The PLOT —
CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR EVERYTHING.
Don't read if you don't like it.
Yuugiou: pre-Battle City.
Bleach: pre-Hueco Mundo.
Here is the prologue for a second crossover, since I completely lost interest in the first one. I'm going to be incorporating more series into this one, and I will be reusing many of the elements I had intended to work into the other one so, figuratively, this should come out twice as good.
Ha.
For the Bleach storyline, what I mean by 'pre-Hueco Mundo' isn't really preceding the arc at all, but rather beginning at a point only a little of the ways into it where Orihime has already been captured, Nel Tu and her brothers have been introduced, but Ichigo and his friends have not encountered any of their respective opponents yet.
Disclaimer :
I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!, and I don't own Bleach. This story is for my amusement only, not for any commercial purpose. Thank you.
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The sword slashed through the air in front of him; its tip grazed the underside of the darkened throat.
"Ha!" The laugh was maddened, thrown against the stone walls on either side of their passageway with such a joyous enthusiasm that it made him grimace. The monster stumbled back half a dozen steps, its oversized tail lashing back and forth, the crazed movements slashing against the sandstone and tearing it up wherever the appendage struck. "You missed!"
The monstrous accent, which already had a creepy, echo-y quality to it, was amplified ridiculously by the small space of the labyrinth passageway; the mere sound of it assaulted him, blasting against his ears with a severity that absolutely demolished what patience he had left for the damned thing. "Then quit," he growled under his breath, pulling his katana in front of him to grab hold of and tighten his other hand around it before lunging forwards again, "MOVING!"
His foot sprang from the cracked floor, and for that second the walls and surroundings blurred—his movement jumped into a speed beyond what the normal eye could see, seeming to vanish him from that place ten feet from the monster to just inches away from it the next second, the air gusting around and behind him in the vacuum of space he had leaped across.
The sword edge flashed in the light as he swung it again; this time its hunger did more than graze.
"AGH—SHIT, OUCH!" it screeched, the scream underlying the affronted howling coming from the rest of its throat. The wound sprayed the air with red and fragments of bone, the monster's mask extending down its neck only enough to defend against the lethality of his strike but not to completely ward it. One of its huge, spindly hands clawed at the wound in desperation, terrible snarls twisting their way up past the damage and out of the thing's mouth with a sickening wet quality to them—like the blood had spilled into the inside of the throat as well as from the outside of it. "SHI—"
His fist broke through the middle of its mask, the momentum of his flash-step slamming a force into the blow that all but shattered the white bone the thing was made of. The wind of his second flash-step gusted behind him as his knuckles ground into the brute's face, tearing at the fabric of his hakama and haori and blasting through the short, unkempt strands of his orange hair.
The air whirled restlessly through his chest, climbing up through his throat and dragging out past his lips in harsh pants. His eyes, narrowed more out of frustration than any real anger, glared up at the monster he had punched as its skin shivered once before beginning to shimmer out; the rest of its body had stilled completely. He pulled his fist back out of its face, some shards of the broken mask following its movement as he then jumped back, his expression still hardened with annoyance as the thing dissolved into the air in front of him.
"… … Jeez," he grunted, face still more than just a little darkened with his scowl as he slowly straightened himself up, "… what a freakin', loud-mouthed … friggin' …"
The monster had not been the first thing he had wanted to see after breaking off from the others back in that room—like, he had expected to run into more hollow (it was Hueco Mundo), but a friggin low-level one like that? His lips pressed together in a frown, more disappointment than actual offense lining the gesture as he stared off into the darkness in front of him.
Was that their sick idea of some kind of joke? Or were they trying to draw him into a dulled sense of security by sending weaker enemies at him first and then letting the big ones come at him later?
He stood there in silence for a long moment, brow furrowed with thought and face just as angered and stormy-looking as it had been since first getting attacked.
… Ugh.
After another second's thought, he just grunted darkly to himself and swung his sword over his head and down behind his back, sheathing it and then springing into a flash-step once again.
I don't freaking care.
