The Iron Sole Alchemist and the Soul Reapers (Chapter 61) Nel's Enemies
by Howlin
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)


Upon arriving at the outer wall of Las Noches, we were surprised to discover it was not made from sekiseki stone. As a result, tunneling in using spirit energy was a viable option. Ichigo and Renji wasted no time blowing a hole through the extremely thick wall. Ichigo tried to send Nel away for her protection, but Nel reasonably pointed out that since she'd helped us and Ruroganda had been able to report back, she would already be considered a traitor. As such, it would be safer for her to stay close to us.

Our tunnel led us, after a fashion, to a circular room with five doors leading out. Sloth identified the door that led most directly toward Orihime. Our spiritually aware friends sensed strong spiritual pressures ahead. Aizen knew we were coming and from where. The arancars in our path had been placed deliberately.

"All right, everyone," I said, pulling a silvery cloak out of my pocket, "who remembered to bring your invisibility cloaks?"

No one had forgotten. Our added numbers meant we had to squeeze multiple people under a single cloak, but there were enough cloaks to hide our entire party. We proceeded carefully, with Sloth and I herding the others since our Mad Eyes let us see the others beneath their cloaks.

The corridor had a lot of machinery hidden in the walls, ceiling, and floor. Some of it was design to make it possible to rearrange the floor plan. Other devices served as triggers for traps of various sorts. To avoid the traps and continue moving silently, Sloth and I kept a close eye on the others and physically guided them away from any triggers they got too close to. We'd progressed a good distance when the floor opened up beneath us.

As we fell, we were sprayed with ink and dumped into a wide, high ceilinged hall. A male arancar with pink hair and mask fragments on the form of glasses was waiting for us. He was wearing a smug, self satisfied expression as he addressed us.

"Congratulations on evading so many of my traps. In the end, I was forced to just open the entire floor and hope you had been delayed long enough to still be in the corridor. You should know most intruders don't manage nearly so well. I am arancar number eight, Zaelaparo Granz, at your service."

"Heads together," said Sloth. We did so and she pulled a mandrake seedling out of its pot and brandished it at Zaelaparo. I couldn't hear the plant's scream, but I could hear the espada laughing.

"You didn't honestly think you could keep getting by on the same trick, did you?" asked Zaelaparo in a mocking tone. "I've been analyzing all your battles so far and have prepared countermeasures for all your techniques. This one was as simple as flooding the room with a sound that perfectly neutralizes the sounds your plants make."

"That's pretty impressive, considering we haven't used any plants in combat before coming to Hueco Mundo," I said. "I presume this was originally developed to neutralize Tosen's shikai and recently modified for mandrakes?"

"Letting potted plants to the fighting was getting boring anyway," said Renji. "Bankai! Hihio Zabemaru!" The enormous skeletal snake that was Renji's bankai was there for only a moment before it shattered and vanished.

"I did just explain I'd prepared counters for all your techniques," said Zaelaparo. "You can't use your bankai here."

"Ichigo," I said, taking out a small glass bottle, "the potion we gave you was optimized for your bankai speed. Don't drink it." I took a swallow from my bottle, closed the cap, and returned it to my pocket. Everyone but Ichigo did likewise.

As the potion took effect, I realized something was wrong. Time seemed to slow down as usual, but my body slowed down with it. Moving felt like fighting through gradually hardening molasses. This was exactly what I'd just warned Ichigo about. My perceptions were massively sped up, but my body couldn't keep up, leaving me effectively paralyzed.

The only ones effected were me and Sloth. It didn't take long to work out why. Looking behind the walls with the Mad Eye, I saw a sealing array identical to the one I used on my bracers while exercising or studying martial arts. The array neutralized the power of the red stones in my body that granted me superhuman strength and speed. Without that power, I was no stronger or faster than my muscles and body plan would suggest.

That wasn't all of Zaelaparo's tricks. He completely neutralized Uryu's quincy powers. Pulling the bangle off my wrists and putting it on his own didn't solve the problem.

