AN: 12:27 AM, Dec 18th, 2018. Ok, let's start the next chapter!
POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas.
I glared at my mirror, aggravated at my lack of progress. Since I began looking into how my mirrors actually worked, I had come to several conclusions, but making use of those conclusions to make the power more effective has been a bit of a pain.
When I first developed the power, I didn't really notice anything weird about it. The Mirror formed, it had a reflective half and a half that was pitch black, and it was the black half that was durable. Now I knew that the reflective half seemed to be generating the black half, and that the black half acted more like a repulsive force than a physical barrier.
In light of this, I have been trying to change the shape of the black part, if only to make it thicker, by pumping more power into the reflective part. Thus far I have only succeeded in tripling the strength, and even then it take five times as long to form, so I might as well just layer five and get a better result. Wishing for the heavens-only-knows-how- big-stupid-number-of times I could sigh, I dispelled the mirror for the time being, settling for the amount I had accomplished and moving on to my energy constructs.
While yes, I had gotten to the point I could form a blade on a whim, any other shape seemed to allude me, most likely do to my focus on forming swords above all else. Thus far the only other thing I can make is a staff, which is what I made before refining it into a sword.
Right now, I was trying to make an axe. Rather basic, but every time I try to add a blade to the end of the staff, I end up making the whole construct destabilize and explode, sometimes taking off my hands. If I become an arrancar, I'm keeping the regeneration.
Muttering angrily under my breath(my voice making it come out like some occult chant) I waited for my hands to grow back as I stared at the moon. Right now I was about a five minutes walk(A fifteen minute walk for a human) from the hole in the desert that came to my cavern.
What? Thought I'd practice in my cave and risk bringing down the roof? No way, I know I have more firepower than the average nuke, I'm not that stupid. I happen to like having a roof above my head. Of course, Tsuki and Zilly are still in there, they only leave to hunt every once in a while, and even then, its only for a few hours.
I got up from the ground and stretched out, annoyed that my regeneration didn't help stiff muscles, and began to jog in the direction of the entrance. Half way there, I noted that a certain cheetah was on the surface and moving distinctly away from me, Inaba nowhere to be seen. 'Well they don't always hunt together, but it's still weird to see him alone . . . '
Part of me wanted to go see what he was up to, but another part of me argued that he'd just run off. Honestly, I know it may sound insulting be he reminds me of my mothers dog. Always running off as soon as I showed up unless someone they were more comfortable with was right there.
Considering for a moment, I decided to just go and see what happens and continued my approach. I noted how his reiatsu shifted to feeling, shall we say jumpy after my approach was noticed.
He positioned his body in such a way that it would allow him to bolt(not that that would help if I did try to hurt him). His eyes were narrowed, but nervous.
"What do you want?" he all but snapped, doing an admirable job keeping the nervousness I felt in his reiatsu out of his voice.
"Just to talk." I . . . breezed? How do you even properly describe my voice? Banishing that rouge thought I focused on the thought at hand. "I've been meaning to try to get to know you better for a while, but you always avoid me."
"Yeah, and your brilliant first impression doesn't have anything to do with that." well, the annoyance just blew away the nervousness.
I felt the urge to snort, but again, lacked the ability. "True, but I didn't exactly approve of you torturing your opponent." Not that I have any place to argue anymore . . . "I do think that one should kill their opponents in the quickest way available, assuming that it isn't a duel of some sort," man the way my vice wheezed at the end of that sentence made me sound like an old man. "but," I continued. "That doesn't mean that I don't know how hard it is to remain . . . stable when in battle."
The cat tilted his head. "Are you . . . apologizing?" he asked, sounding a little dumbfounded at the idea.
I though for a moment before answering. "Are your hind legs digitigrade?" I asked.
"What the hell? What's digigraded or whatever mean!" he more demanded then asked. Seems his fear becomes forgotten when he's mad. Maybe it's the "fight" overcoming the "flight"?
"It means you walk on your toes, so the answer is yes."
The cat gave me what I think was a dirty look. "And couldn't just sat "Yes", why?"
I tilted my head to the side. "Because I have spent ages alone, in a desert, with no-one to talk to, and now seek any entertainment I can find."
"Now I really want to smash your face in."
"Don't bother, you'd hurt something." the cat went of murmuring under his breath about "pain in the ass know it all hooded jack-asses" and grumbling at my joke/morbid statement.
"Alright." the Cheetah grumbled. "What do you want to talk about?"
'Your actual name.' "Well, for one, why were you attacking that hollow so viciously when we first met?" I asked.