The only reason he was here was to rescue Orihime. That was his mission, his sole, driving motivation for braving the wrath of the other shinigami and for facing all the foretold horrors that everyone had warned him against that waited for him here in this place: to rescue her, and to get her and himself and everyone else who had come here to help him out of here in one, freaking piece.
His breaths came heavy in his chest as he ran, more than just exertion driving the muscles in his body into overdrive. He wanted out of this labyrinth—the feel of it made him restless, tense to get out and get rid of the feeling of being a trapped rat. He wanted to find an enemy, find a nice, airy open space and fight that enemy and defeat him and move on to something bigger. His eyes darted from side to side every few seconds, wanting and expecting an attack and growing agitated with a little more paranoia every time his fleeting glance turned up nothing.
He didn't want to run through an endless maze and get nowhere but more impatient and irritated with each passing minute.
The darkness was freaking suffocating here; it lined the walls and edges of the floor so thickly he almost felt like he was in midair half the time, not being able to see anything but black shadows at his left and right and only the sight of a dimly lit, endless corridor stretching out before him. His feet kicked up little clouds of dust as he ran, the heavier sand littering the tanned stone below him flying every which direction as his sandals kicked it askew.
That sand was another thing that unnerved him, too; Hueco Mundo was a desert and had sand, but it wasn't supposed to be colored sand. A dead land meant that everything inside of it should be dead and withered (to him, at least), but the sand here wasn't at all—it looked like the sand back home did, nice and tanned and golden and alive.
He kept running, all but glowering at the stretching blackness before him as a few seconds passed before he harshly shook his head, sending his vision into such a spinning dizziness that he almost crashed into a wall.
Why the HELL am I thinking about sand? Jeezus …
Something moved up ahead. Sand flew up around his sandals as he skidded to an immediate stop, his hand already up behind his head with his fingers closing around his sword hilt as he stared, eyes cold and narrowed, into the darkness before him. He had seen something flicker in there—a sort of light, too bright to have come from the torches in the distance both ahead of and behind him in the weakly illuminated the stretch he stood in.
His face darkened, the muscles beneath it stiffening in expectancy of an attack. "Who's there?"
The question had been more of a demand than a real inquiry, the words low with anger and warning. Despite the fact that his minutes or so of inaction before the first hollow had made him antsy for a real confrontation, that didn't mean he was going to drop his guard and rush headfirst into an enemy he knew nothing about now. His days of training and real-life confrontations from similar accidents in the past had taught him enough to know not to be that dumb.
When nothing answered him but the sound of his own ragged breathing, his impatience and wariness deepened. The bandages wound around his sword hilt felt warm, too warm—his hand was sweating. His brow furrowed, eyes narrowing now to the point where his vision was being reduced to slits almost too small for him to properly see through as he tried to discern the source of the previous movement through the shadows.
… … Where is it? … … Where the hell is it? And what the hell is it? I can't feel its spirit pressure.
His fingers flexed against the hilt, sweat building on his brow in a sudden flux of anxiety that unnerved him more in its unexpectedness than it did anything else. His eyes kept perfectly focused, straining through the dark without blinking or moving or ever once allowing themselves even a single second of distraction. He couldn't leave room for any screw-ups—not when the enemies here were as dangerous, or as powerful, as the ones that had attacked his home.
He gritted his teeth, his whole body so tense now that he felt almost like he was suffocating.
Why is this getting me so worked up?
The air in front of him flickered.
He barely jumped back enough to avoid the swing—the staff cracked down against the stone just centimeters from the edges of his black hakama leg as he leaped back, the jewel-encrusted tip catching the far-off torch light and glinting once with a faint, green glow. His eyes first widened, then immediately narrowed again in anger and realization as he understood the flicker of what he had seen before—it had been that staff.
As his foot landed back down against the sandstone a few meters away, his arm was already at work yanking his sword up away from his back and swinging it out in front of him to grip it with both hands, muscles flexing taut in the preparation to deflect the second blow. The sizzle of electricity next was something he did not expect, sparking out from the tip of that green staff and zigzagging violently across the stone towards him with smell of heat that he knew would roast him freaking good if it hit.
Shit—no!