Shikai apparently still worked, so Ichigo, Renji, Rukia, Chad, and Ashido went at Zaelaparo. Ichigo pulled on his hollow mask for a boost. The espada had studied everyone's fighting style and was able to effortlessly block close in attacks and neutralize ranged energy attacks using a quick bala.

Unable to move until my potion wore off,I turned my attention from the fight to analyzing the devices in the walls inhibiting our powers. Identifying the computer controlled speakers neutralizing the mandrake's cry was easy enough. There were a number of devices for manipulating spirit energy, and I had to diagram the circuit pattern of each in my head before I could say for sure what each was doing and more importantly, which we'd have to destroy to get back to full power.

I had that done by the time Ichigo's mask reached its time limit and shattered. At that point, Zaelaparo called in his fraccion, a gaggle of deformed aranars he sicked on our party rather than bother to keep fighting himself.

With his friends fighting for their lives against tough arancar opponents, and unable to fall back on the power of his bankai, the lessons the visoreds were trying to beat into Ichigo finally clicked. He resummoned his mask and used the boost in power to quickly finish off the fraccion he was fighting. The eight espada stepped in again, preventing Ichigo from coming to the rescue of his friends.

Ichigo fought ferociously, forcing Zaelaparo on the defensive. The fight lasted significantly longer than eleven seconds. At first, I thought his hollow had taken over again, but when a powerful overhead chop forced Zaelaparo to his knees, Ichigo disengaged to cut down the fraccion that was pressing Renji. Ichigo's hollow wouldn't have turned his back on his enemy to save a friend.

Zaelaparo took the opportunity to charge a cero and fire it at Ichigo's back. Nel interposed herself between Ichigo and Zaelaparo using a burst of soinido. Opening her mouth wide, Nel swallowed Zaelaparo's cero. Then she vomited it back up, aimed right back at Zaelaparo. The espada was caught by surprise and took the full force of his redirected cero.

Time started to move normally for me again as the smoke cleared revealing Zaelaparo's torn clothes and burned skin. Renji went to help Rukia while Ichigo moved to shield Nel from Zaelaparo's retribution.

"You've surprised me, Nelliel," said Zaelaparo. "I didn't expect you to retain any of your powers after what we did to you."

"What you did... to Nel?" asked Nel in nervous incomprehension.

Zaelaparo ignored her question, grabbing his nearest fraccion and eating the arancar. His burns and bruises vanished almost instantaneously.

I took advantage of his distraction, drawing a wand engraved with an elaborate alchemic array with an irregularly shaped red crystal affixed to the tip. Pointing it at the espada, the array glowed with a bright blue light. That light flew from teh wand in the blink of an eye and struck Zaelaparo in the chest. He collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.

"You! What did you do to me?" demanded Zaelaparo.

"Alchemy," I told Zaelaparo stepping toward him. "It mostly handles manipulating matter, but there are a couple of exceptions. It's possible to effect someone's mind with alchemy. I don't like doing it. The last time I did something like this in anger was when I ripped all knowledge of alchemy out of Sloth's miserable excuse for a father so he couldn't keep using it to harvest power from a death camp. I've been less cruel with you. All your scientific knowledge is still there. I've just erased your knowledge of how to move your limbs."

Zaelaparo looked at one of his fracciones with panic in his eyes and said, "My sword! I need to release!"

A shot from Sloth's kido gun shattered Zaelaparo's sword before the fraccion had taken a step.

"You didn't let us use our full powers," said Sloth. "It doesn't seem fair that you can use yours."

"Ichigo, aim getsugas there, there, and there," I directed. "That'll take out the machinery suppressing our powers."

The fracciones tried to run, bu chad and Uryu intercepted them. Ichigo with Nel clinging to his leg, came up to Zaelaparo and pointed his zanpakto at the helpless espada.

"You said you did something to Nel," said Ichigo. "You're gonna explain what you meant by that. Now."

"It's obvious he was just saying that to get under your skin," said Pesche. "We've never met his guy, right, Nel?"

"That's right," said Nel slowly. "Nel's never been inside Las Noches before today, and Nel would have remembered meeting one of the espada."

