Uryu wasn't afraid so much as he just felt… empty, looking up at the roiling mass of black shadows in the sky. Countless scattered fragments of Angra Mainyu, all whirling through the airspace above Seireitei like a swarm of locusts.
Months of research, training and planning, all to prepare for that one, perfect shot that would turn the tide of the whole war, rendered meaningless in mere seconds. Uryu could not shoot something that no longer had a physical form; let alone millions of individual targets.
"Urahara-san…" Uryu spoke, sounding about as lost as he felt, "What do we do now? What even can we do?"
Urahara's lips narrowed into a thin line as he observed the individual components that had made up the Dark God disperse all over the Seireitei. "We wait," he decided. "Doubtless he will reform at some point. That will be our chance to strike."
Even if he was right, then they would still have to find a way to actually hit Angra Mainyu once that hypothetical scenario came to pass, Uryu knew. He couldn't accurately fire the Arrow from more than two kilometers away, yet as his earlier attempt had already proven, that was still well within the Demon's detection range. They only had the one Arrow. They could not afford a miss.
Uryu let out a shuddering breath. Glancing downward, he checked Coyote over for any signs of movement, but the man was just as placid now as he'd been for the past ten or so minutes, slumping forward in his restraints. He was still alive; breathing and emitting Reiatsu, but Samael's remote killing attempt had done a number on him, as the blood trailing underneath his mouth and nose proved.
Sounds of commotion drew his attention away again, and Uryu hurried over to the watchtower railing, looking out over their surroundings. "Are those… are those Hollows I hear screaming?" he questioned, a feeling of unease coming over him.
"I believe you're correct, Ishida-kun, but…" Urahara trailed off, growing very still, and Uryu felt his heart rate pick up in response. "…What on earth is it doing?"
Uryu followed Urahara's gaze and couldn't help but flinch back. The maelstrom of whirling shadows up above had begun to descend upon the Seireitei; multiple black funnels forming out of the main host and spearing straight downward like the fingers of a gigantic, dark hand reaching out to crush the entire city within its grasp. Rather than causing any sort of physical damage however, the funnels dispersed once they touched down, and flooded the streets with torrents of shadow. They fell upon and soon overwhelmed the terrified Shinigami who were fleeing before the surging tide, yet aside from the shock they must have incurred, all were left unharmed.
The Hollows who came in contact with the flood on the other hand, were not so lucky.
"My god…" Uryu murmured to himself amid the dying wails of Hollows resounding from all around them. "He… he's eating his own army!"
"It would seem Samael spoke truly," Urahara observed. "His bindings really were all that kept the Hollow Lord's hunger at bay."
Together, the two of them watched as a Menos Grande fell down as if in slow-motion, its massive body breaking down into black smog even as it was busy keeling over. In the end, it never even hit the ground.
"But if those bindings are broken now… then what does that mean for Coyote?" Uryu asked.
Urahara was silent for a moment. "…I'm afraid I do not know," he admitted. "In an ideal scenario, he too would be released from his bonds, but I cannot offer more than conjecture. All we can do is keep him stable and hope that—" Urahara's eyes widened. "Ishida-kun, watch out!"
Uryu turned just in time to see the roiling mass of black coming at them, but could do little more than attempt to shield his face before it was already upon them, and then gone again just as quickly. While it hadn't hurt, the experience of coming into contact with a fragment of Angra Mainyu had still knocked the wind right out of him, and left Uryu cradling his head as the echoes of hundreds of voices resonated within his skull.
"Are you alright?" Urahara asked, seeming rather disheveled himself.
"I am," Uryu was quick to affirm. He did his best to gather his wits back about him; now was not a time to become distracted. "What about-?" His eyes landed on Coyote, and Uryu felt as if a block of lead had been dropped into his stomach at what he saw.
Hissing out a curse, Uryu sank to his knees beside the Arrancar, clutching the man's shoulders as Coyote seized within his restraints. His remaining eye was wide open, yet had rolled so far back into his head that only the white of his sclera was still visible.
"Not now—not now!" Uryu bit out, panic driving all logic from his mind and rendering him unable to do anything but hold on as Coyote continued to convulse. He let out tiny gasps and gurgles, and pitch-black tar had begun to flow from his mouth like bile. Slowly, he began to tilt his head back farther and farther—as much as his neck would allow, and maybe a bit beyond that—until every muscle and tendon above his collarbones stood out so sharply it was as if they were about to break through his skin.