The red spotted feline glanced away from me, before sighing dramatically(stirring a flash of envy from me) and after a seconds thought, answered. "I have . . . anger issues, and a bit of a grudge against the world. Don't ask why! I only really began to calm down after I started to follow Inaba." he looked away from me again. Maybe he was trying to ignore who he was talking to, or pretend I was someone else?
"And why did you start to follow Tsuki-chan?" I asked, hopefully using the Japanese honorific correctly. "Zilly" got a confused look in his eye for a moment, but shook his head and replied.
"Well, when I first met her, she saved me from a group of human looking hollows who called themselver air-cars or something like that."
'What? Did he just . . . no, think on Aizen's imminent approach latter.'
"After we kicked the bleached-towels collective asses six ways to soul society" inventive joke, "she walked . . . well, more hopped, up to me and says, "you fought him" and I'm wondering, what the hell shes talking about! So, I ask . . . well, more demand an answer really, looking back on it I was a total ass . . . or at least a bigger one then now. Where was I?"
"Demanding an answer."
"Oh right, so I say, "what the hell you talking about?" forgoting the "are", and she tells me she was looking for this one hollow, and that I had survived a fight with him. Well, there was a handful of hollow like that, so I asked which one, and she says, "the one who breaths in your reiyoku". I nearly had an . . . an . . . what do you call it when your brain tears from thinking to hard?"
"Do you mean an aneurysm? If so, then an aneurysm is . . . " he cut me off.
"No no no, a stroke! I mean a stroke, I nearly had a stroke because, who the flipping hell would what to find that monster! . . . no offence! No offence!" he went back to nervous.
"I am an abnormally power iteration of a soul eating monster, possessing enough raw power to reduce a small city to a pile of rubble and and smash hills flat by just being there. What else would you call me?" I droned.
The cheetah coughed twice in . . . embarrassment? Shame? Well he coughed in some form of negative emotion, and continued in a rather rambly manner that honestly reminded me of my own speech patterns. Am I rubbing of on him?
"Anyway, I tried chewing her out . . . don't look at me like that! I mean I yelled at her! Not actually . . . well you know, over trying to hunt down . . . well, you, because your the most freakishly powerful hollow I had ever met, so I told her she might as well go to Barragan and ask to be flipping killed. She didn't listen and went off to find you, and I followed her trying to . . ."
The cheetah froze mid sentence as we both felt a flash of reiatsu. Coming from the entrance to my cavern, specifically. Two reiatsu's, one seemingly muted. One was Tsuki's, and the other one, the muted one was . . . 'a Shinigami!?'
I froze for a moment, as I registered the reiatsu signature as being that of the shinigami. One more powerful than either the one I encountered in the world of the living, and the one I glimpsed through the senkaimon before I left.
Not bothering to wait and find out if "Zilly"was following, I charged towards the entrance to my cave at speeds that would make a fighter jet green with envy. I slowed down as I approached, so as not to overshoot, and jumped into the hole.
The short period of time I was airborne seemed like hours, as I felt the Shinigami's reiatsu blur around the cavern around me, Inaba's doing the same. It seemed they were fighting, but the shinigami was clearly stronger from how she was on the run. The shinigami's reiatsu, even now, felt dull, and I was certain that they would be hard to notice if it wasn't for how no other hollows were nearby, and how hard they were fighting.
Finally landing after what felt like an eternity, but was actually closer to five seconds, I collided with the moss covered stone flooring of my cavern, and with a vicious surge of my leg muscles shot of in the direction of the Gotei 13 member.
I appeared in between the moving shinigami and the still fleeing Inaba, who I noted had a still bleeding injury on her left side. Not bothering to say a thing, I whipped my tail at the reaper, the appendage glowing a deep purple. However, to my shock, the black blur shifted mid flight, landed feet first on my tail and used it's momentum to put distance between us, landing several hundred feet back(and leaving a notable streak through my moss).
Eyes narrowed, I stared at who had to be my favourite minor character in bleach, and possibly the greatest threat I had ever faced. A tattered shinigami garb, a mass of the same furry moss I used for bedding covered in recovered hollow masks, one mask worn over his own face. 'Ashido Kano, the lost shinigami. This. This is bad. This guy was definitely stronger that Rukia, and he was never so much as strained in any of his fights.'
I braced my body, noting that the cheetah had entered the cavern, and that he immediately began to head for Inaba. 'Zilly and Tsuki can't handle someone on this level! I need to get him out of here, or those two will get torn to pieces!'