"I suppose it isn't surprising you don't remember after Noitora cracked your skull open," said Zaelaparo. "Where did you think you got that scar?"

"He's still trying to play us," said Dondachaka. "He'll say anything if he thinks it'll keep him alive a few more minutes, you know what I'm sayin'?"

"That girl has been manipulating you," said Zaelaparo. "She's a former espada! Noitora and I were responsible for defeating her and banishing her from Las Noches, and now she's using you to get her revenge!"

"It's a lie," said Nel. "Nel was never an espada, and she wouldn't use you like that!"

"It's okay Nel," said Ichigo, putting a hand on her head. "We trust you."

"She has a number on her back that proves it!" yelled Zaelaparo.

"You think we're going to strip a child on the say so of a defeated enemy?" asked Uryu. "I'd say at this point, the only thing to be done with is decide who should finish him off."

"To be honest, I have misgivings about trusting hollows," said Ashido.

"So you're gonna start with one of Aizen's espada?" I questioned. "I'll make this easy. I already knew about the number on her back. I saw it when I was checking for a hollow hole to verify she was an arancar."

"Why didn't you say something if you knew?" demanded Pesche.

"Nel didn't match the description of the third arancar I knew about, so I figured the tattoo was part of a trick to fool the other hollows into backing off. One that didn't work very well back in the Menos Forest," I explained. "Zaelaparo's story about memory loss makes me less suspicious, not more."

"Nel really did used to be an espada?" asked Nel, shocked.

"It's okay," said Sloth, putting her hands on Nel's shoulders. "We don't care about who you were. It's who you are that matters to us. And who you are is someone who saved Ichigo from a cero to the back just now."

"I understand," said Ashido. "I'll finish off our enemy."

Ashido's blade cut clean through Zaelaparo's neck. Green energy shot upward from the wound, forming into a massive pair of double doors, chained shut, with a giant skeleton half embedded into each door. The doors slid open, breaking the chains holding them, and an arm wielding a blade reached out of the crack and impaled Zaelaparo. The arancar screamed as he was pulled inside. The doors closed, then shattered, leaving no sign they'd ever been there.

"Now, you're going to explain why you've been keeping her past a secret from Nel," said Sloth, turning on Pesche and Dondachaka.

The two hollows bowed low, noses against the ground.

"We're sorry," said Pesche. "We were Master Nelliel's fraccion. Master Nelliel always hated fighting. She used to say that by becoming arancars and regaining our reason, we shouldn't fight unless there was a good reason. Even so, out of gratitude to Lord Aizen for making her an arancar, she served as an espada, which mean she had to fight a lot. After Noitora and Zaelaparo injured her, and she lost her memories and powers, we saw it as a chance to start over and give Nel the happy, peaceful life she always wanted."

"You did that for Nel?" asked the girl, touched.

"And for us," said Dondachaka. "I liked being your big brother a lot mroe than I liked being your fraccion, you know what I'm sayin'?"


I came to under Orihime's healing shield. I didn't know how long I'd been out. My body felt weak and I was as hungry as I could ever remember being.

Raised voices had woken me up. I looked around and saw a pair of female arancars standing over a bloody and bruised Orihime. One of the arancars was charging up a cero.

My spirit energy was almost empty, but what little power I had came at my call. Tsumi no Rensa released into its shikai state. The exertion nearly made me pass out again, but I held on to consciousness through sheer force of will.

A light swing was all it took to wrap Tsumi no Rensa around the arancars' legs. They looked down as I yanked. Links were added and removed rapidly, the chainsaw action cutting through their hiero and severing their legs at the ankle. The energy for the cero dissipated as they collapsed to their knees.

"Greed, you're okay," said Orihime.

"You aren't," I observed as I dragged myself to my feet. "What happened?"

"Are you made we roughed your princess up?" taunted one of the arancars. She started to charge a cero.

I was too weak, too tired, and too hungry to fight. I briefly considered eating the both of them to get my strength back. Then I closed my eyes, shook my head, and took two small black cubes out of my utility belt.

"Go bleed out somewhere else," I said, dropping one of the cubes into each of the arancars' hollow holes.