Uryu could only watch, horrified, as the life of the man who'd kept him sane during the worst days of his life slipped away right before his eyes.
Coyote opened his mouth as wide as it would go; black tar overflowing from his lips, and Uryu flinched back and fell down on his behind when a gushing torrent of liquid shadow spewed forth from Coyote's throat. The sound of hundreds of voices whispering filled the air as that black mass pooled together underneath the watchtower's roof; sneaking tendrils of darkness eventually finding their way out from underneath the eaves and joining the rest of the shadowy host in their rampage across the Seireitei.
Once the last wisps of shadow had fled him, Coyote slumped forward in his bindings once more, utterly still.
With his heart pounding in his throat, Uryu crawled forward again on hands and feet, holding up two trembling fingers to press against Coyote's jugular vein. He felt nothing. No signs of life whatsoever.
Suppressing a sob, he gently tilted Coyote's head back and looked into his eye, finding it blank and unfocused. It was fast becoming a challenge to keep his own vision from blurring, but Uryu powered through, refusing to give up on him. He pressed both hands up against the other man's chest and prepared to start CPR, barely taking note of the fact that Coyote's Hollow Hole had returned to its normal state, now freed of the black tar that had befouled it for so long.
Uryu took a deep, slightly hysterical breath, and made to press down, when—
Ba-dump
He froze. Did he just feel…?
While still stunned and hyper-alert, an odd sort of sizzling sound reached his ears, and Uryu's jaw slackened when he saw chips of obsidian flaking away from Coyote's Mask Fragment one by one, until the jawbone necklace was once again a pristine white.
Ba-dump
This time, Uryu was sure he hadn't imagined it. The sheer relief that welled up from within him when Coyote finally stirred and immediately broke out into great, wheezing coughs would have sent him straight to his knees if he hadn't been on the ground already.
With a muttered word from Urahara, the Bakudō holding Starrk in place fell away, and Uryu helped to steady him while he caught his breath. "Coyote…" he began to ask, fully aware of how shaken up he sounded and not really having it in him to give a damn, "Are you…?"
With wide eyes and an expression of stunned disbelief, Coyote met his gaze. "I… I don't sense him anymore…" he gasped in bewilderment. He touched one hand to his pure white Mask fragment, and then another to the hollow space within his chest. "…He's gone."
Coyote spoke his next words with such delicacy and hesitance that he almost seemed to fear that saying them aloud would render them false.
"I… I'm free."
Ichigo stood on the edge of a rooftop as close to ground zero as Orihime and Katsumi had dared come down for a landing, overlooking the chaos that was happening all around him. Even now, the tidal wave of black tar that had erupted from Angra's body upon Samael's ultimate demise continued to spread throughout the Seireitei, breaking down all it touched into nothing like a cancer that ate away at the land itself.
"We might have to move again soon," Ichigo cautioned his friends, watching as the black gunk crept closer. "You guys about done?"
"Oh no," Rukia snarked, "I'm only attempting to use an incredibly delicate and highly experimental technique to stop your best friend from bleeding to death from a self-inflicted injury—by all means, keep telling me to hurry it up!"
She and Chad were both seated on the ground; Rukia's fingertips emitting a blue light as she poked and prodded at the gaping wound on Chad's shoulder where his right arm should have been attached.
"Yeah; I get that!" Ichigo shot back. "I just don't think that freaking tsunami of black gunk over there is gonna wait for you to finish!"
"It ain't gonna get much farther than it already has," Grimmjow added his own two cents. Ichigo had just gotten used to being at eye-level with him, but in Resurrección, Grimmjow once again towered over him despite the extra inches he'd gained, and Ichigo was forced to look up. "Whatever the hell that stuff is, it's eating away at everything it touches, the ground included. It's already sinking into the pit it's made for itself."
"So we can stay here a bit, then?" Katsumi asked, panting like he'd ran a marathon. "That's good. I don't think I'd survive having to haul two hundred pounds and change"—he gestured vaguely in Rukia's direction when he said 'change'—"for another half-mile."
"Why couldn't Orihime just heal his arm in the first place?" Ichigo wondered. "It'd be a lot faster, wouldn't it?"
