Hollow God
By ______
Chapter One: To Las Noches
The creature crouched low, lightly sniffing the small, huddled green cloth. Its shivers intensified. He could well imagine the tiny hollow hidden within quivering in terror. It was an odd one, its scent had driven him across the desert seeking whatever strange hollow could produce it. On the surface it was merely the scent of another common hollow, slightly distorted by how long it had been since the hollow in question had passed by.
The first clue that it was something special had been just how often he caught traces of either the smell or the reiatsu signature he had come to associate with it. It was like the little hollow had sprung a leak and then decided the best thing to do was continuously run across the vast, sandy waste of upper Hueco Mundo. It made her damn hard to track, though after witnessing the three other hollows chase her around a bit, he wasn't entirely certain it had been a way to conceal herself.
Her reiatsu was meager, yet there were trace amounts of reishi drizzling from her head constantly, as though her power was meant to be greater and her body couldn't hold it. She was, with the small amount of power she held, overflowing.
Yes, she. A rather rare thing, for a hollow to have a gender obvious scent... Yet there were traces in her reiatsu... Faint and distant, with the feel of something he knew he should remember, but found he couldn't.
"H, hey, leave us alone! Nel's an arrancar, don'cha know?" One of the three hollow's that had been chasing her shouted, finally managing to stand from where a cero had knocked him.
"Y, yeah!" The tiny hollow suddenly yelled out with false bravado, still trembling. She pulled back her hood and gave him the first clear view of her head. "Nel's an arranthar, so go away!" The small thing lisped at him, as he focused his attention on the broken skull-shape resting on her head.
The creature considered it, then reached down and gripped the skull mask. "Let go, I'm an arranthar!" She cried, fearful again. He pulled and she rose from the ground with it, he shook it and she didn't fall away. He snorted and dropped her.
"Pathetic." He hissed at her, turning to leave the group to do... whatever it was they did.
He had fought real arrancar, learned everything he could about them and given up on that being the path he needed to take. Arrancar were almost entirely gillians who were desperate not to fall into mindlessness and too weak to actually resist in their natural state or adjuchas who decided that putting the effort required into becoming a vasto lorde was a waste, so they settled on a quicker power and removed their own masks. It weakened them horribly at first, their uro powers and reiatsu dropping to less than menos levels. As time passed they grew stronger and stronger until they eventually became far more powerful their original hollow form. In their released state, anyway.
The reason he wouldn't take such a route to power were the flaws involved. Arrancar required a set number of shinigami who had mastered shikai and, preferably, bankai to even be capable of sealing their powers into a sword form. This in turn accounted for their immense rarity.
Second, once one became an arrancar, there was no point in trying to become stronger after a certain plateau. Where a hollow had unlimited growth, the shinigami element stunted it and created a cap. The cap was high, much higher than the power they had before transforming, but it was still there. A shinigami only had shikai and bankai after all, from there they had nowhere to advance to, so a similar limitation was set upon arrancar. Not to mention the corresponding weakness of an unreleased form.
There was also the facet of a hollow's original, human personality emerging, colored by the experiences as a hollow. He didn't know who he was back in his mortal life, but there was always a chance that upon transforming he would lose the very drive for power that caused him to do it.
And finally, despite being an arrancar, the power gained failed to out stripe either a shinigami captain, who was limited to the power of their bankai, or a vasto lorde unless the arrancar in question already was a vasto lorde before transforming.
It was a fickle and underpowered enhancement. The opposite however, a shinigami with the unlimited growth of a hollow's uro was fascinating. Worthless to him of course, but still an incredible idea. Perhaps he could find one someday, there was no doubt it'd be delicious.
Time to hunt again. It was quite sad, but once others achieved the level of vasto lorde they stopped eating those on their own level and contented themselves with surviving on gillians and the occasional adjuchas. When he ate his third vasto lorde he became the stronger than any he had encountered since. Not to the level he sought, he was still a mere vasto lorde, after all, but great enough that none of the others posed a threat. Tch. Hopefully this one, the sixth, was the last one he needed to ascend. Living like this simply wasn't fitting, but until he became a god there was no point in trying to rival with the false king Aizen. It would only waste time and energy.