I charged at the shingami, forming a staff in my right claw at the halfway point between us, however, before I could reach him, he disappeared in a shunpo, reappearing several hundred feet to my left. Slamming my tail into the ground tip first, I allowed my own momentum to pull me in a circle and threw the staff straight at him like a spear, forcing him to roll to the side, and letting the spear/staff give my house a new window.
Lunging at him while he was still off balance, I rotated mid air and, again, used my tail as A whip, however, he preformed a break dance-like maneuver, standing on his hands and lifting them as my tail passed, letting it pass underneath him uselessly. Furthermore, he nearly clipped it with his sword as I drew it back.
It was less than a full instant after he got his feet under him that he disappeared in another shunpo, reappearing right above, forcing me to block his attack with my right arm, which I lost in the process.
Retreating quickly and forming a cero on my tail-tip, I blasted a wide shot at him, selection a greater AOE in exchange for less power. However, when the wave of power dissipated, he was standing behind a clear barrier. 'And of course he knows that kido. And I ruined my flooring for nothing . . . '
He again vanished into a shunpo, but I was beginning to get more used to the speed, and moved to intercept his next attack, a left handed punch slamming into his midsection when he resurfaced behind me. He flew back, almost into the far edge of my cavern, but rotated mid air and planted both feet on the ground, leaving more furrows in my moss flooring.
However, before he could get back into the battle, I closed the distance between the two of us. Suddenly extending my robes bandages, I quickly wrapped as many around his body, no matter how sloppily, as possible. Ashido successfully fended of quite a few of them, extending appendages are actually the single most common ability of hollows after all, but the nigh hundreds of threads overwhelmed him before he could regain his footing.
My entire body now taking on a deep purple hue, I shoot off like a pellet from a rail-gun through the exit of my cavern, dragging the tangled shinigami behind me, where he bounced around on the ground. I raced through large empty cavern that stood between my home and the rest of the forest of menos, feeling as the soul reaper cut himself free, neither the high speed nor the constant collisions with the ground doing anything to stall him.
Feeling him cutting through the last few bandages, I wrapped my tail around him as a last resort, feeling his sword dig into it as he tried to cut himself free. Knowing I only had a few seconds, I severed the remaining bandages then whipped my tail, and thus the shinigami, at the entrance to the cavern, sending him flying back into the main body of the forest of menos. As I neared the entrance, I shoot a cero at the roof, causing a cave in that covered said entrance even as I passed through it, leaving me and Ashido cut off from my caverns.
POV: 3rd Person
The hooded wraith stood across from the lost shinigami, who even now was climbing to his feet, casting off the last few pail violet bandages that still clung to his body. The last of the bandages removed, he fell into a kendo stance across from the hooded hollow, who himself braced his body as if he was ready for a harsh collision, tail coiled around his body with a glowing blade of energy on the tip.
The two remained like that for ten seconds, before the hollow attempted to speak. "Why . . . " the shinigami shot forward in a shunpo, appearing above the adjuchas in a downward swing, which was intercepted by the tail-blade. The two ground their swords together for a moment, before both backed off, returning to their standoff.
The hooded hollow quickly formed two rather short blades(relative to it's own body size) in either hand(one recently regenerated) and sank into a rough, but passable defensive stance. The hooded hollow remained in that position for only a few seconds, before it spread it's arms wide and inhaled with all the force of a super vacuum, the sudden suction catching the grim reaper off guard, forcing him to stab his zanpakuto into the ground lest he be pulled towards the adjuchas.
Even as he kept up the constant vacuum, he slammed his hands together wrist first, formed a two handed claw, and charged a small cero on each finger tip, again sacrificing power for area of affect. Dropping the suction, he immediately fired all ten cero's at Ashido, who dodged, ducked and weaved expertly between them, at one point taking off his mask to block one he couldn't avoid.
The very instant that the the deep purple rays of energy stopped, the red haired reaper vanished and appeared directly in-front of the hollow, where he fired off a gout of purple flame, a sokatsui, point blank into his face. Blasted head over heals comically, tail tangling up as he flew, the hollow crashed into the wall, leaving a deep indentation.
As he dragged himself back to he feet, he ran a clawed hand over his face, noting several new points were the blade like fingers caught on something, and that they came away red. His masked was cracked, and he was bleeding. Before he could fully register this, he was forced to block another overhead strike from Ashido with his tail, but the hastily formed blade shattered under the pressure, forcing him to dodge to the left.
Skidding back even as he formed a cero, he prepared to fire, but before he could Kano faded out of existence and re-materialize directly behind him, cutting a deep gash into the hollows side, only to receive a blow to his own ribs from the Adjuchas tail, sending him flying himself.