"Because that insufferable recklessness of yours has rubbed off on yet another impressionable victim and convinced him that sacrificing an arm to stop Samael's attack was a good idea," Rukia bit out, glaring at Chad as she spoke. "Curse damage tends not to heal easily, least of all when the person injured is the one who cast the damned thing in the first place! If I hadn't learned how to dispel them during our fight with Samael, not even Orihime would have been able to save you. I regret telling you I even had that ability, now."
Chad at least looked somewhat apologetic when he replied. "My arm was a small price to pay for the lives of Ichigo and the others," he rumbled, not showing any signs of pain or discomfort over the loss of his limb. "But I'm sorry for making you clean up my mess… and for betraying your trust."
"…At least you made a better bargain than my brother did," Rukia eventually murmured. Ichigo's heart sunk, and he looked between Katsumi and Rukia for an explanation on what had happened to Byakuya, but neither seemed up to answering. He swallowed thickly. "So… Chad's arm," he started, if a bit awkwardly, "Orihime can't bring it back?"
"Dont misunderstand," Rukia warned. "What Sado traded away to save you three wasn't his actual, human arm; it was the Arm of the Giant." The blue glow at her fingertips faded, and she stepped back to make room for Orihime, who called out her fairies and got to work on the injury herself.
"A single human limb wasn't a valuable enough sacrifice to deflect such a horrendously powerful attack," Rukia explained somberly as she moved to stand at Ichigo's side, in between him and Grimmjow. "The price he had to pay instead was half of his Fullbringer powers. The only reason he lost the arm as well is because it was what housed that power. Assuming I did my job right, it at least should be salvageable."
"How'd you learn to do this kinda shit, anyway?" Grimmjow interrupted her. "You didn't even need Fuckface's nails to fix him up. Why doesn't he get a stabbing?" Grimmjow almost succeeded at not sounding petulant.
Rukia shook her head. "Using Takahashi's own Curse to counter others was a workaround, at best. What I can do now actually deals with the root cause." She let out a somewhat shaky exhale and raised one hand to her chest. "I gained a rather… intimate understanding of how Curses work when Samael turned my own blood into poison." She turned to face Ichigo. "When you killed him—or destroyed his original body I guess, I actually felt his Curse dissolve in those last few moments before I… well, you know. It helped me see what weak points I needed to pick at."
Ichigo knew very well indeed. There was a trail of devastation leading from the scene of the battle with Samael all the way to where the Central 46 Compound had been to prove just how aware he had been that he'd caused her death.
"Cut that out!" Rukia admonished him, whacking him on the back of the head. It had probably hurt her more than it did him thanks to his bone armor, but it served to derail his train of thought, at least. "Don't think I don't know what's going on in that head of yours—I can see it in your eyes! Didn't we already have this conversation less than two hours ago?!"
Beside them, Grimmjow snorted. "Gonna have to hit him a lot harder than that if you wanna beat the martyr complex out of him," he commented, baring half a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth when he smirked.
Ichigo was fully prepared to snipe back with a smartass reply of his own, when he noticed a shift in the swirling mass of shadows all around them. "They're… they're starting to come together again," he observed.
"…They are indeed." Rukia's lips thinned as she looked up at the overcast sky. Grimmjow on the other hand did his best to keep his expression neutral, but the way the tip of his tail started swishing back and forth betrayed his restlessness.
"Oi," Katsumi spoke up, pointing at something in the distance. "Over there, in the middle of the lake. Is that-?"
Ichigo looked, and saw the black muck there begin to churn. From the depths, a pale white husk arose, being lifted higher and higher up into the air, straight toward the swelling mass of frenzied shadows. It was barely recognizable after Orihime's actions had torn it apart from the inside out, but Ichigo still managed to identify the black-and-white chunk of shredded meat and exposed bone as Angra's abandoned body.
The shadows moved to encircle it, then began to infest the corpse by the thousands, all of them seeping in through either its mouth or one of the countless gaping wounds that riddled the body. Ichigo's eyes widened. They were using it like a hive.
"No fucking wonder the Shinigami never managed to kill the damn thing," Grimmjow uttered weakly. "His body's just a container. Those shadows—those are what he really is."
"And according to Samael, each of his servants carried his essence. They must have all had an actual fragment of Angra Mainyu embedded in them," Rukia suggested. "That would mean that so long as even one of them remained alive, they would have served as an anchor for all those other souls we're looking at now, no matter what happened to the physical body."
