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Yamamoto narrowed his eyes at the all too helpful Quincy.
"If he is as destructive as you say he is, he will push the enemy back away from the door," Ryuuken said. He stared back at the ancient Shinigami, calm and unmoved by the censure he could see in the old man's eyes. He really didn't care about any collateral damage that might happen in Shinigami territory.
Besides, Ryuuken recognized that all too soon the Shinigami may not even have a choice. Kenpachi strained against his bonds, his own out of control reiatsu eating away at the kidou. The large man could now shift his arms in his struggle for freedom.
Yamamoto lifted his hand to recast the kidou and keep Kenpachi immobilized. Ryuuken saw his chance. As Yamamoto cast the the kidou, using the full incantation for maximum effect, Ryuuken stepped between Yamamoto and his target. The kidou wrapped itself securely around his body. It forced his arms behind his back, and an unorthodox twist of the wrist at the end of the chant tripped him up and made him fall heavily on his side.
It wasn't a lot of fun, but the reward was great. Kenpachi tore through the last of the kidou holding him in place like an enraged bull. Kidou strips flying from side to side as he shook them off.
"'Bout time," Kenpachi growled at Yamamoto. He cracked his neck loudly and noticed Ryuuken laying on the ground bound in kidou. He glared Ryuuken down for a moment. When the other didn't blink Kenpachi shrugged to himself. "Eh, why not?" He slid his notched sword under the kidou binding and sliced the kidou as if it were a piece of string. "Don't slow us down; take out as many as you can. Winner gets free booze and a chance to have a go at me." Kenpachi grinned like a shark. Then he glance at Yamamoto. "Gotta go, Old Fart. Ya can't keep a strong fighter from battle forever!"
He turned for the door and took off at a run straight at his companions backs. He threw a couple of the Taichou, Ukitake who was coughing up blood even though he was unhurt and Mayuri who cursed Kenpachi, as he charged passed. The others quickly got out of the way before they joined the other two on the floor.
Ryuuken stood and dusted off his pants. He could hear Yamamoto grinding his teeth.
"You said you would not interfere," Yamamoto said in a clipped, angry tone.
Ryuuken smiled smugly at having gotten under the man's skin. He knew who had led the massacre of his people. Being an ally now did not mean the man was forgiven. Yamamoto was a means to an end. Ryuuken decided to dig a little deeper. "I have never been all that good at following my own advice," He said as he straitened his tie. "At least now you can tell your masters you didn't have to make that decision, clean hands and all that. Now if you don't mind, I do believe I have been challenged."
Yamamoto's face turned red with anger. He flipped his staff into the position of a sword ready to draw. Ryuuken ignored him and walked toward the door and the battle that had moved outside. As soon as Kenpachi had bulldozed his way through the Quincy front line the others had charged out behind him. The tide had turned now that the Shinigami had more room to maneuver.
Once out in the open several shikai blossomed into existence. Ryuuken couldn't help but think that the sheets of forming ice reflecting pink glits of light off of slivers of blade was rather pretty. It certainly offset the stomach churning pile of slashed bodies Kenpachi was piling up at his feet.
"Where's the real fight?" The giant of a man yelled as he impaled another Quincy on his blade. Ryuuken winced slightly. Kenpachi was horrific, but he did have a point. Not many of the Quincy present could beat Ryuuken in an all out fight, even with Yhwach's power boost.
In fact, there were only three who had the levels of power Ryuuken had been expecting in the invasion force. Two stood off to one side much like Genryuusai and two other taichou, the sickly one with the white hair and the lout wearing the most ridiculous pink kimono a man could wear.
One of the two Quincy was covered from head to toe in a black cloak. The other was a slender man with pale blond hair and ice blue eyes. The heavy hitters of both sides seemed content to stay out of the conflict for the moment.
Mostly, Ryuuken amended as the gentle looking woman who had stabbed the abomination of a mouth earlier decapitated three men at once with her sealed zanpakutou. She seemed to be having fun.