The hooded adjuchas, charged at the shinigami, wrapping the bleeding gap in his left side with his bandages, the grim reaper retreating.
Following directly behind him, the hollow remained doggedly on the shinigami's heels, not giving mind to the fact that the reaper had already showcased speed far in excess of his own until it was too late. By time the hollow realized what was happening, he had been lead into a group of quarts-tree's with only minimal gaps between them, and unsure footing.
The shingami, with a final powerful leap, slammed into a tree foot-first, kicked off it, and flew through the air like a projectile at the off guard hooded hollow. Sloppily rolling out of the way, but still taking a nick to one leg, the hollow inhaled sharply, throwing the shinigami off balance for a second, but only a second, as he masterfully regained his balance and jumped straight up, avoiding the hollows follow up tail whip.
Now the shinigami had every advantage, the close set tree's of stone preventing the hollow from either reaching top speed or being able to use it's tail to full effectiveness, forcing him to stand in one point, blocking or dodging Ashido's attacks, and allowing the agile shinigami to disappear into an effective hiding place every time he tried to counter attack.
Finally, after taking multiple small injuries, that, though healing quickly, seemed to cause him a great deal of pain, the hollow froze for a moment began looking around at such speed that it was a miracle he didn't snap hi own neck, and inhaled more powerfully then ever, firing off ceros, seemingly at the random.
Ashido had a relatively easy time dodging these attacks, keeping a certain distance from the hollow so as to minimize the effect the suction had on his movements. After several minutes of seemingly non-stop firing, the hollow fell to it's knees, whole body shaking and raggedly drawing in breaths, though it never exhaled.
Ashido, for the first time since the battle started, spoke. "Are you finished?" he asked in a tone devoid of emotion. The hollow looked up from where it was crouched on the ground, movements still shaky. Raising his sword, Ashido prepared to strike the final blow, but was cut off.
"Wait." the word came out not as one of the hollows usual airy whispers, but as a snarl. However, it was not a snarl that was angry, or scared, more one that contained a modicum of authority, just enough to make the reaper pause for a moment, before the hollow spoke again in it's regular voice. "Please, listen to me, if only for a moment."
Ashido stood their motionless, a statue, for what seemed like an eternity, the hollows eyes never leaving the eye-holes in the mask over Ashido's own face. Finally, robotically, Ashido sheathed his sword, but remained in a Iaido stance, ready to cover the remaining distance with shunpo and finish the fight in an instant.
The hollow seemed relieved and after waiting a moment to see if the reaper would attack, slowly began to shift his body until he say lotus on the ground, body seemingly deflated. "Thank you. I have, for a long time, had, a question." the hollow began, eyes now seemingly distant and tired even as they remained solidly one the shinigami's own. "But I had none to ask for the longest time, as I felt that other hollows . . . simply would not understand." Ashido noticed how when the Adjuchas went to blink, he did it one eye at a time so as to keep one eye on him at all time. Smart.
"Shinigami, since I first gained consciousness in this damned dimension, I was off. I had the shattered remains of my living self's conscience, fragments of his memories . . . I was lost. I had no mouth, rather than eating I drained hollows of reiryoku and drank the reishi from the air. Part of me felt . . . morally superior to those around me for this, like I was better because I did not need to eat the souls of others in order to survive."
"But, then I thought more deeply on things such as life, and death, and came to the conclusion, that memories . . . memories are more important than even one's life, and suddenly the way I turned them back into Gillians painted me a far greater monster than any other I had met, for I took from them two things more valuable than their lives. Memory . . . and sapience."
"So, I justified to myself that I still held the moral high-ground, by thinking that I could put their power to far better use than them, devote it to a far more just cause, and tried not to think on what I had done beyond killing my foes before draining them from that point forward. I wanted to have an actual impact on the world, a positive one, and for that I needed more power."
"But then,, then I reached my limits, and suddenly everything I had ever done was for nothing. I was to weak to actually do anything. Certainly I'm strong, but when compared to even the things I have seen with my own eyes, I am still to weak to actually make a difference in this world. And then, my eyes opened I realized that I didn't even know what I wanted to change!" the hollow choked bakc what sounded strangely like a sob. "I have been wandering through this world, damaging the one part of myself I want to protect, not even having a justified reason for doing so!"
The hollow, for a moment so brief he nearly missed it, looked to the ground before his eyes were back on Ashido's own. "So I've wanted, for the longest time to ask a question, and had no one to ask. Other hollows wouldn't understand, and I had no one else to ask. Even when Inaba told me she still had some feelings, I feared to probe deeper. So now I will ask you, reaper. Was their been any point, in the first place?"