Ichigo swallowed thickly as the implications of that set it. "Then… then what does that mean for Starrk?" he asked hesitantly, startling when he sensed another Tenteikura-link being established.
"You have excellent timing, Kurosaki-san!" Urahara's voice rang out, and Grimmjow cursed under his breath when the shock of it almost made him take a dive off the edge of the rooftop. "I was just about to deliver the news!"
"Good or bad news?" Ichigo asked. Urahara sounded cheerful enough, but that was never much of a guarantee of anything where he was involved.
"A bit of both, as it happens. Let us start with the good: firstly, as of three minutes ago, Coyote Starrk's connection to the Dark God was severed for good. Once he has had some time to recover, he will join up with you and your group to join the fight, Kurosaki-san.
"Secondly, Hueco Mundo's sands appear to have stopped their encroachment upon the Seireitei. No more of the barriers between us and the Royal Realm have been breached, either. This leads me to believe that Inoue-san's actions have had the desired effect, and Angra Mainyu has effectively lost control of Hueco Mundo."
Ichigo let out a relieved sigh he hadn't known he was holding in. "Then we've got some time now, right? Time to rest up and recover before we go after him again?"
"…I'm afraid that is where the bad news comes in. Angra Mainyu has no servants left, and no way of reaching the Soul King. He is more vulnerable now than he has ever been. However..."
Ichigo had both been expecting and dreading that 'however'.
"…He has just devoured every single Hollow that was present in the Soul Society, the Arrancar and a handful of remaining Adjuchas excluded. It seems their sense of individuality was too strong for them to be assimilated into Angra's hivemind. In effect, I estimate he has taken in well over a million additional souls."
"Fucking hell," Grimmjow swore. "He was already close to unbeatable before. If he's gonna be even stronger now, then how the hell are we supposed to fight him?!"
"That is not all," Urahara continued, tone of voice turning grave. "As powerful as he is now, he will only become more so over the next several hours. The divine ability Samael held until his ultimate demise seems to allow him to call upon the form and power of every soul he has ever consumed. If he were to devour any of our Captain-level fighters and take their abilities for himself, our chances for victory would dwindle dramatically."
Urahara let out such a deep sigh that Ichigo could hear it over the telepathic link. "In addition to which, it is only a matter of time before he reclaims control over Hueco Mundo. He is still its God—not even Inoue-san's powers can change that. To summarize: the longer we wait, the worse our situation becomes."
It was silent on the rooftop as everyone allowed Urahara's words to sink in.
There was no way—they couldn't resume the fight with Angra as they were now, Ichigo knew. He might have still had an abundance of Spirit Energy left to work with, but his friends didn't possess the same monstrous reserves he did. As it stood, Rukia was the only one of them who could be considered fighting-fit, and she'd been dead not even a full hour before.
Grimmjow turned to look at Orihime. "…Any chance you could just blow him up again?"
The sheer bluntness of Grimmjow's question almost made Ichigo want to laugh, but he couldn't quite bring himself to when the situation was this dire.
Orihime at least dredged up the effort required for a smile before shaking her head. "I don't think restoring his Mask a second time around would have the same kind of dramatic effect. I doubt I'd even get the opportunity to do it again; Samael was right when he said that I could only reject my own death once. It took me months to prepare that technique."
The orange glow of her Souten Kisshun faded, Chad's back in one piece at least if nothing else, but as the light disappeared, it became all the more clear just how pale Orihime's features had become by contrast. She wrapped one hand around her own stomach, her breathing growing labored. "And to be perfectly honest…" She coughed wetly into her free hand. "…I don't think I did it right the first time."
Her hand came away bloody.
Grimmjow was already by her side before Ichigo could even get past his own shock; pulling away her arm and hiking up her shirt to expose her abdomen without any concern for social graces. Five strips of sickly, purpling flesh littered Orihime's torso, covering most of the skin between her collarbones and bellybutton, and Grimmjow swore under his breath.
"T-that shouldn't be possible," Orihime sputtered, staring at Grimmjow with wide eyes. "I-I rejected it! Made it so that attack never happened in the first place! Even if I messed up, the wounds shouldn't be coming back like this!"
"…I don't think that thing's playing by anyone's rules but its own anymore," Grimmjow muttered darkly, observing as Rukia started working to contain the damage.
