in store for Tatsuki, the reaction from you readers will be along the line of "oh, of course". You are right that what Tatsuki needs is something that'll allow her to actually take hits (including the ones she inflicts herself) and something to give her a trump card when needed, instead of having to resort to self-destruction to win her battles.

    My particular choice for this is also tied very deeply with what I want the theme of the story to be - but I don't think that'll help, since I doubt the theme will be clear until at least the end of the Soul Society arc.
     
    Clearly Tatsuki is going to become a Bount, because those are OBVIOUSLY a thing in this continuity. /s

    Real talk, OP, this is a great fic, and I'm glad I was able to find it through this site. You've done an excellent job of "making sense" of Bleach without disrupting its emotional core - as a Shonen, at least - or making it more explanation- and infodump-heavy than canon was. I'd be excited to see where you take Kubo's wild ride from here :)
     
    Chapter 24: Menos
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 24: Menos​

    Yoruichi turned to glare at Hirako with anger visible in everything, from her face to her posture to her voice.

    "Are you mad? Don't you realize how much destruction that thing is gonna cause?"

    He looked completely dumbfounded by that.

    "This wasn't my plan, I didn't call that thing here!"

    "So what? This is just the danger of using hollows as weapons, especially when you can't even control them all!"

    "What?"

    She shook her head in disgust, then turned to Rukia and Ichigo and said in a serious tone:

    "We're in trouble now. I can take the Menos, it'll be an hard fight but I should be able to drive it away at the very least, if not taking it out; or I could use my Bankai to take out all of the rabble, but they're all spread out and distant from one another. Either is easy, but will also take me a good amount of time, and we can't let either the Menos Grande or the individual hollows go rampaging around while I'm taking out the other one."

    Ichigo frowned at that and asked, perplexed:

    "Couldn't you just use your Bankai to take out the big guy alongside all the small fry?"

    Yoruichi shook her head.

    "Not really; I could try, but it'd almost certainly backfire. My Bankai is more of a debilitating effect than a killing one; it leaves most normal enemies completely helpless, but for a Menos in particular, a feral creature which only follows instinct, I might well just end up making it more dangerous instead."

    Even as she said this, the giant creature waved an arm, generating a gust of wind that flattened several of the smallest trees in the part, while those strong enough to withstand it creaked dangerously from the strength of it. The arm, it turned out, was used to snatch one of the hollows that were falling from the sky, which the Menos Grande then proceeded to throw into its own mouth, swallowing it whole before letting out another long, chillingly mournful howl like its previous one.

    Ichigo focused on the trees, considering what that said about the monster's strength, and then he had an idea.

    Don't. It's a stupid idea.

    He couldn't help but feel guilty at Sode No Shirayuki's chastising of him, even as he inwardly argued with her that this time they had a much better reason for it, a much better grasp of the results, and even a way to prevent things from getting out of hand.

    It is nevertheless very risky... but I can sense I'm not going to talk you out of it. Even still, on your own you will do nothing. Ask Rukia's opinion, and should she agree, I'll help you with it.

    He lost no time at all in posing his question, addressing Yoruichi and Rukia both.

    "If I had a way to keep him focused on something, trying to keep it focused on a single target which he couldn't easily destroy, would that help?"

    Yoruichi looked at Ichigo with surprise, then turned contemplative as she answered:

    "It might. Depending on how long you could keep him distracted, I'd have the time to clean up the rabble and then take the fight to it in earnest. Are you confident you could achieve that?"

    Instead of answering himself, Ichigo turned to Rukia.

    "What do you think? I don't know much about this creature, but I do know the distraction I have should last for a good bit; is there anything else we need to make it work?"

    "There's the issue of having to be ready for any ability it might pull out, but I can think of a few Kido that would be good general counters, although none that'd be effective long term. And we need to keep it contained too, or it'll level the nearest city blocks in minutes; I can probable come up with some combination or other on the fly that might do the job, but I've no idea if it'd hold up to a Menos - I've never faced one before."

    "But if it works, we might have a chance?"

    Rukia nodded, and that made Ichigo's determination harden, even as in the back of his mind he could hear Sode No Shirayuki sighing in defeat. He ignored it, however, offering Rukia a hand as he said, letting all of his determination enter his voice:

    "Then yeah, as a team, I just thing we might have a shot at making it work. You in?"