Their eyes widened as the caja negaccion did their work, sealing them into an inescapable pocket dimension before the cero finished charging.

The threat ended, I slumped down into a seated position against a wall and rummaged through my utility belt. Finding a rice ball, I bit into it and ate ravenously, pausing to mutter the incantation to duplicate what was left of my snack every few bites. Orihime healed herself while I ate.

"They didn't do any permanent damage did they?" I asked when I'd finally eaten my fill.

"I'm all right," said Orihime.

"What happened to me? And where's Sloth?" I asked, only now fully registering her absence.

"I don't know what happened to you," said Orihime. "When you came back, you just collapsed. Sloth and I both tried to heal you. Her powers didn't work, but I was able to sense some kind of foreign reshi sticking to you. It was like your body shut down to protect you from it. Once I rejected the last of it, you woke up."

"I'd just put the flesh bomb in Baragan," I said, trying to get by bearings. "I don't think anyone saw me. What about Sloth?"

"She wanted to stay, but I told her I'd take care of you and that she should finish what you came here to do," said Orihime.

"And those arancars?" I asked. "What was going on with them?"

"Aizen called me up to his throne room. I'm still not sure what he was trying to accomplish. I think the arancars were jealous I got to talk to him."

"They won't be causing any more trouble," I said. "Unless you have spirit energy equivalent to an espada, there's now ay to break out of that pocket dimension."

"There's something else," said Orihime. "Just after Sloth left, I sensed Ichigo, Chad, Uryu, Rukia, and Renji. They were fighting with an espada until a minute ago."

"Sloth has the detonator for the flesh bombs," I said, my mind finally revving back up to its usual level. "If she's doing what I think she's doing, trying to contact her will just put her in danger."

"We should go to them," said Orihime. "I can heal their wounds and we can help them fight until Sloth gets back."

"Sloth can't sense spirit energy," I noted. "She wont' know how to find us. And we can't be sure she'll know it's time to hit the detonator."

"I thought of that. Tsubaki!"

The small rika who represented Orihime's offensive power split off from her hairpins and manifested before her. Looking around, he turned to Orihime.

"Why did you call me? There isn't any enemy to fight!"

"Tsubaki, listen very carefully," said Orihime with a tone of calm, firm authority that caused the rika to pay attention. "Greed and I are going into battle. I need you to stay in this room. When Sloth gets back here, tell her to detonate the bombs in the espadas then lead her to where we are."

The rika looked like he was about to argue. Then he saw the determination in Orihime's eyes, snapped to attention and said, "You can count on me."

"I know I can, Tsubaki. Greed, let's go."

"Right," I said, taking Orihme's offered hand. It took me only a moment to find the others' spirit energy. Then I turned on the spot and aparated, with Orihime side along.


Orihime and I appeared just outside Zaelaparo's palace where I was immediately sucker punched by a superhumanly strong fist wrapped in the Ultimate Shield.

"You idiot," berated my homunculus self. "Do you have any idea what you've put me through? What in the world made you think you could trust Aizen?"

"Why would you think I trusted Aizen?" asked my Visored self. "You know me better than that."

"Well, for the record, he lied about the Soul King being a threat, and the method he wants to use to make the Oken is an emergency backup plan only meant to be used if the world's about to end and they can't get access to the Soul King, who can just make new Okens without cost."

"Who are these people?" asked Ashido.

"That's Orihime," said Rukia, "the one we're here to rescue. The other one is Greed. It's a little strange, but he and the other Greed sort of split off and merge together."

"Conspiring with the enemy and taking our prisoner out of her cell. I knew you couldn't be trusted."

Noitora'd come up behind so quickly I didn't even notice him until he spoke. Taking advantage of his element of surprise, Noitora pierced his left hand through my back and out the front of my visored self's chest. He took part of my heart, a good chunk of lung, and several vertebrae from my spine with him. Visored me collapsed to the ground as Noitora pulled his hand back out.

Orihime threw herself over my collapsed body, putting a triangular shield between us and Noitora. Once so secured, she snapped her oval shaped healing shield in place over me.