The other was a Quincy who looked like he would be more at home in the underground punk scene than in any kind of military. Despite his looks though he seemed to be a competent fighter. The other two female taichou Yoruichi and Sui Feng, Ryuuken had seen in the meeting hall had singled him out for a tag team assault.
"Hey pretty ladies," Mohawk said with a lecherous grin. "Come to play with The Heat?" He stabbed a single finger at Yoruichi. She used shunpou to dodge the bolt of fire that shot from that finger easily.
Ryuuken rolled his eyes, "The Heat", right.
Yoruichi was good. She could dodge all of the bolts of fire Mohawk- Ryuuken considered his personal name for the man a better choice- with seemingly little effort. As he was a marksman himself he could tell that Mohawk was actually a very good shot. From the frustration that he was showing Mohawk was not used to missing more than once if at all. Yoruichi continued to dodge the fire bolts but would lunge at Mohawk making ineffectual seeming attacks while a smaller Sui Feng used her shikai, what looked like a fitted gauntlet with a single elongated finger on it, to paint Mohawk's body with butterfly tattoos. Ryuuken frowned. What was that going to do? Most of the shikai he could see around the courtyard seemed bombastic when they were trying to be subtle.
Sui Feng lunged forward on the attack aiming for one of her marks. Mohawk abandoned his defense against Yoruichi to block her, obviously seeing her as the greater threat. He took a very hard shunpou enhanced hit to his side for his trouble.
Ryuuken looked at the scene again, this time using his reiatsu. He noticed the unstable change in Mohawk's reiatsu in the center of each of the butterflies, exactly where the woman had stabbed him. Sui Feng was putting up a good front with her hakuda, but anyone could see that her blows were having little effect against Mohawk. She was trying to get close enough to stab him once again in one of the several places she had already marked him.
Mohawk stabbed two fingers at the lithe taichou and used two fingers to fire a concentrated jet of flames directly into her face. From Ryuuken's perspective, She had barely evaded fast enough to escape sever burns to her face, but her hair caught on fire and burned away on the left side.
Yoruichi screamed like an enraged animal and went completely on the offensive. Her taichou's haori shredded along her back and arms with a concentrated blast of of reiatsu that crackled with lightening. For a brief second she disappeared completely, and Mohawk went flying across the courtyard.
Ryuuken was surprised and a bit impressed. He had never seen such a tactic from a Shinigami before. Most of them preferred their zanpakutous to other forms of combat. Mohawk's reiatsu enhanced body had been barely phased by her hardest hits before.
"Fucking bitch!," Mohawk yelled as he stumbled to his feet. He spat out blood. "I'm gonna melt you into a puddle!" He lunged at Yourichi with three fingers extended. He missed.
Yoruichi used shunpou to dodge Mohawk's glowing hand and started a flurry of blows that could not be seen by the naked eye. Mohawk had to push his hirenkyaku to the limit just to keep up. The moves impressed Ryuuken quite a bit especially when she shunpou-ed directly into a spin kick and knocked Mohawk not only off of his feet but strait up into the air.
Mohawk landed hard on the ground with a loud groan. He recovered quickly but not quickly enough as Yoruichi had enough time to propel herself with shunpou into a flip over Mohawk, kicking him in the back of the head as she landed.
Mohawk growled incoherently, and to his surprise as well as the taichou's, he caught the taichou's foot in his hand as she attacked again. Then he grinned, and his hand started to glow again. Yoruichi screamed but still managed to use her shunpou enhanced speed to rip her foot from Mohawk's hand. She landed meters away on her good foot and hobbled her way to a nearby tree. She fell against the tree panting heavily. He eyes were gazed with pain.
Mohawk laughed loudly in triumph and took the opportunity to finish her off. He aimed a single finger at the struggling Yoruichi with the intent of burning a hole through her head.