    She seemed surprised, and for a moment Ichigo could have sworn she was about to cry, but then her face opened in a happy grin that turned smug as she clasped his hands and answered:

    "Of course I am - somebody's gotta save your skin when you get in over your head, isn't it?"

    "Yeah, I'm definitely gonna need that."

    Yoruichi chuckled at them both, then turned to regard the sky, where the breach in the air was now closing, a few of the last hollow that were falling out of it getting trapped midair into cages of crystal light as they stumbled by accident in the minefield Rukia had placed before. She then pulled her scarf away, revealing a red collar underneath with what looked like a cat's bell dangling from it, and said to the two, with a grin:

    "Alright then, do your best to stay alive and minimize the damage it can do - I'll be back in two minutes at most to help you out. Now transform, Shunko!"

    She flicked her fingers at the bell, making it cling softly, which Ichigo noticed caused the collar to grow several more bells, but then the captain was off, and Ichigo and Rukia focused on the opponent they had to tackle.

    "So, what you can tell me about this thing? I bet there's more to it than just being big and strong, isn't there?"

    "Yes, but I can tell you as we close in."

    Following deed to words, she darted upwards, heading toward the huge hollow walking on air, Ichigo taking after her. As they headed toward the Menos Rukia explained, in a serious tone:

    "So, a Menos Grande is the result of many hollows congregating together at once, in what we call a feeding frenzy. They start to eat each other in a more and more chaotic manner, until the reiatsu of them all mixes together to the point it becomes impossible for it to separate. At which point, the hollows all fuse into one singular entity, a lone hollow but with hundreds, sometimes even thousands of minds, all vying for control over it and thus resulting in it reacting on instinct."

    "Souls fused together? That sounds a lot like what would be required to form a Bankai."

    "Yes, but that would require that all the minds forming the Menos act in concert as a single being, and that's extremely rare; only one Menos in a thousand develops that strong of a soul, and we name those Vasto Lorde. Those have a single personality that welds the fused souls together, and thus their power is comparable to a Bankai. But normal Menos Grande don't have that; instead, whichever hollow's mind is in command determine how their reiatsu is shaped, thus effectively they switch randomly between any of the powers that the hollow which make them up had."

    "...so a single Menos Grande can have up to thousands different powers?"

    Rukia nodded grimly.

    "Yes, although they can only use one at a time and they switch randomly. And of course, with the amount of power they have accumulated, they can use Cero much, much more frequently."

    "Cero?"

    "...right, I never explained you; it's the beam the first Hollow we faced together used. Just avoid it, it's an attack that can't be stopped."

    Ichigo nodded; that was good to know, considering how much the hollow he had trapped inside himself favoured the move. He refocused when Rukia motioned to the Menos they were very close to now.

    "So, that distraction you were speaking of?"

    "Right. So, this should make me very though, and look scary, but I should still be in control; if it looks like I'm not, or start attacking anything but the Menos, just break the mask and I'll go back to my senses. Ok?"

    "What are you talking about?"

    Ichigo didn't answer, instead focusing on his inner world, reaching for the power within; he could feel the connection leading him to Sode No Shirayuki, but then he reached more deeply, the sword spirit helping him. He felt the power leaving the sword, and a glance confirmed it'd reverted from the white color of it's released state to the black of its sealed one. Then a moment later, he finally found the dark, roiling core of fury and hunger within himself, and almost immediately he felt it enveloping him, and for a moment it almost seemed to start numb his senses, but then he felt his own body going extremely cold, the reiatsu slowed by having to go through a barrier that was actively pushing it back, and Ichigo was able to stop it, instinctively using the same technique as he would with the fullbringer armor to wrapping the reiatsu around himself like a shell. He could feel a constant tingling feeling all over his skin, but he grit his teeth and, after a moment, he felt confident he had it under control.

    "You're a Visored?! Since when?"

    "I'll explain later - what matters right now is that I can take what punishment that thing can dish out, if I can get it to focus on me."