His sense stretched. The tiny arrancar had been stomping around this entire area for untold years, leaking reiatsu everywhere, only at the edge of his senses could he detect anything beyond...
"Shinigami!" "Save us don'cha know!" "Sthary!" "Bawabawa!"
The four hollows from before ran towards him, quickly crouching behind him in terror. The little one wrapped herself around his leg, the humanoid two with their hands on his shoulder and tail and the last cowering behind them, whimpering.
He huffed, blowing out a minuscule cloud of condensed reishi. Annoying insects.
And suddenly the ones who so terrified the group crested the dune. A giant of a human in a purple shirt and white pants. Inconsequential. A glasses-wearing human with flowing white clothes not too dissimilar from Aizen's espada. Minutely powerful, but still unimportant. A human girl in a white gi, tied closed with a black belt. Not particularly noteworthy.
The five shinigami held some diminutive interest, but only in the sense of 'why are they here'. The oldest looking was a man with black hair and a scruffy face who felt somewhere around captain-level. A minor threat. Beside him was a literal redhead with some sort of tribal tattoos where his eyebrows should be wearing a sand proof cloak. Lieutenant level, plausibly dangerous. There was a petite girl next to him also clad in a sand proof cloak, but otherwise uninteresting. Opposite her, beside the scruffy looking shinigami, were two young girls, maybe a few human years older than the arrancar clinging to his shin in physical form. One was orange haired and timid, the other black haired and scowling.
The creature gazed flatly at them, rising slowly to his full height and lashing his tail to free it from the ant-themed hollow's grip.
"Leave." He uttered, releasing another modest cloud as he exhaled.
The group looked among itself, as though discussing something. The petite shinigami in a cloak stepped forward. "We were looking for Las Noches..." She abruptly jerked as though struck and finding it hard to stand as the vasto lorde allowed a little of his reiatsu free.
He considered the group before him. Clearly they intended to cause trouble for Aizen, which was fine. Perhaps he could sneak in during their disturbance and collect some of the espada instead of hunting for a single vasto lorde in the wastes again. The three female shinigami were clearly struggling against the weight of his power, but within permissible bounds to slay some of the lesser arrancar and bring the focus of an espada to deal with them. The other shinigami seemed concerned, but weren't putting overt effort into resisting, meaning they would draw out the upper tier instead of the privaron. The humans were probably of similar power, though it was harder to quantify as they seemed to be soaking up the reishi around them slowly.
He turned to his right and started walking at a lazy pace so the slower beings could keep up. "Follow." He uttered over his shoulder when they failed to move. After about the sixth step he grabbed the minuscule arrancar clinging to his leg by her collar and set her on his shoulder, where her clenching hands latched onto his mane tightly. The pitiful hollows that companioned her wailed and panicked, but quelled and froze the second his eyes landed upon them.
There was something strange about them, their reiatsu and their behavior was unlike the typical common hollows' but their size indicated they weren't gillian or adjuchas and their power was not within the bounds of vasto lorde. It was fine, they'd leave the distortion the miniature arrancar had created eventually and then he'd know exactly what they were.
And then the sands before them surged and rose, crafting itself into the shape of an enormous man-like sandcastle golem.
The various beings accompanying the vasto lorde panicked, drawing weapons or running around wildly. Except for the captain class shinigami, who merely stared at the giant briefly before glancing at him expectantly. He growled at both the shinigami's arrogance and the snot he could feel being compacted in his mane.
"Aside, gillian." He hissed commandingly, stepping forward with no concern of the feeble menos grande before him. It was a powerful gillian, but a gillian will always be a gillian. ...Well, until it became of an adjuchas anyways.