Ashido stood frozen for a moment, considering. Considering the answer, considering whether he should answer, and considering all the ways this could be a trap. Finally he spoke. "I don not know. That is for you to decide." and struck. Shooting forward in shunpo, he stopped mere feet from the sitting hollows face, and swung his katana at the mouth-less mask . . .
Only for the hollow to catch the blade between the thumb and forefinger of it's right hand. "Thank you . . . for listening." It said, eye's closed, a slight amount of liquid at their sides.
Ashiso, overcoming his shock in an instant, twisted his sword to the side, the sudden motion enough to cut off the hollows thumb, and back off to a save distance. Watching the hollow rise to his feet in a smooth motion, he realized all to previous signs of weakness were now gone. The hollow noticed his tension, and spoke.
"As I said, I can take the reishi from the air I inhale, did you honestly think I can exhaust myself? No, I just used a little trick I learned to make other hollows think I was vulnerable. That is not to say I asked you that to trick you. I honesly wanted an answer to that question. But, now, would you like to see why I launched all those cero's in the first place?"
Not waiting for an answer, the hollow formed a sword in either hand, and one on it's tale. But instead of attacking, he began to spin in place, rapidly becoming a glowing purple blur. Then, as Ashido watched in horrified fascination, the hollows swords began to grow longer.
Withing seconds the swords were hundreds of feet long, each one dicing the numerous tree's round them to small pieces, even as they grew longer. Finally, the hollow began to, again, inhale with enough force that the lost shinigami was forced to dig his sword into the ground to maintain his footing, and the blocks of still-air-borne crystal were pulled towards the hollow, forcing Ashido to cast a bakudo to protect himself from the stones.
Then, to Ashido's mounting horror, the entire cavern seemed to shake, with the sound of stone grinding against stone echoing through his very bones. Glancing up, Ashido couldn't now see it clearly. 'Holes!' the hollow had filled the roof of the caver around them with holes, then taken out the supports, and because of the vacume, he couldn't run away fast enough to get out of the crash zone. Worse, the vacuum only removed the one thing between him and the roof, air resistance.
Tensing his body, Ashido prepared to jump with all his power, even as he recited under hid breath. "Ye Lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of man! On the wall of blue flame, inscribe a twin lotus. In the abyss of conflagration, wait at the far heavens." with that recited, he kicked off the ground, shooting into the sky even as the collapsing cavern was upon him. "Hado #73, Soren Sokatsui!" with a might cry, he shoved both hands into the roof, the powerful Kido drilling him a tunnel to the surface, ironically the escaping air from the collapse only serving to shove him out faster.
Shooting into the air above the surface faster than a bullet, he only had seconds to notice the sound of a second explosion before the surface again burst outwards, the hollow shooting up behind him, hands put together to form a cero as large as his own torso.
Having only seconds to prepare for the oncoming attack, Ashido did the only thing he could do.
"Strike your prey, Tashika Hanta!"
POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas
After firing my strongest cero at Ashido, still uncertain if it would be enough to finish him off, I backed away from the cloud of smoke that enveloped his position, going to the very edge of the crater. If you can't see your enemy after landing an attack, the first question you should ask isn't "did that kill them", it's "did that affect them".
I formed another staff to be on the safe side, and prepped my tail-blade. After about five seconds, a half dozen branch like spears emerged from the smoke and converged on my position. Rapidly retreating, I watched as the spears all pierced the ground where I had stood just a few seconds ago.
I turned my gaze to the spears origin point, seeing Ashido standing in the air above the desert with only a few minor burns. This is bad. Now that were not surrounded by lesser hollows on all sides, I can make out Ashido's reiatsu, and it's ridiculous. At least three times my own, and very finely controlled. 'Well, at least he's not at the point were I wouldn't be able to hurt him.'
Seeing as how he was now in shikai, I was glad I had held back from using my mirrors(not that he gave me any openings to use them before) as I still, hopefully, had an ace in the hole. That, and I had him, again: hopefully, in a less advantageous footing. 'Hey, If Ichigo can break even with Kenpachi, then I can beat this guy!'
That thought reassured me, after testing with lesser hollows I found that one's reiatsu had to eclipsed another by roughly fifty times, at absolute minimum, to cause the kind of recoil seen in Ichigo's first attack on the giant captain, meaning Ichigo beat someone who started the fight over an order of magnitude stronger than him, proven by Kenpachi beating an opponent Ichigo would have still had trouble with after receiving two power-ups.