    Ichigo's voice sounded like a low growl, and nothing like his own, but the fact he'd answered her seemed to reassure Rukia, although she sounded quite annoyed.

    "Unless it decides to swallow you whole."

    "That's why I said I would need your help; I can't use Sode no Shirayuki and control the Hollow at the same time."

    Rukia grimaced, then answered:

    "I'll try what I can."

    Ichigo nodded, then charged at the giant monster. He still held his sword in hand even if he couldn't use its powers, but remembering what he'd done against Hirako, he focused his Hakuda to cover the blade with a coat of reiatsu, and found it responding incredibly quickly, over it almost before he'd had the time to think of it.

    It's the hollow; you're using its reiatsu in addition to your own, it gives you a lot more to use and it will answer more quickly to manipulation, especially that based upon negative emotions.

    If that was true... Ichigo though of what could the most attention-grabbing, annoying things he could do to catch the Menos' attention, and then focused all of his anger on the coat around the sword; a literal bonfire light up all over it, just as he was upon the titan, stabbing straight into its body with it.

    The hollow let out a shriek of pain as Ichigo's blade set the deep wound it'd inflicted on fire, and tried to grab at him, but Ichigo used the fullbringer air-walking trick to bounce away faster than Shunpo would let him, dragging his blade all along the monster's body as he did to create a gaping wound, before finally using Hakuda again as he kicked at the monster to push himself away from it.

    Ichigo knew he'd gotten the Menos attention when the mask of the huge creature turned to face him; even as the eye sockets were empty and devoid of sight, the way the mask was aimed at him made him feel like he was being glared at. Still, he readied himself to avoid whichever attack the hollow would unleash next, keeping an eye on both of its arms.

    That was when the creature suddenly glowed red for a moment, as it's entire body light up in flames, which then expanded out of its body in a sudden sphere of fire; it completely absorbed within itself what few of it had remained in the wound Ichigo inflicted in the process, but more to the point, it invested Ichigo before he had a chance to react, and even as the hollow's regeneration triggered, that didn't put out the fire, so Ichigo got to feel the sense of his own flesh being consumed again and again.

    At least until Rukia slammed a hand on him, which turned off the fire immediately; he let out a rantle at that.

    "I guess I'm not as durable as I thought..."

    "Without regeneration you'd have died before I could get to you; don't lower your guard, a Menos is like a walking Hollow city, you can't stand still when fighting it!"

    As if to prove Rukia's point, a set of spikes grew all over the hollow's body, which it then proceeded to fire from himself; most were wildly off target, the creature apparently unable to aim them, but one of them, about twice as large as Ichigo himself, was right on target, at least until Rukia created a circular shield of golden light which exploded when the attack impacted it, stopping it dead, before nodding to Ichigo and heading to the left, while he did the same to the right.

    While they were circling around, Ichigo saw that Rukia was leaving very large barrier behind herself as she moved, clearly aiming to contain the monster in the park so it could not damage anything else.

    Something which the creature immediately threatened as, upon noticing Ichigo again, it spat out several boulders the side of trucks from his mouth; Ichigo gave himself a push with the fullbringer ability, before using Shunpo to maintain the gained acceleration while placing his sword over his shoulder, drawing more and more reiatsu from his hollow to wrap the sword in at least four layers of it. Then, just as the boulder was about to smash into him, he struck, filling the sword with as much disgust as he could, and as he'd hoped for, the result was that he send the boulder straight back at the Menos' face, smashing it straight into its mask, which caused the beast to let out a cry of pain even as it made a wild gesture with its arm, causing it to create a hurricane of winds that Ichigo got out of the way of by pushing forward, hoping to just be able to strike its mask with his Zanpakuto.

    As it turned out, just as he thought he was close enough, the monster's mouth opened and five twisting, frog-like tongue erupted from it; Ichigo dodged two and smacked another two aside, with a distinctly metal sound that indicated they were actually far harder then they looked - and then he had no more time to think of it as the fifth speared him straight through his good, proving that they weren't just hard as sword, but also sharp and piercing as one.