"You dare try to command me? I, Lunuganga, Guardian of the White Sands?" Its mask scowled, an impressive feat given how solid the typical hollow mask is. "Who are you that dares to bri-"
The vasto lorde had heard enough. The moment it became clear the gillian was not going to move, it was as good as dead. Opening his mouth and thrusting his jaws upward, the creature spat out a small, vibrant pink mass. It landed with a wet splat in the middle of the sand hollow's mask.
The male human in white gasped in terrified surprise, but the vasto lorde ignored him.
"An insult! An unparalleled insult! You will pay... most deeply... for... iss..." The guardian of the white sands slowly crumbled to as much dust, the very reishi that composed him being sucked away while the pink mass swelled and grew until everything fell still and the writhing, growing blob slowly became inert.
The great hollow opened his jaws again, and like gum stretching out the pink mass shot a tendril forward. Upon contact the rest surged forward faster than a human eye could follow, disappearing into the abyss behind his sharp, white fangs. With a quiet click his mask closed and he was soon walking regally forward again.
"Uryu, what's wrong? Come on, get a grip." The female human shouted somewhere behind her companions.
"No, it's nothing..." Uryu adjusted his glasses and followed swiftly, deep in thought.
The mismatched group followed nervously after the creature leading them, aware in at least an abstract way that it was capable of killing them with little to no effort on its part. After a few hours march they stood in the shadow of the bone white walls of Las Noches. The vasto lorde stepped lazily up to the wall, standing almost directly against it, before raising one arm and tapping the surface gently.
The wall exploded inward crumbling magnificently to reveal a stairway leading upwards along with the remains of hinges to what was once a vast gateway. The great hollow strode boldly forward, ignoring the nervous whimpering of the child-like arrancar gripping his mane. With those following him disrupting things, there was no need to worry about the espada dog-piling him, and therefore no force in Las Noches capable of stopping him.
He paused momentarily at the top of the stairs, mulling over the five paths presented before settling on the one pointing to the strongest reiatsu. Nearest right.
Behind him he sprayed a mist of reishi that bonded and shaped itself into a solid wall after the other two hollows passed.
"We shouldn't be here, this is a dangerous place, don'cha know?" The tiki mask whimpered.
"Nel's sthared." The tiny hollow added, pulling at his hair again. But still, he was willing to put up with such pitiful trivialities from her. She was an unusual and lucky find, an apparent fountain of reishi, constantly pouring from her forehead.
Absently he noted that he still couldn't tell exactly what was going on with the other hollows because of that. Impermissible.
With a deft tug the little arrancar was plucked from his shoulder and held in front of his face. A careful examination showed that every particle that she lost was drizzling from either the damaged mask or the scar on her forehead. Perhaps she was something more, something hidden behind the reishi she was leaking.
His jaws opened.
"Hey! Stop that, what'd Nel ever do to you?" The white ant cried, struggling pathetically against his arm, trying to push the girl away.
"She's a real nice kid, don'cha know? She doesn't deserve..." The tiki added, both verbally and physically.
Their charge simply cried.
Carefully ridding his reishi of its more harmful traits, he exhaled a thick, deep burst of mist into her face. Molding those particles he painstakingly tore away the damaged reishi around the scar and crack, piecing the mask back together into the shape he assumed it would have and knitting her skin into a flawless, leak-free forehead. No real cost to him, other than the risk of his curiosity leading to her amassing enough to power to think she could kill him. Wouldn't work of course, but it'd still be annoying.
The Nel creature felt her mask and started poking it with an awed expression on her face after he placed her back on his shoulder. The other hollows simply gapped, petrified in wonderment.
The vasto lorde snorted at how easily amused this group was, already stalking forward towards the greatest reiatsu in Las Noches once more.
#Las Noches Entryway#
"Four directions... We'll need to split up." Ishida muttered, hesitating for a moment at sight of a pure white shell covering where a fifth door should be.
"What about..." Tatsuki murmured, suspiciously eying the blocked door.
The eldest shinigami shook his head. "The vasto lorde went that way. Whatever he intends to do, we're better off avoiding him. If we follow we'll either trail behind and get there after him or catching up to him. Inoue-chan is dead if he gets to her, assuming the fight with the guards doesn't kill her by accident. And if we caught up..."