I focused my gaze on the hilt of Ashido's zanpakuto. The hilt hadn't changed, but the blade had been replaced by a bunch of wood like growths, each one ending in a sharpened point. Of said growths, three immediately surged in my direction, while another three went high over my head and curved around to come at me from behind.
I dodged to the side before they could hit me, however, and took a swipe at the growth with my tail, to test how durable it was. To my surprise, the wooden spear was sheared through with only a bit or resistance. Sure I wouldn't be able to cut through them without a good wind-up, but it was still surprisingly easy.
However, the brief moment of satisfaction was snuffed out immediately as the area I had just cut off immediately grew a new point and continued growing. 'Ok, so I can't take his weapon away, but at least I can cut them if need be.'
I charged at the shinigami, but the wooden tendrils coiled in on themselves like a snake and formed a wall between me and him, only to uncoil like a snake shooting forward, forcing me to dodge the lightning quick attack, which, even then, still nearly clipped me. 'At least it looks like he can't use shunpo with that thing weighing him down. Probably why he only used it when dodging wasn't an option.'
Charging a cero in one hand and converted the power from my tail blade into another cero, I fired the one from my hand at Ashido, causing him to draw back his branches again to defend himself. The second that the branches were back in a defensive position, I raised my tail as high into the air as I could, jumped straight up, and fired at Ashido's position.
No matter how awkward this tail can be at times, you can't argue with that reach.
The blow sent Ashido flying with minor burns across his cloths, although his hollow mask seemed to have prevented any real damage from carrying through. 'Darn it.'
Luckily, the blow had sent him flying from his zanpakuto. Unfortunately, he could still use shunpo, and apparently, hakuda, as I learned when he flash-stepped close up and kicked me in the face, causing me to crash into the ground, creating a crater where I was buried in the sand.
As quickly as I pulled myself out of the sand, Ashido had apparently had had the time to get back to his weapons, and now all branches were descending down on me like meteors.
I quickly detonated my staff(and my hand), causing me to shoot of to the side, the sudden burst knocking me of balance, causing me to bounce and roll through the sand, and into the still filling sand-pit where I had collapsed the forest. I quickly shot back out, only to find that Ashido had charged another blue-flame-crashdown, making me use a mirror on reflex.
Dispelling the mirror as quick as possible, hoping he wouldn't notice the ability I had been holding in-reserve, I realized I had to finish this, now.
I charged at the shinigami, now holding a sword in my left hand and pumping spiritual power to the right to accelerate the regeneration, which was complete before I reach the half way point between us. He drew three spear/vine/branches back to him in a defensive position, and launched the other three at me.
Forming a sword in my other, now healed hand, I ducked under the first of the spears launched at me, and cut them off as I ran passed them. My body now a purple glowing blur, I rushed at the lost reaper, ducking around his spears and cutting them in half as I went, rapidly mincing the snake-like spear-shafts, even as I charged my (hopefully) secret weapon.
Seeing that he wasn't going to get, me, I saw that the spears seemed to . . . rot off, until only the last ten feet remained. I was now fifty strides away. The ten feet of branches, in a lightning qucik motion, rotated around one another, forming a drill like shape. Forty paces. The drill took on a brilliant green glow. Thirty paces. The drill broke back apart, and with a cry of, "Muttsu no ten no shōdō!" launched at me with far greater speed then before. Twenty paces.
'Now!' my instinct's screamed at me, and I unleashed my trump card. "Kagami hogo-sha!" with that cry, my own trump card appeared. Ten mirrors, each a hundred feet tall and a hundred feet wide, appeared between me and Ashido.
This was my trick. As experience showed, it was easy for the mirrors to be broken from the reflective half, but not the dark half. I would be able to smash through all ten easily from this side. The other side however, would take me twenty consecutive fully charged ceros to pierce, I was confident that Ashido wouldn't be able to reach me, cancelling his attacks momentum, and barely affecting mine.
Altering my course slightly, so as to avoid Ashido's attack, I slammed into the first mirror, feeling it break even as three others broke under Ashido's attack. Then it happened.
"Shikei shikkō hito no mori!"
POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas
'What?' I thought, as I stared down at the ground some thirty feet beneath me. Had I blacked out? If so it was only for a secon-'oh lord the pain!'
Pain unlike anything I had ever experienced before shot through my body, and I unleashed a bone chilling cry of agony. After a few seconds, I regained enough sense to look up. In front of me was one of the ten mirrors I had formed, which, from what I could sense, only two remained. Three destroyed by Ashido's attack before being stopped on the fourth, five destroyed by me before I was . . .