"I hate to say it, but Jaegerjaquez is right," Rukia muttered, grimacing. "Fixing this is beyond me; the most I can do is keep it from getting any worse. You and Sado should head back to the Fourth as soon as possible," she told Orihime. "The one upside to all this is that there won't be any more Hollows rampaging through the streets to get in your way. I'll stay and do what I can to help."
For a moment it looked as if Orihime was about to argue, but then she nodded, albeit grimly. As soon as Rukia had finished, she summoned back her floating shield, and with Chad steadying her, the two of them prepared to take off. The mood was a decidedly somber one as those present exchanged quick goodbyes.
"Well then," Rukia broke the quiet as the four of them that remained watched Chad and Orihime disappear into the distance. "I guess we'll be making at least one more suicide charge today. I'm honestly starting to lose count of how many it's been." She raised her eyebrows when no one said anything in response. "There's been an almost worrying lack of wiseass remarks for a while now," she pointed out, addressing Katsumi. "Are you quite alright?"
"…I'm fine," he eventually replied, in a tone of voice that inspired very little confidence. "Just saving my energy, is all." He took a deep breath and shook his head, as if he was trying to keep himself awake. For the first time, Ichigo noticed the bags under his eyes, as well as the sallow tint to his skin. He didn't look fine at all.
Ichigo was about to comment, but Grimmjow cut him off before he got the chance. "Just be happy he's keeping his fucking trap shut for a change," he grumbled brusquely, marching straight up to the edge of the building. He very pointedly did not meet Ichigo's gaze as he passed him by. "We ain't got time for this crap."
High above the center of the black lake, the last of the shadows were seeping into the no-longer-empty husk, at the same time that the last slivers of sun vanished beyond the horizon.
The final clash was about to begin.
Ichigo could admit to himself that he was afraid of what was to come. What worried him far more however, was the knowledge that Grimmjow was hiding something.
Just why had he done that? Grimmjow kept on mulling it over as the four of them plodded toward the edge of the black lake, but didn't manage to come up with an explanation that satisfied him.
Lying wasn't in his nature; deception was something he considered beneath him. So why the hell had he made Ichigo believe that everything was fine, when he knew damn well Takahashi was on his last legs?
Was it because he wanted the bastard to die? Hell no; not like this, at least. Watching as Takahashi got himself killed wouldn't bring Grimmjow any satisfaction.
Maybe because this was Takahashi's own choice, and Grimmjow wanted to respect his wishes, then? He barely managed to suppress a snort. There were very few things in life Grimmjow cared less about than Fuckface's wants and needs.
No.
It was because Grimmjow knew that they needed his power. Without him, he and Ichigo were fucked. Admitting that was a bitter enough pill to swallow on its own, but at least it offered some sort of justification for his actions.
"Remember: there is no need to defeat Angra Mainyu outright," the Shopkeeper informed them as they marched on. Between that weird Soul Reaper spell and his two perpetually-bickering Zanpakutou Spirits, Grimmjow was almost getting used to having other people's voices inside his head. "All that you four need to do is prevent him from consuming any more souls than he already has, and keep him occupied until reinforcements arrive. After that, you must find a way to either immobilize him, or befuddle his Reiatsu senses for just a few short moments. Ishida-kun will see to the rest."
"He makes it sound so easy," Kuchiki muttered, injecting more than a little irony into her voice.
Once they reached the edge of the lake, the four of them halted and glanced about their surroundings. Even the very earth at its banks had been tainted—dirt and stone alike reduced to a nondescript, purplish-gray substance—but at least it seemed to have stopped expanding for now.
Overlooking the area, Grimmjow couldn't help but feel somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the devastation. Not only was there now a gigantic lake of bubbling tar at the heart of the Seireitei, but the land surrounding it kept alternating between stretches of desert and half-ruined cityscapes. There was barely any part of Seireitei that was still standing.
All that, in less than a day. Grimmjow almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Just what the hell had he gotten himself into here, anyway?
"I must applaud you, Kurosaki Ichigo."
Grimmjow's heart leapt straight up into his throat when he heard that voice. High up above, the swirling maelstrom of shadows dissipated, revealing brilliant, starry skies that stretched out as far as the eye could see. With wisps of darkness trailing behind his body, Angra Mainyu descended from on high and gently set himself down upon the lake, a single ripple traveling outward when his bare feet touched the surface.
"You and your allies dismantled my jailor's schemes far more efficiently than I had held possible." He was still hundreds of meters removed from Grimmjow and the others, but they all heard him just as clearly as if he'd been standing right beside them.