"My name is Noitora Gilga," the tall, thin espada introduced himself. Then he stuck out his tongue revealing the number five tattooed on it.

"You don't introduce yourself after a sneak attack," said Ichigo. Then turning briefly to Nel and her brothers, he added, "That was a sneak attack. This isn't. Bankai!"

Ichigo and Renji activated their bankais, Rukia nd Ashido released shikai. Chad summoned the power of his arms. Uryu drew his bow. Sloth and my homunculus selves too out our combat potions only to have them shot out of our hands by a bala from an unexpected direction and spill out onto the sand.

"We have unfinished business," said the arancar I knew from our after action reports was named Tesla, the boar arancar that Sloth and I had fought in the world of the living. "This time, I'm not letting you enhance your strength and speed with those potions."

"We've got more than enough of both to finish you off," said Sloth, using hirenkyaku to get behind Tesla and swing a roundhouse kick at his head.

Tesla ducked under Sloth's kick. I rushed in with hirenkyaku of my own, Uryu having returned my bangle after our fight with Zaelaparo, and aimed a punch at his chest. He dodged that with trivial ease as well and brought his sword down on my arm.

The shield spells in my sleeve activated and prevented Tesla from cutting off my arm like he had in the world of the living. Looking me in the eye, Tesla started to charge a cero only to have it blow up in his face when Sloth struck the unstable ball of energy with a quincy arrow.

Tesla soinidoed backward to get some distance, casually dodging the dozen arrows sent after him. Then he released his zanpakto. His enormous, boar-like resureccion form still bore the scars of our last battle. His nose was misshapen and mangled, and his right arm was attached with a number of large stitches and staples. He moved it only gingerly, obviously favoring that side.

"Without your potions, you're much slower than you were in the world of the living," observed Tesla with glee.

That wasn't exactly true. Both Sloth and I had an order of magnitude more strength and speed than the toughest arancar thanks to our red stones. The quincy bangles we wore let us use hirenkyaku to resolve the problem of the ground under our feet not providing enough traction to take advantage of that raw speed. The problem was, without either our souls or our potions, we were limited to human reaction times.

"Follow my lead," I said to Sloth.

She nodded in reply.

I rushed Tesla, throwing as many punches and kicks as I could as fast as I could. I ignored defense entirely, counting on my enhanced uniform to keep me safe from any counterattacks I wouldn't be able to see coming anyway. Sloth was in the melee a second after me.

"So, I have a question," said Pesche from the sidelines of our fight with Tesla. "Why don't you just do what you did to Zaelaparo?"

"I hit Zaelaparo while he was distracted," I explained as Tesla dodged every punch and kick Sloth and I threw at him. "On top of that, it only works on the really human looking arancars. Does pig face here look human to you?"

A flare of green light came from Sloth's cape as the defensive spells laid on it neutralized a solid punch from Tesla.

"So you're not just toying with him?" Pesche confirmed.

"We're trying as hard as we can to kill him," said Sloth. "You want to help?"

"I'm glad you asked," said Pesche. "You'd be lost without me. Don't worry. I'll stop him dead in his tracks with my Infinite Slick."

Pesche spit a slippery fluid on the ground under Tesla's feet. Sloth and I were both in the air using hirenkyaku, and so were unaffected. Tesla slipped on the puddle and lost his balance. It wasn't clear which of the two dozen hits Sloth and I connected with before his corpse hit the ground actually killed Tesla, but based on the fight so far, he saw every one of them coming. There was just nothing he could do about it.

"Tesla!" called out Noitora. Ichigo was in bankai wearing his mask and slashed at Noitora's back while he was distracted. The slash produced a shower of sparks, but not a single drop of blood. Noitora rushed at me with a boom of soinido and split my head in two with his massive blade.

Visored me came around to see my homunculus self on the ground with his head bisected, Sloth laying next to him decapitated, Rukia, Renji, and Ashido down and bleeding, and Noitora fighting Ichigo, Uryu, and Chad at the same time.