    The tongue immediately tried to drag him back into the Menos' mouth, and when Ichigo tried to cut it, his sword bounced off it again, but then a blue beam of energy hit straight through it, causing the Menos to roar in pain even as Ichigo himself fell back to the ground; a glance to the side told him that the beam had come from Chad, who offered him a thumb up gesture before firing another beam into the monster, slamming it straight into the mask - and inflicting no damage at all, despite how it had just cut through tongues harder than metal.

    Due to Chad's sudden offensive, the Menos turned its mask around to look at him; Ichigo could feel his blood running cold with fear at that, and immediately he ripped away the tongue from his belly and then dashed straight for the closest piece of the monster, what looked like a skeletal feet peeking out of the bottom end of its cowl-like body. As he struck it first, the sword bounced off it once again, but then he got an idea, focusing all of his determination onto the largest, heaviest coat for his sword he could manage, making it much much heavier, while trying to keep just the tiniest strip of disgust running right along the edge. He'd never have enough control to do it normally, but with all the reiatsu the hollow was giving him, precision mattered a lot less and he just barely managed, resulting in a powerful downward chop from an impossibly heavy blade with a edge set up to repel anything it touched away from it.

    He grinned, which had to be scarier with the mask he was wearing now, as the blade went straight through the monster's feet, sending tree of its skeletal toes flying in the air; the monster roared, refocusing on Ichigo, then roared again, except this time a hurricane of empowered sound slammed Ichigo into the ground; then the monster slammed its wounded feet into the ground twice, provoking miniature earthquake that cracked the ground Ichigo was standing on. And then it moved to smash him down with his fist, but just before it could Chad hit it with another beam that pushed the fist out of the way while leaving it lightly singed, allowing Ichigo to get back on his feet and then in the air.

    As he did, he stabbed at the monster once more, this time focused on rage again, and it left another burning wound into the creature's body; he tried once more to run it through its body, but as he placed one foot on the monster's cowl, he found himself stuck, as it started to secrete a viscous liquid that seemed to act like glue, trapping Ichigo on its skin, while at the same time putting out the fire Ichigo had left in its other wound.

    Ichigo tried to get himself free, cutting at the creature's body, but once more his sword bounced back uselessly. It was becoming clear that he needed to empower the blade somewhat if he wanted to pierce the creature's hardened body, but before he could think of how to go with it, since the fire was clearly not going to work right now, suddenly a portion of the monster's body exploded, annihilated as a literal thousand of glowing blue arrows pierced through it. He took a moment to get his bearings, and when he did he saw that Ishida was standing over one of Orihime shield, the girl right next to him with a worried expression, which seemed justified since the Quincy was on his knees, breathing hard, and his bow looked like it was loosing some of the light particles composing it every new moment, making the weapon look like smoke made of light was coming from it.

    Apparently, the Menos didn't took well to having a large chunk of itself ripped away by Ishida's arrows, as it made a gesture with its hands that sent what looked like huge javelins of light of its own; only one headed in Ishida's direction, but Orihime's expression hardened at that as she called her second shield to stop it. The impact actually pushed the shield back a good distance, making it slam into the edge of the other one Orihime and Ishida were standing on, but it remained undamaged by the attack.

    However, the Hollow seemed to like the attack - or perhaps, if it really was just randomly changing abilities just by what it instinctively felt would best fit the situation, the attack being stopped was not enough by itself to trigger the charge - as it kept creating more and more of the energy javelins by waving its hands around, and even as Orihime's shield kept stopping those headed her way and Chad sniped several out of the sky, the thing was worrying, especially as Ichigo himself was having increasing difficulty in dodging them.

    Then, as if from nothing, a multitude of circular, golden shields appeared between their team and the enemy, stopping every single thrown javelin at once, and when it tried to throw out more, a matching number of shield formed from nowhere to stop those as well.

    Ichigo grinned; it seemed that Rukia had finally finished securing the area and was able to contribute actively now. Knowing she would be able to support him now should he get himself light on fire again, Ichigo charged toward the enemy - the portion of his body that had been wounded by Ishida had been pretty large, so while it had almost completely regenerated already, there was still enough of a wound left that he managed to weld his sword into it, before letting out as much anger reiatsu as possible, unleashing what was a veritable flamethrower from the tip of his sword straight inside the monster.