'I've been impaled.' It was a surprisingly conscious thought for all the pain I was in, and thinking it only seemed to make said pain worse.
I had, indeed, been impaled. Through multiple points on my body, from what I could see in the mirror. Hundreds, no, thousands of spears, with shafts only as thick as a normal persons fingers, had risen from the ground in a perfectly vertical wall all around me, and underneath me. Some had hit me and broken on my skin. Others had struck, pierced through, broken inside me, then had the broken part keep growing into me. And some, some had gone all the way through. I had bee hit in at least three dozen places(though I was in to much pain to figure that number out at the moment)
The mirrors dispelled as I resisted the urge to thrash in pain, instinct telling me that that would make it worse. I looked down at Ashido, only ten paces between us, the forest of spears visible all around us. As tears dripped from my blurry eyes, I managed to register a single, minuted detail, and realization cleared my mind enough to speak through the pain. "You . . . were never limited . . . to six spears . . . were you?"
The detail I had notice? A single line of wood only half an inch thick, descending from the pommel of his sword, rather than the blade, to the ground beneath him. The shinigami replied with a simple nod, and allowed all the wooded spears to disintegrate, until only one remained, which was a single, two foot long stake shooting comically out of the sword where the blade should be.
I fell to the ground, striking with a disgustingly wet splat, and a horrid whine of pain, my whole body convulsing as it tried to throw up blood through a throat that simply didn't work that way, retching, wheezing gasps the only sound I could make.
I placed both hands on the ground, trying desperately to pull myself up to my knees. I heard the sound of sand crunching, and barely found the strength to look up. Ashido stood above me, mask removed, sword held in a backhand grip above my face. The look in his eyes . . . pity?
He spoke, a calmness in his voice. "You . . . you fought well. What is you name?"
Through my mind clouded by pain, I managed to register the question. After a few seconds of trying to inhale, making a horrid wet-flesh-vibrating sound, I managed to gather enough air to speak. "I . . . I d . . . don't . . . remember." I said, fresh tears of something other than physical pain flowing down my mask.
Ashido looked slight sad. "My name, is Kano, Ashido. Goodbye, hollow." He raised his sword higher, and then thrust downwards towards my face . . .
POV: Ashido Kano
I starred at the pitiful creature, impaled in over thirty place by my executioners forest. The creature, wheezing in a way that was painful to hear, shakily raised its gaze to meet my eyes, then drifted to my sword, where it saw the single vine from which I grew the forest that spelled it's doom.
It spoke. "You . . . were never limited . . . to six spears . . . were you?"
Seeing no reason to deny it, as it was the truth, I shook my head, then released my forest, allowing my zanpakuto to shorten into a stake, and switched my grip into reverse, to better stab downwards.
The hollow fell six times my own height to the ground, where it hit the ground with a splat and a wheeze so pitiful that it made me flick in self disgust, the words of one of my late companions echoing through my mind condemningly. "Ashido! Shinigami are meant to purify hollows! Not torture them!"
I walked towards the beast, even as it wheezed horribly, and struggled to get up. As I watched it, another memory flashed through my mind. This one of a wisdom imparted by my squad leader the first time I had mad the mistake of killing a hollow from the front, and saw the face under the mask. "Remember, Kano! Unless the man under the mask is dragged to hell, what you just did was a mercy killing! And if they do go to hell, well then, then they clearly deserved it!"
Resolve strengthened by memory's of my late companions, I strided forward with propose, stopped directly in front of the hollow, raised Tashika Hanta and began to strike downward . . . only to stop as the hollow looked up to meet my eyes. Over come with a desire to know the name of my opponent, I removed my mask, strapping it to my right side, and spoke. "You . . . you fought well. What is you name, hollow?"
The hollow made several horrible sounds, sounds that made me regret asking, wishing I had just put the pitiful being out of it's misery, but the selfish desire to ask overcame the desire to end this. Finally, blood dripping from the grate in its mask, the hollow replied.
"I . . . I d . . . don't . . . remember." He responded, the answer somewhat disappointing me, but pressing on, I decided that I should at least give him my own name in compensation for the excess pain I had caused the hollow.
"My name, is Kano, Ashido. Goodbye, hollow." I raised my stake back up, and thrust downwards, only for the hollow, in a moment of surprising strength, to whip it's tale at me with enough force to make me back off.
Backing away from the hollow, I question aloud, "Why do you still fight?" even as the hollow found the strength to climb shakily back to it's feet. "You said it yourself. You have no reason to exist. You've lost the battle, and are now in such great pain I can barely stand the sight of you. Let this end. Rest."