"The fool."
Angra began to make his way over to them; the gleaming, obsidian surface of the lake supporting his weight as easily as if it were solid matter. "Two thousand years he spent attempting to master my abilities—attempting to control me—and in the end, even when he finally had all my powers at his beck and call, that mismatched abomination was the best he could do."
He had returned to his original, humanoid appearance, yet even so Grimmjow felt as if he was looking at a whole new sort of living nightmare. Angra's Reiatsu had once again far transcended Grimmjow's ability to perceive, and reality itself somehow seemed less… real, the closer he approached. As if this entire dimension was just a house of cards he could bring crashing down at any moment.
If he managed to reach the Soul King, then Grimmjow had very little doubt that that was exactly what would happen.
"And the girl," Angra went on, "How very sweet, thinking that her powers could restore me. How very naïve." He was now close enough for Grimmjow to make out the few blackened shards that still clung to his pale face—the last, crumbling remnants of the Hollow Mask Orihime had given him back. Angra smiled, the Mask fragments shattering further or falling away altogether when he did. "…I fear that I am far beyond salvation."
Grimmjow swallowed thickly, then bared his teeth. "The hell are we waiting for?" he grumbled. "We just gonna let him come to us?!" His heart was pounding away in his chest; liquid fire flowing through his veins as adrenaline fully kicked in. He still didn't have much, but at least he'd had the time to recover some Spirit Energy. It was gonna have to do.
With a flash of blue light and an eruption of power, Grimmjow let out a deafening roar as he called upon his Segunda Etapa, feeling his muscles swell and his chest armor shatter as his full power was unleashed. "To hell with that," he rumbled out, in a voice much heavier than before. He looked to Ichigo. "Let's show that thing how real Hollows fight."
It took him a moment or two of indecisiveness, but then Ichigo nodded, the golden glow of his irises intensifying. "And show him we can mess up the landscape just fine without any godly powers while we're at it," Ichigo added, the smirk he was no doubt wearing creeping into his voice.
"Heh. Now you're talking." Both of them cut open the flesh of their palms with almost synchronous movements, and in a matter of moments, two blindingly bright Gran Rey Cero's in the making were flash-boiling away the black tar near the lakeshore with nothing but the sheer heat they emitted.
"It hasn't even been five minutes and already I regret coming with you," Kuchiki deadpanned. She sighed and turned to Takahashi. "What do you say? Should we show it how Shinigami fight, as well—oh god damn it."
"Whaaat?" Takahashi whined, a bulging, purple sphere forming between the open jaws of his Hollow Mask. "Peer pressure!"
"...I hate you all," Kuchiki informed them emphatically, before nearly tripping and falling flat on her ass as the recoil from three simultaneous Cero blasts sent her staggering back.
A thundering roar resounded throughout what must have been the entire Seireitei when the three death rays skimmed the lake's surface, instantly evaporating all that they touched on their path towards Angra Mainyu. When they hit their target, a stunning blast of hellfire erupted that jettisoned massive globules of boiling tar high up into the sky, most of them burning up completely before they could even touch the ground.
Grimmjow had to shield his face from the searing heat that the resulting shockwave buffeted them with. Half the lake was on fire after that explosion, like an oil spill that had caught alight. The inferno was so intense that some of the embers it spat out reached all the way to the shore.
"…Think that did anything to it?" Grimmjow grunted.
"Probably not," a pessimistic-sounding Ichigo replied.
Suddenly, there was movement within the flames; as if something had come dashing out of the heart of the conflagration at extreme speed, and then a hulking, flame-wreathed figure appeared right in front of the three of them, black teeth gleaming in the light of the fire.
Grimmjow barely even had the time to move before Angra Mainyu's claws already impacted against Ichigo's sword, and Ichigo was sent skidding backwards, his clawed feet leaving deep grooves within the diseased-looking earth.
"Whatever is the matter, Kurosaki Ichigo?" Angra taunted, looking more like something that had emerged from the deepest pits of Hell than ever before now that his entire body had been lit aflame, to no apparent ill effect. "You wished for me to fight you seriously, did you not?"
Furious tides of light and dark began to swirl around the Demon's flame-shrouded form, and it was all Grimmjow could do to invoke his Reishuken, cowering within a tiny, cyan-colored bubble of energy as Angra tried to tear both it and him to shreds. To his left, he could see Ichigo doing the same, shielding Kuchiki within a crimson sphere of his own making, and while he couldn't glimpse Takahashi behind the dome of whirling, ravenous energies assaulting them, Grimmjow did manage to spot a green glow emanating from his position.