"So that was a vasto lorde..." Rukia muttered, moving towards the shell.
"Don't." Adjusting his glasses ominously, the only quincy present grabbed the petite girl by the collar of her cloak. "Anything and anywhere that hollow has been is dangerous."
"Phef. The Seireitei destroyed vasto lordes before. With bankai we can-" Renji cut in, hand gripping the hilt of his Zanpakuto, eager to go after any hollow on hand.
"There's a reason the chamber of 46 leaves Hueco Mundo alone. And there's a reason every fight with a vasto lorde is hundreds of years into the past. Bankai alone is seldom enough and the total number of captains that have killed a vasto lorde and survived are less than ten. The only one still around is Yamamoto-sama himself." Isshin pointed out seriously, placing a hand on the hilt of his own blade.
"Besides someone as crude and barbaric as you couldn't hope to get close enough to use your sword anyway. Where quincy leech bits of reishi from our enemies, that hollow can drain them completely." The last quincy added, posing arrogantly to piss of the red headed shinigami.
"Tch, we're wasting time. Who cares if it's like a quincy or a shinigami? If it gets between us and Inoue-hime we'll beat it up regardless." A brash female voice broke in from Tatsuki's belt.
"Kakutou..." The martial artist grumbled, pinching her belt.
"Like you don't feel the same way. We're here to save the princess, not bicker about which dragon's in our way." The belt replied.
"Geez, don't you bounts have any control." Renji muttered, sticking his pinky in his ear.
"Shut up, maybe if your sword wasn't such a coward you'd-"
"Arisawa-san." A giant hand rested on the girl's shoulder, calming her slightly. "We'll find her."
Tatsuki snorted, brushing off Chad's hand and walking through one of the doorways. "I'm going this way. And I'll have Orihime back by the time you guys stop arguing."
"Yuzu, Karin. Stay with Sado-san. Sado-san, I leave their safety with you." Isshin commanded quietly, already stalking into another corridor.
"Someone will have to keep Arisawa-san from getting herself killed." The quincy stated, following the bount.
"This way Sado-san. I'm sure she's this way." Yuzu said, leading the giant of a man by one hand while her twin kept pace, huffing in exasperation as they entered a third corridor.
"But what about the pre-mission ritual?" A certain red-haired shinigami asked as he was dragged backwards down the last hallway.
Rukia ignored him.
#Las Noches Corridor#
"H, hey, what's your name?" The white ant asked suddenly.
The vasto lorde tilted his head, his pace slowing as he thought about it. "Ichi... kuro." He ground to a halt, thinking hard. He hadn't had a name since he died. "Ichikuro... Sakigo?" Was that right? "Ichikuro, Gosaki?"
The little arrancar giggled.
This in turn made the tiki masked one start laughing, followed by the white ant.
The lead hollow growled at them mocking him, but turned that energy towards moving forward instead of towards killing them. He wanted the little one alive until he knew what she was and killing either of the others might make her run which would force him to track her down. An effort he didn't care to put in.
"Wait, wait for us! We aren't all that fast, don'cha know?"
"We didn't it mean it like that Ichisaki!"
"Aha ha ha! So you intruders dare-" A third, feminine voice started as the group entered a room filled with red pillars.
Ichikuro, in no mood to bother with a gillian arrancar, promptly sonido'd onto the pillar, grabbed her by her throat and blew a gout of reishi mist in her face.
Cirucci toppled over in shock as she was released, crashing to the floor while clawing at her rapidly disintegrating face as foreign reishi converted the very particles that she was made of into more of its own. She convulsed on the floor for a few seconds before her reiatsu clouded out the infection and the vasto lorde reconsidered.
Unlike the useless, full sized gillian that had been guarding Las Noches from outside, this little gillian was potentially useful. He couldn't guess at how long the shinigami and human group would last, but it would be safer to have others disrupting things as well. Besides, the gillian outside had almost made him vomit with its disgustingly thin reiatsu, an arrancar flavored one could hardly be counted on to taste better.
