The Iron Sole Alchemist and the Soul Reapers (Chapter 62) The Final Battle of Hueco Mundo
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.)
Thanks to Orihme's healing abilities, Rukia, Renji, and Ashido, along with Sloth's and my homunculus selves were fully healed when several gargatna opened up inside the domed city of Las Noches. Byakuya and Hanataro arrived through one garganta. The captain and lieutenant of squads four, eleven, and twelve each arrived through separate gargantas.
Impossibly, Ulquiora, the fourth espada appeared in our midst in a flash of soinido. He was in his resureccion form. His half helmet mask was now a symmetrical horned helmet. His fingers now ended in sharpened claws, and his clothes had changed into an ankle length robe. Large black bat wings extended from Ulquiora's back.
I only saw him for a moment. Ulquiora grabbed Orihime and vanished in another burst of soinido. Even Ichigo, who was still in his bankai state, could only slash the air where Ulquiora had been a split second too late. A moment later,I heard Aizen's voice projected remotely using a kido spell.
"Can you hear me, my daring intruders? I commend you for coming this far and defeating my espadas. As a reward, I will tell you this much. We are proceeding with our plans to invade the world of the living.
"Orihime Inue is being held in the fifth tower. If you want to effect her rescue, feel free to come and get her. She is no longer of any use to me. Her powers are indeed amazing. Her ability to reject all forms of phenomenon is beyond anything the human race has ever demonstrated.
"The leaders of the Soul Society are not fools. They have understood the importance of that power from the beginning. That's why her capture was a threat to them. It helps to explain their response to her. They were afraid. They immediately took steps to protect not the world of the living, but the Soul Society itself. Her very presence caused them to mobilize. She became the bait to lure in the Soul Society's potential new military strength, the ryoka, which included the substitute soul reaper and his friends.
"If you were wondering about the fate of the four captains who came to assist the intruders, don't worry. I was able to imprison them here in Hueco Mundo."
As he said that, all four gargantas slammed shut. Aizen paused a moment to let that sink in, then continued.
"The strength of the Thirteen Court Guard Squads is really quite simple when you break it down. The thirteen captains all possess enough power to be able to stand as a military force of their own, but now, however, three of them have defected and four of them are imprisoned. If you do the math, you could say that the military power of the Soul Society has been cut in half. It makes our job easy.
"We will destroy Karakura Town, create the Oken, and overthrow the Soul Society. When all of this is done, I shall take each of you on at my leisure."
Aizen's voice fell silent.
"That guy sure loves to hear himself talk, doesn't he?" said Kenpachi.
"The genuinely amusing part is that he actually thinks our being here is to his advantage," said Mayuri giggling to himself.
"Isn't it?" asked Ichigo confused.
"Do you recall why the Thirteen Court Guard Squads were unable to capture Soske Aizen the day he defected?" asked Captain Unohana mildly.
"Negaccion," said the two mes at the same time.
"Precisely," said Byuakuya. "When Aizen arrives in Karakura Town, he will face every fighter except for us that can fight under captain level spiritual pressure. We will be waiting here for the traitors if they attempt to retreat again."
"Wait a minute," said Chad. "The spiritual pressure of all those captains would crush the people living there."
"They moved Karakura Town to the Soul Society and replaced it with a duplicate," explained my visored self. "The Rukon Militia's been monitoring the construction of the copy. I have my people watching over the real Karakura Town while the captains fight it out in the fake."
"Then we'll have to hope that's enough," said Ichigo. "You guys do whatever you have to do to get ready for the fight with Aizen. We're going to finish what we came here to do, rescue Orihime."
"Nel, Pesche, Dondachaka," said Sloth. "I know you're all still tired from our fight with Noitora. We're going to go bring Orihime back. It won't be long. Please wait here for us to get back. Don't worry. These soul reapers are our friends. They won't hurt you." Sloth gave the four captains a stern look, silently daring them to contradict her.
"You don't have to worry," said Unohana. "Our mission here is to prevent Soske Aizen from retreating to Hueco Mundo. Getting into unnecessary fights would run counter to that mission."
"Greed," said homunculus me. "Sloth and I brought mandrakes. A lot of us have broken goggles from our last fight. Put a silencing spell on us before you use your transportation kido and we might not need to fight Ulquiora."
"I'll cast it on Orihime as soon as we arrive," said Visored me nodding as he drew his wand. After pointing at each member of our party in turn, silently casting the spell, I raised my wand above my head. Strips of white cloth unfurled from the tip and swirled around us in a dome. When the cloth vanished, we were in the fifth tower with Ulquiora and Orihime.
Visored me cast the silencing spell while Sloth and homunculus me pulled out our mandrakes. Ulquiora anticipated the move and destroyed both mandrakes before they left their pots with a pair of balas. After eliminating the mandrakes, Ulquiora wasn't making any aggressive moves. His lips were moving, so I assumed he was getting some pre-fight taunting in.
Ulquiora should be dead and visored me knew it. Taking advantage of this lull, I used legelimency. His emotional control still a wreck since Sloth resurrected him, I was able to slice through his occlumency barriers with trivial ease.
My flesh bomb had done its job. Ulquiora had been taken completely by surprise and his organs were destroyed by the explosion contained and amplified by his hiero. Unlike Noitora and the other espada, Ulquiora had a powerful level of high speed regeneration. It couldn't regrow his destroyed organs, but it kept him functional enough to jump out a window. Once outside the dome of Las Noches, where the energy form his release wouldn't destroy the fortress, he entered his resureccion form. Releasing his zanpakto healed his wounds and left him more than ready to fight.