Grimmjow's Reishuken had proven powerful enough to stop Kali from squashing himself, Chad and Orihime to paste during their fight, but…
It seemed that not even three Kings all working together were enough to hold a true, full-fledged God at bay.
With a sound like shattering glass, Grimmjow's barrier shattered, and then he and the others were all catapulted away from the maelstrom of chaotic energies. Grimmjow landed on his back somewhere along the lake's shoreline, cursing and rolling away when his right arm was dragged through the black tar, the stuff instantly beginning to eat away at his metal gauntlet. He hurried to right himself again, only to sink back down to his knees when the air was suddenly forced out of his lungs.
"Such pitiful creatures you Kings are," Angra sneered, looking directly at Grimmjow as the black-and-white tides surrounding him dispersed again. "Strip away the armor around your hearts, and you cannot even muster the strength to stand in my presence."
Grimmjow was barely listening—his Hollow Hole felt as if it was about to split his body clean in half at the waist. The others weren't faring much better; Ichigo was clutching at his chest, whereas Takahashi was spitting blood and bile alike onto the ground. Only Kuchiki seemed to have remained unaffected.
Even in his current state, it didn't take Grimmjow long to put two and two together: Angra had taken the Power of Kings from them.
That horrible emptiness and hopelessness he was feeling now was what everyone but the three of them must have been feeling this whole time. He couldn't help but wonder—how the hell had the other Arrancar and Shinigami even managed to put up a fight against Angra and his troops at all, while being subjected to this?
Even as the initial shock began to fade, Grimmjow was soon hit by a second one when the flames enshrouding the Demon petered out and revealed the body underneath.
"A most intriguing reaction, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez."
Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, Grimmjow took in the familiar, gleaming plates of bone armor; the ribcage wrapped around the chest, the spinal processes jutting out from the back. The two pairs of arms each as thick as tree trunks.
"Is it because you fear her power?" Angra mocked. "Or perhaps… what plagues you most of all is knowing it was your actions that deprived Hueco Mundo of its guardian, and damned her soul forevermore."
With a cruel, malevolent smile that could not have looked more out of place on the proud warrior-goddess' face, an inverted-color copy of Kali loomed over him. There was no trace of her skull Mask or its permanent rictus grin, and instead of gleaming with a midnight-blue light, her eyes were the darkest of black; the slitted pupils narrowing as they focused on Grimmjow.
His fingers dug grooves into the earth as they tightened into fists. His lips curled back, exposing every single one of his razor-sharp, dagger-like teeth as his muscles pulled taut.
If that thing thought it could break Grimmjow's resolve just by growing two extra arms and a pair of tits, it was dead fucking wrong.
"I killed her once already," Grimmjow growled, the talons that made up Byakko's Claw jutting out from his metal-clad fingertips as he got his legs back under him. "I can do it again. Should be easier this time around without that bullshit sword of hers to get in my way."
Angra's eyes narrowed; laugh lines appearing around the corners in a sick mockery of Kali's smile. "You believe that I lack a weapon? I fear you are mistaken. After all…" he—no, she now—turned her head to regard Ichigo, who had just managed to get back on his feet with Kuchiki's help. "...You made more than one mistake during your duel with my jailor, Kurosaki Ichigo."
A strange, high-pitched cry sounded—a noise that was not at all human or even bestial, but something decidedly other—and then a familiar, pale shape came whirring through the air, heading straight for Ichigo.
"Ichi-!"
"Grimm-!"
Both of them were so busy trying to warn each other, that they never even saw the attacks aimed at themselves coming until it was nearly too late.
Grimmjow managed to flinch away from the initial face-grab Angra attempted at the very last millisecond, the Demon's Sonido so quick and soundless he'd never even known it was happening, but failed to evade the second hand that closed around his throat and lifted him off the ground with all the ease of a child lifting a doll. Grimmjow's breath hitched. All of a sudden, he found himself right back where he'd been six months ago: helplessly dangling high above the ground of Hueco Mundo, the skin of his throat rotting away beneath Angra Mainyu's putrid touch.