Plus it might shut up the pathetic whimpering from his experiment.
With a lazy hop the great hollow landed next to the female arrancar, who flopped backwards trying to bring her long-ranged weapon to bare on such a close target. A negligent swat disarmed the smaller hollow before she was lifted roughly by her arm. His jaw opened.
"Kakk-" The arrancar started, cut off by another puff of her enemy's reishi blasting her already damaged face.
With less care than he took with Nel, Ichikuro directed his reishi to burrow into the arrancar's body, twisting and altering her into a puppet that would relentlessly hunt down and slay the lesser gillian arrancar plaguing Los Noches, leaving only the adjuchas he sought and doubtlessly drawing any attempt to contain him onto herself.
Then he found the parasites.
He wasn't entirely sure what they were, but they leeched the hollow's reishi at a monstrous rate to send out a constant buzzing signal of some sort. As the girl was going to be his puppet and needed her strength, he had his reishi break down the pests into their component energy and cycle themselves back into her body. Almost immediately reiatsu surged to resist the attempt, nearly drowning out his control even while in physical contact. The things were trying to pull more power from their host to heal themselves... They were defying him! Unacceptable.
Enraged enough to ignore the consequences, such as his new puppet's death, the vasto lorde seized her jaw with his free hand and forced her mouth open, placing his own over the top of hers. A vibrant pink mass forced itself down her throat, sending thin tendril through soft tissue to attack the parasites directly.
The arrancar convulsed in pain again, forcing him to shove her against a pillar to hold her still. Scant few moments were spent puzzling over how the devices worked and how he could use them to puppet her better than his own design before rationalizing that time was of the essence. He crushed the pests, rending them down to as much vibrant pink paste. As the last one along her spine was destroyed her eyes seemed to sharpen and without a single warning she bit down. Hard.
He took in her defiant, proud expression as she made a show of swallowing before closing her eyes with a serene smirk. She was expecting to die and reveling in a perceived small victory. Did she truly believe she could damage him so simply? As the probe settled into her stomach he debated the merits of allowing her to digest it naturally versus integrating the reishi in it directly into her reiatsu. But first, that smirk had no place on his opponents.
With a flicker of a thought the probe began roiling violently, nothing particularly damaging but noticeable enough to change her expression to terrified dread and cause her to clutch her waist in shock.
The vasto lorde snorted, feeling the mass of condensed reishi melt away within her far faster than it should have. Her body was starving, likely from the parasite leeching away at her for some time. While that was good in a way, it meant he'd be able to control her much sooner, it indicated that she was nowhere near full power and therefore incapable of the task he wanted to set her on.
Luckily there was something edible on hand.
With a sonido the eyeless sockets of the remnants of a bull-like mask met the yellow irises of a complete, featurelessly smooth mask of white. Rudobon had barely even thought of reaching for his weapon before an arm ran him through, painting its pure white surface red with streams of his blood.
Ichikuro returned to the others with his kill, dropping it unceremoniously at his new puppet's feet. "Eat." The arrancar stared at him with a look of disbelief. A whimper reminded him of his passenger. "All of you." The green-haired little hollow was plucked gently from his shoulder and mane and placed on the ground before the dead Exequias.
"Uh, it's a real kind gesture, but, don'cha know, we're kinda not hungry." The tiki said nervously.
"Y, yeah. So you can just, eh, finish our share yourself, right Ichisaki?" The ant added, equally unnerved.
The child simply whimpered and clung to his calf again, rubbing her snotty nose against his hierro.
The gillian was frowning and looking properly defiant again.
Ichikuro emitted a low growl, stilling the group instantly. They dared ignore his orders so blatantly? Very well than, he'd shove it down their throats!
The trace reishi he'd left on contact burst into activity, cannibalizing the inert particles that made up Rudobon's body and collecting into a bright pink blob that drew in and swallowed up everything on the corpse including mask, clothes and zanpakuto.