    The Menos roared, flailing with its arm in pain, and one of them ended up backhanding Ichigo, pulping almost the entirety of his midsection alongside his left arm as well as sending him smashing into the ground with enough force to create a crater in it.

    He stood there for a moment, even the regeneration granted by his hollow having to work quite a bit harder than if had to so far to fix what would have otherwise been a killing blow, and as he did the Menos turned around to road at him; it was clear it was preparing to come up with something that would take him down.

    And then the sky opened, beams of light falling onto the Hollow uninterruptedly, looking almost liquid as they did, continuing to just hit it for almost thirty full seconds before it finally stopped. When it did, the Menos looked halfway melted, especially along its left arm, which it had wrapped over its head to shield itself. The mask, however, was untouched, looking almost pristine, and the rest of its body started to regenerate almost immediately, the incredible level of devastation the light had inflicted visibly disappearing at a speed far faster than any regeneration Ichigo had ever seen hollows display before, even this one.

    That was when Rukia shouted, her voice rough:

    "Come on, try to take advantage of the opening! I can't do that again!"

    Ichigo let out a groan as he got back up, but luckily Chad and Ishida had heard Rukia as well, as they both unleashed another salvo of attacks; Ichigo took advantage of that to get his bearings, then charged at the enemy as fast as he could, even using Hakuda to cover himself in a water-like coat that removed most of the attrition from the air, and managed to slam his sword straight into one of the regenerating but still open wounds on the Menos, and then unleashed another blast of reiatsu - except this time, rather than focus it on anger, he let the disgust flow, hoping to manage to push the creature back, maybe topple it to the ground.

    Instead, the hollow's flesh, repulsed from the inside by the huge surge of reiatsu, exploded, sending Ichigo flying backwards even as the Menos flailed around in fury; Ichigo had a moment of inspiration and pushed a good lot of reiatsu to have the air stop him in the fullbringer maneuver, bouncing him forward charging at the hollow - whose mouth opened, a sudden glowing red light forming within it.

    Ichigo could feel the destructive power, but more than that, he recognized it from the first fight he had with a hollow; it was Cero, the attack he was supposed to dodge... and he was diving headfirst into it, and without any way to dodge in time.

    Fire your own, idiot! I'll guide you, but shot it now!

    Then Ichigo felt his own reiatsu changing, almost as if all of his emotions were being purged by it; he had no idea what that meant, but he had no chance other than trusting it would work, so he focused all of the purified reiatsu he could call forth on the tip of his sword, and then let it loose.

    The result was a dark red - really, black but glowing with red light - beam of energy that impacted straight into the similar one fired by the Menos, the two cancelling each other out in an explosion that send Ichigo rolling backwards from the sheer wave of power it unleashed.

    He was stopped by slamming into a person, and when he looked up, he found Yoruichi looking at him with a puzzled expression. Then the Captain shook her head, and commented:

    "You'll explain later - now I have a Menos to deal with."

    And with that, she charged forward, and as she did, Ichigo saw her arms and legs change to those of a panther; then suddenly electricity started to run all over her skin, somehow not arming her, but when the hollow sent a set of spikes at her, the electricity arched from her body to the projectiles, literally reducing each one that was touched by it to dust, before she reached the Hollow and punched straight at it, the impact causing an explosion of fire and thunder. The creature stumbled backwards from the hit, and Ichigo could see that the wound wasn't regenerating like the rest had, which just proved to him some more that Yoruichi's transformation was indeed making it so that her entire body was part of her zanpakuto.

    As the battle went on, however, Ichigo realized that, from the way she was fighting, she didn't think it would protect her from the Menos' strength. Her body was contorting in impossible ways, likely taking advantage of a physiology modified to match the flexible joints of felines, so that the enemy's attacks were missing her by a hair, but the look of concentration on her face and the way she only went on the offense when she was sure she wouldn't be hit back made it clear she didn't think she could sustain any hit.

    Which was proved when, suddenly, the hollow grew six extra arms out of its own just as it was striking, catching Yoruichi completely by surprise and smashing a punch straight into her side. She managed to get out of its range, and was obviously still capable of moving, but the way she was leaning on her right side, it was clear that, even with the best defense an Hakuda armor as skilled as Yoruichi could put up, the hit had left her wounded.