Urged on by raw instinct, he made to wrap his hands around Angra's wrist, most likely about to trigger a repeat of the exact same scenario from back then in doing so, but a brief flash of clarity amid the haze of panic stopped him short.
It didn't hurt. He felt the pressure of that giant hand squeezing his throat shut, but there was no pain accompanying it. Grimmjow almost couldn't believe it.
His mane.
Of all things, it was the hair of his goddamned mane that had saved him. He hadn't had Segunda Etapa the last time around.
"Desgarrón!"
Grimmjow nearly blinded himself with the light of his own attack, but he must have severed a tendon at least because next thing he knew, his feet were touching solid earth again. He backed away as fast as he could, then snuck a glance to see how Ichigo was faring, and nearly had his heart stop at what he saw.
Five thick, stark white tentacles had wrapped themselves around Ichigo's torso and were squeezing tight; rivers of blood cascading down his chest as Samael's very-much-alive starfish-familiar tore at the flesh connecting Ichigo's neck and shoulder with its monstrous, circular mouth.
"All this time, it was lying in wait; saving the very last of its strength for an opportunity to avenge its master," Angra explained, not even blinking when Takahashi charged in and blew a fist-sized, smoking hole straight through the creature's center-of-mass with another piercing Azrael.
The creature shuddered, letting out one final, pitiful whine before its grip on Ichigo slackened enough for Kuchiki to pull it off him. It hit the ground with a muted, fleshy thump, the tips of its tentacles continuing to twitch as a pool of black blood spread out around it like ink.
"…Such loyalty should be rewarded, no?"
Angra held out one of her four hands toward the creature. "Azathoth; to me," she commanded. The dying familiar convulsed once more, then went skidding through the pool of its own blood, launching itself at Angra with the last dregs of energy it possessed.
"Oh no, you don't!" Takahashi hissed out, his wings spreading wide as he rocketed after the creature, only to suddenly be propelled in the opposite direction at absurd speed when the quickest Bala Grimmjow had ever seen—or not seen, it happened so fast—impacted him dead-on in the chest and gave him whiplash so bad Grimmjow could almost feel it himself.
Had he just broken his fucking neck?! Grimmjow didn't even have the time to check, as all of a sudden that tentacled monstrosity was right up in his face, multiple concentric rings of teeth all snapping at him as the creature's foul, rancid breath left his eyes watering.
Grimmjow switched to the Fang, preparing to shear the damned thing in half once and for all, but Angra's hand got in his way. The quicksilver pike slid straight through her palm and out the back of her hand with next to no resistance, and kept right on going until Angra managed to wrap her fingers around Grimmjow's own, gauntleted fist. Another hand closed around his upper left arm with a grip like steel, and this time Grimmjow did scream when fur and flesh alike disintegrated beneath the touch.
Angra Mainyu chuckled as she raised him into the air once more. "Are you wondering why I chose you as my target, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez?" the Demon whispered in his ear as he thrashed within her hold. The starfish she still held in one of her free hands continued to shudder, its coloration inverting until it was predominantly black as Angra allowed it to feast upon her own corrupted Spirit Energy.
The gaping hole in what Grimmjow guessed had to be the creature's innards and brain closed back up, its mouth conversely opening as wide as it could go when she brought it closer and closer to Grimmjow's face. The stench of death and putrefied blood had him gagging even as he struggled desperately to break free, but he could only watch as that pitch-black, Eldritch maw loomed ever-closer, indescribable horrors moving around within its depths.
Except… no! He did know what that was!
"GRIMM!"
Roaring his name at the top of his lungs and still covered from head to toe in his own blood, Ichigo appeared in a blur of Sonido, Tensa Zangetsu cleaving through the air in a pitch-black crescent as he separated two of Angra's arms from her torso in one fell swoop.
Angra smiled. "...Because Kurosaki Ichigo's greatest weakness... is you."
Azathoth's body shrank down into a horribly familiar form; a midnight-black, contorted pike emerging from its insides as it did. Grimmjow's mind went blank with horror. "NO!" he roared, shaking off Angra's severed arm and then wrenching free of the hand that remained attached to her with a strength borne of pure desperation. "ICHIGO, GET BACK!"
"Daimajin Kyoken [Greater Demon's Void Blade]."
Ripping himself loose, Grimmjow fell down into the dirt, looking up just in time to watch on as Angra drove Samael's sword through Ichigo's chest…
"I reject."
…And erased the entire right side of his ribcage from existence.