The lesser hollows twitched and edged away as the harmful elements and traits of his energy were neutralized. Such distrust and ingratitude. After he went through all this trouble for them. The mass quivered, forming four tentacles that pointed at each target's jaws.
They stepped back, tripping onto their rears as it surged at each of them.
#Elsewhere#
"Now, now nina, you can't just walk by."
"Uryu, I've got this guy."
The quincy ignored the statement, only adjusting his glasses in a suitably dramatic, shiny way while gauging the Privaron's spiritual power. "...I suppose he's weak enough." He finally acknowledged.
"You're just asking for a fight nino." The Spaniard hollow replied, falling into a comical anger.
"Zeige dich Kakutou!"
"Ignore him, you're fighting us now!"
#Also Elsewhere#
"You'll have to excuse me, I really can't stand sunlight."
"Heh, don't worry. I'm just a little rusty myself."
#Elsewhere Again#
"A hundred and seven?"
"Privaron Espada?"
"Phef, no problem. One quick bankai and you're gone. Ow! What the, Rukia!"
"We don't need everyone to know we're here, keep your reiatsu down."
#And Elsewhere#
"Hmm?"
"Nice arrancar-san, don't mind us, we'll just be on our way now..."
"Yuzu, don't talk to him!"
"But he's asleep..."
"Hold, Shinigami."
"See! Now we'll have to fight him!"
#Soul Society Arc Omake#
The vasto lorde raged across the miserable cityscape of the Seireitei, casually destroying every building he came across, yet leaving as many survivors as possible.
Finally one of the ones he sought confronted him, a dorky looking captain wearing glasses. The captain said something that the hollow ignored, his focus on carefully counting the number of shinigami present. Almost four hundred, good.
The captain finally drew his blade, uttering the first syllable of his shikai release when the creature was satisfied with its count.
Moving faster than the currently suppressed Aizen could hope to match, the hollow seized the wrist of the hand clutching the unreleased Zanpakuto and twisted. The bones snapped easily, allowing the menos to skewer the shinigami through his sternum, pinning him to the wall by his own sword before biting out his throat to make sure the officer died.
The collected shinigami gasped in shock as the power of the shinigami's sword faded with his life, revealing how Aizen truly looked to the Gotei 13 for the first time since he learned shikai. The hollow didn't care, he turned his focus towards the oldest feeling power present.
"Over two hundred... I am captain now..." The creature hissed menacingly.
Yamamoto frowned. "That is the law yes. Sadly no one ever thought to specify that only shinigami could be promoted that way." The old man sighed. "First that Ryoka, Zaraki and now this. We really need to change that."
The vasto lorde gave a hissing laugh of childish glee, plundering the dead captain's blood-soaked haori and flipping his orange mane over it once his arms were through the sleeves. Strange how this felt so right. He immediately pointed to some random fifth division grunt. "Sake!" He pointed to another grunt. "Food!" And then he pointed to his inherited lieutenant. "Paperwork!"
The grunts quickly fled to fulfill his request, the lieutenant shivered and twitched, seeing her beloved captain killed in such a manner, but was ushered off by some of the lower seated officers to complete the task assigned to her.
Ah, afterlife is good.
#Author's Notes#
First on the omake, while the other two methods of becoming a captain are limited to only shinigami, unless you can get nine of them to vote for a non-shinigami, the third option is not. I'm of the opinion that Zaraki was never a shinigami until he wandered in and killed his predecessor. He had that Zanpakuto of his back when he was wandering the 80th district after all and doesn't seem to know any of the other skills that every other shinigami displays at least minimal, basic capabilities to use. At the very least it can be assumed he was never trained as a shinigami until becoming captain as I recall some comments to the effect of no one knowing who he was until his promotion and him killing the guy almost immediately after entering the Seireitei. Could be wrong though, it has been a while.
Oh sure we could assume that the laws specify that only shinigami can become captains, regardless of method. But honestly, where's the fun in that?
As for this rest of this, meh, this will probably be a fairly short fic, around five chapters or so, I think.