"I'm good. Heal the others," I said as I pulled my mask on and let my high speed regeneration take care of any remaining wounds. "Bankai, Hofuku no Rensa! Weave, AraƱa!"

I took a dose of my enhancement potion optimized for this form then rushed to join the melee. Noitora swung his oddly shaped scythe down at me, but with my enhanced reflexes, I got my chain up to block. he fifth espada had more spirit energy behind his attack than I had behind my defense, and his blade began to cut through the link in my chain it was in contact with.

With his weapon tied up for a split second, Chad and Ichigo saw openings. Disks of blue spirit energy formed at the fingertips of Chad's left hand while black energy poured off Ichigo's blade. Chad's punch landed in Noitora's stomach while Ichigo's blade struck his back. At the same instant, Chad called out, "La Muerte," and Ichigo roared, "Getsuga Tensho!"

"Get back!" ordered Uryu.

The three of us in close combat leapt back, though I left a loop of chain around Noitora's weapon. Uryu had planted five seele schneiders around Noitora. With Chad, Ichigo, and I out of the way, Uryu poured the liquid reshi from one of his silver ginto tubes onto the hilt of the nearest seele schneider, saying, "Springer." A glowing blue pentagon of light formed, defined by the seele schneiders Uryu had planted, compressed inward on Noitora, then exploded.

When the dust cleared, Noitora's white clothes were shredded, including his eyepatch that concealed both his mask fragments and the hollow hole straight through his head. Noitora's body didn't have a scratch on it. All that and we hadn't gotten through his hiero.

"Good job with the setup, Uryu," called out Pesche. "Now it's time for us to finish him off."

Pesche was standing on Dondachaka's back. Dondachaka had gotten a spiked metal club from somewhere and Pesche was brandishing a sword hilt with a glowing blue energy blade. Dondachaka's mouth was open and something resembling the barrel of a canon was sticking out.

"Ever since you attacked us and banished us from Las Noches, we've continued to train and improve our abilities," declared Pesche. "Your mistake was dismissing us as an enemy you've defeated before. Now, that this! Cero Sincretico!"

Pesche and Dondachaka each charged a cero fo a different color. The two blasts twisted and swirled together, launching at Noitora as a single Cero. Noitora was too stunned from Uryu's Springer to dodge and took the powerful combination attack head on.

This time when the smoke cleared, the fifth espada was sporting mild burns, bruises, and scratches all over his body. The damage was largely superficial, but the fact that their combined cero had broken his skin in places meant I had a way around his hiero. I flash stepped in and drove my fangs into Noitora's shoulder, injecting venom through the small openings that had been made in his skin.

Noitora punched me in the face hard enough to shatter my mask, break my goggles, and toss me ten feet away onto my back. Then he rushed at Pesche, swinging his scythe at him. I added links to the loop of chain I'd left around Noitora's scythe until the weapon more resembled a mace. Then I removed layers as Noitora hit Pesche with it, cushioning the blow as best I could. It was still a solid hit that sent the insect masked arancar flying.

Nel screamed and I felt a spike of spiritual pressure from her position. A small explosion accompanied Nel transforming from a small child into a tall, long legged, large breasted woman. Her green robe tore strategically, forming a short skirt and a tiny, high necked top. Her short blue green hair had grown out and waved over the number three tattooed on her back. The round, cracked skull mask took on a more angular appearance along with a pair of curling horns.

With a burst of soinido so fast it looked like teleportation, she grabbed Dondachaka and Pesche, bringing them both to where Orihime was treating the wounded. Looking down at the two fondly, she grasped a sword and said, "You've both protected me for so long. Now it's my turn to protect you."

"Protect them?" demanded Noitora. "You should think more about protecting yourself, Nelliel!"

Noitora licked the blood off one of his arms then charged a cero at the tip of his tongue. Nel stood there and stared Noitora down. When the energy released, Noitora called out, "Gran Ray Cero!"

Nel held up a hand, stopped the blast in midair, then opened her mouth and drew it in. Noitora realized a split second too late what was coming when Nel vomited the cero right back at him with more force than it had when she swallowed. Noitora dodged most of the blast but still had his left arm blown clean off.