    Even so, she dove in once more, and the hollow went for her with all of its new arms, only to stop suddenly; Yoruichi's eyes widened at that, but she didn't stop, instead slamming a powerful strike into the hollow's mask, which still didn't manage to break it but did send the creature skidding forward... and then, a moment later, the Menos disappeared into thin air.

    "What was that?"

    Yoruichi landed in front of him, then collapsed on her knees, spitting blood as she did; she cleaned it from her mouth with the back of her hand after a moment, and then answered, her breath breaking:

    "Shinji. He used the Hougyoku to paralyze the Menos, and then I bet he captured it, sealed it somehow the same way he had all those others hollows sealed before."

    Ichigo could feel terror taking him over; then he realized it wasn't terror, as he started to lose control of his body, and shouted:

    "Rukia! Now!"

    He felt Sode No Shirayuki working to stop the hollow from taking over, then Rukia was there, next to him, and elbowed him in the face strong enough to break his mask, which caused him to stumble backwards, even as he took a deep breath, feeling his body back to normality again.

    Meanwhile, Rukia turned to Yoruichi and asked, in a whisper:

    "You mean that Hirako now has a Menos he could deploy at any time?"

    "We'll know better what he could or could not do when we interrogate his people. Do we still have them?"

    Rukia nodded, even as she moved to help Yoruichi to her feet and support her, and then answered:

    "Hachigen, at least, is still in my prison, that's not gonna move for another couple hours unless I move it. He's safe there. I don't know about the others..."

    "They're gone."

    Everybody turned to watch Ishida, who was being supported by Orihime and looked positively exhausted, as he explained:

    "I saw the green haired one, Mashiro Kuna, show up to take away those I had defetead back when we were fighting the Menos, but I didn't have the strength to spare to stop her."

    To which Chad added, his tone serious.

    "And the one I fought, Hiyori Sakuragi, was very good at timing her regeneration. I had to keep her under constant threat to keep her from recovering; the moment I had to turn away to fight the big enemy, she would have recovered."

    Yoruichi let out a long huff, but then Ishida added, hesitant:

    "There's more. Kuna, she... she had a person strapped to her back. They... they took Tatsuki."
     
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    • Ah.
    Prisoner. Hooo boy Tats is gonna have a fit.
    Not sure if that means there's gonna be a new Mayor of Menos town or what Shinji's going to be after, but I have a feeling he's about to get his info that:
    Kisuke and Yoruchi got played, they saw what Aizen WANTED them to see, hence them seeing Shinji going full evil-villian when Shinji had tracked down Aizen's misdeeds and got VIsor'd for his trouble. From there...
    That bad proof was enough to convince them to go off-grid to chase Shinji down because that Hogyoku is bad news! But the off-grid part may have been Aizen's idea, to get the loose ends off the table.
    If Shinji wins he swoops in and finishes the good officer, while if Kisuke wins Aizen can smile, and look over the tapes while he decides what to do next.
    Shinji may or may not figure this out but the mutual hostage situation likely will ensure that that an exchange of information that leaves everyone puzzled should occur, even if Tatsuki is initially defiant before hado # brainscanning gets used on her I don't see Hachigen holding his silence on the matter if/when it comes up.
    What nobody noticed:
    GIN released that Menos initally, and re-captured it after it was beaten. I'm betting he's just trying to keep the loose ends loose and wild, and possibly hoping to sneak some info to one side or another. Because HE WAS THERE THAT NIGHT, and Aizen DIDN'T grab him. But Gin's not dumb. He knows if he tries to tattle directly it'll just be his snaky untrustworthy word against Aizen, pillar of the community and general nice-guy. So he needs to be after Aizen personally, and he's gonna need help because he doesn't trust he can shank Aizen successfully. So he grabs Tsukishima, gets some hollows, lucks out and finds Grand Fisher...Now to start meddling in Aizen's schemes!
     
    @Zaealix - you're not entirely off base, but not entirely right either. I'll leave it to the story to show which is which, although rereading the scenes with Aizen and Shinji might help get a better picture of what actually happened, such as everybody experienced it. I hope it's at least an interesting situation to read about! :lol:
     
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