As he was about to fire a kidou pinned him in place with three beam of converging yellow light. Sui Feng had regained her senses. She screamed in incoherent rage and dived at Mohawk. Her zanpakutou was aimed squarely for the butterfly mark on the side of his neck.
Mohawk dodged the strike. The needle like end of Sui Feng's finger gauntlet scratching across his face. Another butterfly mark bloomed into existence on his cheek. Mohawk grinned mirthlessly and jumped up into the air. When he hit the ground again fire erupted at his feet and whooshed outward. Sui Feng had to jump back to avoid more burns.
"It's getting a little dangerous fighting you," Mohawk taunted.
"Tch," Sui Feng replied. She readied herself to strike again.
Mohawk glanced briefly at the blond still standing beside the hooded figure. "Oh well, no pain no gain," He said and his reiatsu flared and burned Sui Feng's reiatsu out of his body. He burst into flames and the air around him got so hot that Sui Feng had to step back several paces.
Mohawk fared little better than Yoruichi's foot did. Once his reiatsu turned to flame he was no longer immune to the damage that it could cause. Burn marks replaced the butterfly marks Sui Feng had put on his body, and he stumbled briefly before he could catch himself.
Sui Feng scowled at the destruction of her marks and worse she now had a headache from reiatsu back lash. She shook her head and dived forward to attack. If she couldn't kill him with her two hits then she would make sure he had to burn his own skin off to survive.
Mohawk didn't even move. He just grinned at her. Suddenly Sui Feng's body was wracked with pain. Burn marks formed on her skin exactly where the burn marks were... had been on Mohawk. Sui Feng grit her teeth against the pain. Her mind was racing as she tried to figure out what had just happened. She tried to move out of the way as Mohawk pointed a single finger at her. The grin on his face was triumphant.
Before he could fire Mohawk screamed in pain as lightening wracked through his body. He fell to the side unconscious. Sui Feng focused her attention behind Mohawk's fallen body to see Yoruichi pointed at where he had been standing. She had pushed herself away from the tree and used her shunko to fling a compressed lightening bolt at Mohawk.
Yoruichi smiled at Sui Feng and winked. She leaned her back against the tree casually, if you ignored the mangled foot that she couldn't put any weight on.
Sui Feng rolled her eyes, "Show off," She muttered.
Then Unohana was at her side. All trace of the ruthless killer was gone. She used her kaidou to heal a burn on Sui Feng's side. "Now this is a fine mess," She said. "It's going to take me awhile to heal all of these burns."
"What happened?" Sui Feng asked in frustration. "I had him."
"Yes you did," Unohana said. She nodded at where Shunsui and Ukitake were facing off with the blond Quincy. "That one has some strange powers indeed. He switched Flame Boy's burns to you." She glared at Mohawk's corpse. "Looks like he can't cure dead, though."
Sui Feng sighed in exasperation. "I'll be fine for awhile. Go see to Yoruichi-sama." She wanted to be left alone. If there was any point in that fight where she should have picked up on Blondie's ability, she wanted to find it.
Unohana snorted. "The Sou-Taichou is seeing to her. We decided that you needed my expertise." She smiled softly at Sui Feng. "You have no idea how bad you look do you?"
Sui Feng glanced over to where Yoruichi was holding out her foot for the Sou- Taichou's tender loving care. By the look on her face it hurt a lot.
"You could help, you know," Unohana said to Ryuuken without looking at him as she healed Sui Feng.
Sui Feng turned her head to see who she was talking to and was surprised to see a Quincy standing so close and not trying to attack them.
"I talked the Sou-Taichou into letting that monster go," Ryuuken said pointing at Kenpachi having a great time hacking away at a masked Quincy who seemed to be able to regenerate himself.
Unohana looked him up and down. "I guess that is enough, for now."
She turned back to her healing, and Ryuuken let out a silent sigh of relief. For some reason it seemed more appropriate, and safer, to explain himself to her rather than taunt her like he did to the Sou-Taichou.