"I forgot," said Noitora, gripping his weapon and breathing hard. "Cero doble was your specialty."

"This fight is over, beast," said Nel contemptuously. "You can't beat me. Leave now and keep your life."

"Over?" demanded Noitora. "Like I told you back then, a fight isn't over until one side is dead. Now, Pray Santa Teresa!"

In a flash, Noitora entered his resureccion form. He was still humanoid for the most part, except that he had four arms. His mask fragments had expanded into a kind of horned helmet and each hand held a long, curved scythe of more conventional design. As usual, entering resureccion had completely healed him.

Noitora rushed at Nel, swinging his scythes. She blocked his attacks with her sword, but was being forced back. A psychotic grin was on Noitora's face as he attacked contrasting with Nel's cold, emotionless expression.

"You've been gone a long time, Nelliel," said Noitora. "Did you really think the rankings of the espada were the same as when you left? That number on your back doesn't mean a thing anymore!"

My mask had regenerated itself and I was up on the eight legs of my spider bodied resureccion form. In the middle of a high speed melee like this, I didn't dare try a spell that could miss and hit Nel. Instead, I swung Hofuku no Rensa low, removing any links that might entangle Nel's feet and wrapping Noitora's legs. Gripping my chain with both hands, I yanked as hard as my enhanced strength would allow, pulling Noitora off his feet.

Nel took the opportunity to leap back a few paces while Ichigo, Uryu, an Chad fired ranged attacks at the toppled Noitora. The attacks amounted to little more than a distraction to the fifth espada. He cut himself free of my chains and was back on his feet none the worse for wear.

"I didn't want to do this so soon after regaining this form," said Nel. Raising her sword in front of her, she said, "Praize, Gamuza."

In resureccion form, Nel's lower body had been replaced with the brown furred, four legged body of a large mountain goat. A double sided lance appeared in Nel's hand and she threw it at Noitora, calling out, "Lanzador Verde!" Noitora tried to block with his scythes, but Nel's lance punched right through, shattering all four blades and striking his shoulder with enough force to throw him backward.

Materializing another lance, Nel said, "Don't worry. I'm not going to kill you." As she thrust her lance forward, Nel suddenly reverted to her child form with a popping sound. She face planted into the ground, looking at her hands and asking, "Why is Nel small again?"

Noitora laughed and went to punt Nel, but Ichigo swept her up as he flash stepped past Noitora.

"Oh please," said Noitora. "All of you working together could barely keep up with me before I entered my release state. Without Nelliel to save you, none of you stand a chance against me." Flicking his wrists, four new scythes appeared to replace the ones Nel destroyed.

"Expecto patrounum!" I called out, conjuring a dog made of silvery light.

"What's this?" asked Noitora. "Some new attack?"

"No, it's to protect the rest of us from the real attack," I said as the chain links at Noitora's feet turned into dementors. I dropped out of resureccion form and removed my mask as Noitora fell to his knees. "I didn't want to risk summoning them where their aura might effect someone else, but I've been keeping an eye out for openings."

"What are those things?" asked Nel.

"They're called dementors," I explained. "Amortal beings that feed on positive emotions. They gradually drain away your capacity for happiness and your will to live. They're intelligent, and can avoid feeding on people if they like, but it seemed prudent to have the patronus out for protection in case they got confused who they were supposed to be feeding on."

"What's gonna happen to him?" asked Ichigo as Noitora curled up in the fetal position on the ground.

"The effects of dementor exposure are temporary," I said. "They wear off quicker if he effected eats some chocolate. Long term exposure can break a person completely, of course."

What was to become of Noitora became a moot point when we heard a muffled explosion from inside his chest and smoke began pouring out of his nostrils. Sloth had detonated the flesh bombs inside the espada. Noitora was dead. I resealed and sheathed Tsumi no Rensa. My patronus flickered out with the disappearance of the dementors.


Author's comments:
Keeping the party together means we get to watch everyone contribute something to taking down the enemy. Even if they don't have the strength to deal with an espada on their own, being a distraction so someone who can do the job means a lot.