He swung up, desperation and instinct guiding the motion as his spirit power rushed through him and into his sword, massing for the briefest instant before exploding in a burst of power out of the entire length of the blade and into the opposing attack; the interception exploded between them.
"Damnit—!" he ground out between gritted teeth, his sandals skidding back across the stone as the wind from the explosion slammed mercilessly into his body and threw him stumbling back. His sword shuddered in his hands as he struggled to save his footing, vibrating below his fingers with the aftershock like it had taken the attack head-on instead of just intercepting it.
His foot slammed down against the stone in a desperate effort to regain his balance, cracking and uprooting the floor as his spirit power rushed to swarm below his feet, his arms already swinging back with his sword high above his head for an attack.
What the hell is this feeling?
He gritted his teeth, entire body lunging forward without a second's warning into a flash-step before the whirlwind of power at his front had even started to fade. The tingle forked through his sword and into his hands with hot agony, slamming through his body with an electrical shock that yanked a snarling yelp of equal parts pain and surprise from up out of his throat, and not only that—it struck him with a flash of paralysis that completely threw him off guard.
His sandal caught against the uneven stone, and his momentum threw him violently off balance and onto his back. He hit the ground with another snarled grunt, this time the sound more parts offense and humiliation than actual pain as one of his hands flashed from his sword for a dangerous, fleeting movement to brace itself against the stone beneath him, legs already moving to drag themselves desperately under him and get him back on his feet.
My body—it's ... it's numb! What did I get hit with? Lightning?
"No. Magic."
The voice froze him, soft but loud through the corridor behind him, echoing against the walls and in his ears. He surged to his feet and whirled around, the blade of his sword scraping against the stone as he pulled it up with him. The flash of movement when he turned hit him fast—too fast—in the middle of his stomach, the head of the staff slamming into him with a force he couldn't imagine that all but blasted every ounce of air from his lungs.
He doubled over, ragged gasps dragging out from his mouth as the staff was yanked back as swiftly as it had been thrust forward, the green-jeweled tip again flashing its glow against his eyes. His knees hit the stone hard as he fell to them with a grunt, utterly winded and unable to do anything more than gasp hoarsely for air. His sword fell to the stone at his side, his hand still refusing to let go of it but his arm pulling in close to his stomach and pulling the hilt of the sword in with it, chest heaving in its efforts to get his breath back.
… Where the … hell did that voice come from? And why … … why can't I feel its spirit pressure?
His eyes, slightly glazed but still very much livid, burned with deepening anger.
What the hell is attacking me?
"Very good, my magician."
He jerked his head up, entire face tightened with hostility and flushed from his hard breathing. The staff head hovered in the air just in front of his face, the green jewel flickering its weird light at him again, though at this close of a vantage he could now see where it was coming from—the inside of the jewel, burning there with some sort of light that he knew wasn't fire, but couldn't be electricity either.
The earlier word rang in his ears: Magic?
The wielder of the staff loomed up in front of him, the shadow of the body very much human but heavily costumed—it was covered head to toe in some sort of deep purple robes, with what looked to be harder and darker material of the same color acting as armor on its arms and shoulders and head. His teeth ground down against each other so hard he swore he broke a few of them, a single thought flooding his mind with both an anger and a panic so intense that its answering adrenaline possessed him completely:
Vasto Lorde.
Finally.
The creature swung the staff back without warning, the long weapon spinning wildly in its hands and the head of it again sparking ablaze with a green glow as the figure reared back, intending to launch a second strike. He surged angrily to his feet, the tip of his sword gouging a practical valley in the stone where it sliced through as his spirit power flooded again through his body and into the blade. The fingers of his other hand flashed around the hilt, tightening their grip on the bandages there as he swung his arms high above his head in the same second as the monster, this time his face hardened with resolve.
That voice rang out again, the words sharp now, and harsh with confidence. "Now—finish it!"
"Getsuga—" he snarled, his tone low in his throat as he swung the sword mightily down in retaliation against the enemy command, the spirit power condensed in it rushing forth from its swing in a thundering, inescapable wave "—TENSHOU!"
Moon-Fang Piercer of the Heavens.
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TBC.