The hollow flinched at my claim of it's life's pointlessness, but looked me in the eye even as it's hunched form towered over me. It seemed to consider for several moment's, before it answered.
"Fear. Fear drives me. I am afraid . . . afraid I'll loose, what few memories, I have left, if I go to the soul society." Even as it said this it's bandages wrapped tightly around it's heavily bleeding wounds, and it's constant inhalation grew slightly less disgusting.
"I, am sorry, Ash-i-do. I want to try to be a little selfish, and hold on to myself. If you were, a quincy, I would let you kill me, but the thought of going forward, and leaving myself behind, is far more terrifying than even the thought of my own souls destruction. So let me . . . " the hollow reached up and placed it's talon-ed hand on its face. "Let me be, SELFISH!" with that cry, the hollow dug its claws into it's own mask, spreading crack throughout it, and inhaled more deeply than ever before.
The sudden vacuum was so great that nearby sand dunes were pulled towards it, surrounding the hollow in a tornado of sand, even as I dug Tashika Hanta's branched dozens of feet into the earth to hold my footing, the roots digging until they reached the bed-rock.
Finally secure, I covered my face with the hollow mask, the thick eye holes allowing me to see through the sand.
The hollow stood tall, back arched, mask horribly cracker from where it dug it's claw in, sand slipping thorough the grate at an awe inspiring rate, the entire creature's body glowing an, admittedly beautiful, shade of deep purple. Then, with the sound of pottery shattering, the hollow tore off it's own mask in a single smooth motion, allowing me to glimpse it's face for a brief instant, before the Adjuchas was surrounded in a pillar of the same purple light, all but blinding me and forcing me to cover my eyes.
When the light finally fade, I looked back at the hollow and found myself looking at, not the hollow, but at a far more human figure.
They were about my height, with golden brown hair, that fell down to their waist, and they were all but nude, the remains of a purple robe hanging about them. Their eyes were closed, and one of them was partially concealed behind the remains of a bone white mask. In his right hand, was clutched and odcahi sword with a purple wrapped hilt.
After standing as still as a statue for a moment, the man inhaled, and then after moment, slowly exhaled, somehow making the the basic action sound covey far more euphoria than such a sound had any right to carry.
Opening his eyes, he looked at me, and smiled slightly. Reaching his left hand down, he grabbed the purple robe, which suddenly unravelled into hundred, no, thousands of bandages, leaving him completely exposed for a moment, before wrapping around his entire body like mummy wrappings, leaving only his feet, hands, and head exposed.
His eyes matched mine. Their was a certain . . . relief, and energy, to them. "Kano, Ashido." he said it a clear voice, reaching up and gathering his hair up in one hand, before cutting it off with his Odachi, leaving it down to only just the middle of his should-blades, and letting the remaining the remaining three fifths of his mane blow away in the still billowing wind. He smirked. "Where were we?"
AN: 4:05 AM, Dec 25th, 2018. Over. Seven. Thousand. Words. Not counting the authors note's! This has to be the longest chapter I've ever done! Probably the longest single thing I've ever written! Made all the more impressive because I was only at two thousand when I started today.
Now, If you really want to know why I was taking so long to get this done, I was catching up on my Frostval seasonal quest's of Dragonfable and AdventureQuest Worlds, I was years behind on those.
Now normally I tell you how I came to the conclusions I did concerning Kenpachi's reiatsu relative to Ichigo, but it's 4:10 right now and I don't want to end up sleeping till 2 Pm . . . again . . . on to the reviews! Luckily theirs only two worth noting.
sloth slayer: Sorry, your review seemed a bit rushed and hard to make out. How could looking into mirrors while alive be used to "a few more additions either to your mc or potential oc allies"? Afterwards it's just you take on my SI's appearance, and how you think the bleach timeline works, so I won't comment on that . . . more than I have . . . still commenting, darn-it . . .
king gilgamesh: No no no, you forgot to say "Mongrel". You've got the condescending insults and belittlement part down, but you need to call me "Mongrel to really got the "Gilgamesh" role down! Otherwise you just come across as a second rate fate fan! Also, I doubt the actual gilgamesh would have grammar that bad, so you need to work on that. Maybe get that Grammarly I keep hearing about?
Ok, talk to you guys later, it is 4:18 now I need to go to bed before someone breaks the door down and makes me.
Update: 4:27 Am February 19th. Yikes I need to work on this more. Anyway, for those who bothered to check this far, the next chapter should be out by friday, but I couldn't stand all the mistakes in this one, so I edited and re-uploaded it. Sorry if I got your hopes up.