Ulquiora finished talking, then promptly rushed at Ichigo. Ichigo's black blade clashed with the arancar's claws, just barely getting the weapon up in time to keep his head from being torn off. Countering with a black getsuga tenso, Ichigo did no damage.
Visored me cast a quick finite encantum spell on the area to remove the silencing charms, then put on my mask and began the chant to build up power for a high level kido. Rukia joined me, chanting a different spell. Renji released his bankai.
Homunculus me, Sloth, and Chad rushed in to engage Ulquiora hand to hand with Ichigo while Uryu fired arrows past us. Without an enhancement potion, Sloth and I were having the same problem we had against Tesla. We were an order of magnitude stronger and faster than Ulquiora, but his reaction time was so far ahead of ours, it almost didn't matter.
Ulquiora caught one of my punches, hen used me as a club to bat Chad through a heavy stone support column before using my body as a shield against one of Ichigo's getsugas. He no doubt expected Ichigo's attack to take me out, but the shield spells built into my uniform activated and negated the blast. I grabbed the wrist of the hand Ulquiora was holding me with and delivered a lick to his shoulder that ended up breaking off his entire arm.
Ulquiora backed away form the melee to regenerate his arm, but that coincided with Rukia and visored me finishing our chants. The arancar was hit from three directions at once. Once by a powerful crimson blast from the mouth of Renji's bankai, once by an amped up bolt of lightning from Rukia,and once from a dragon shaped blast of fire from me.
The three blasts had blown the roof of this tower and raised an obscuring cloud of smoke around Ulquiora. The Mad Eyes in our sockets let my and Sloth's homunculus selves see through the cloud. We rocketed in at the dazed arancar, taking advantage of the fact that we had no spirit energy for him to sense. Unfortunately, the enchanted armor we were wearing could be sensed and Ulquiora blasted us both with a green cero that launched us both off the roof of this tower and into the base of a neighboring tower, which promptly collapsed on top of us.
Ulquiora's cero had cleared away the dust and revealed him to be whole and unharmed. Any damage our combination attack had done was regenerated just as fast as his severed arm had been. The arancar tried to rush Rukia and my visored self, but Renji interposed his bankai in the way giving Ichigo time to reengage with Ulquiora.
Ichigo pulled on his mask, wrapped a getsuga around his blade and attacked Ulquiora in close. By using his getsuga that way, his sword swings all had the power of a getsuga behind them. It wasn't enough to do even superficial damage to Ulquiora who pressed his attack until he'd broken Ichigo's mask in half.
I released my bankai and summoned a patronus. That was as far as I got before Ulquiora disengaged with Ichigo, accepting a quickly healed slash to the back as a bargain price, soinidoed to me, and tore out my throat. Undeterred, I summoned half a dozen dementors including one directly between Ulquiora and myself.
The fourth espada retreated to the sky as my high speed regeneration mended my throat. Ichigo pursued Ulquiora, and the later led him through the top of the dome of Las Noches, blowing a small hole ahead of them with a bala.
"Before we came to Hueco Mundo, the other Greed gave me, Chad,and Ichigo each a bakoto," said Uryu, drawing the tuning fork shaped short sword from beneath his cape. "The bakoto he handed out had the power to suppress soul reaper abilities in everyone but their wielder. After Rukia and Renji showed up, none of us wanted to sue them and risk leaving them powerless. If Ichigo's smart, he's using his now that he and Ulquiora are a distance away."
"What are you saying?" asked Renji.
Uryu channeled his spirit energy into the bakoto, causing it to dig tentacles into his left arm and cover them with black armored scales. Renji's and my bankais ended and our swords returned to their sealed states.
"Hollow and quincy powers aren't effected by the bakoto," said Uryu, forming a glowing blue disk of spirit energy under his feet. "If you don't have those, you should stay behind."
I sheathed Tsumi no Rensa and drew my bakoto. It dug its tentacles into my right arm and layered black scales over it as I stepped onto the platform with Uryu.
"Orihime," said Rukia, "I'll finish healing chad. You go with the others."
"Right," said Orihime, nodding and hopping onto the platform with us.
As Uryu raised the platform to take us to Ichigo, I said, "Weave, AraƱa," and released into my spider-centaur full hollow form.
The clash of spiritual pressures above us was titanic compared with what had been happening under the dome. Between Ichigo using his bakoto and Ulquiora no longer needing to worry about collateral damage, this was going to be a whole new fight. Uryu got us above the dome and we rushed toward the spirit energy we were sensing.
Ulquiora had transformed again. His mask was now entirely gone. He was naked with thick black fur covering his arms and lower body. Large, pointed ears now complimented his jet black wings, giving him an even more bat-like appearance. A thin tail with a small tuft of black fur on the end was wrapped around Ichigo's throat.
The bakoto I'd given Ichigo was nowhere to be seen. He was still in bankai, but his coat was shredded down to almost a single sleave, indicating he was almost out of spirit energy. He wasn't wearing his mask and only the fact that he still held his sword in a death grip told me he was still consious.
Ulquiora glanced at us, lifted Ichigo's chain mail vest, then fired a black cero through Ichigo's chest. Dropping Ichigo as though he were a corpse, Ulquiora had failed to notice that Ichigo's sword was still in its bankai state. Horrifically injured as he was, Ichigo wasn't dead.
Orihime rushed to Ichigo's side, summoning the rika who controlled her healing powers. When Ulquiora tried to get in her way, I stabbed him through the stomach with the green energy blade projected from the mouth of the dragon shaped gauntlet of my bakoto. Uryu got above Ulquira and rained hundreds of blue arrows down on the espada, who brought his wings up to form a shield.
Ulquiora grabbed my right arm and tore it off at the shoulder. The bakoto quickly drained the severed arm to nothing and reverted to its tuning fork form, which Ulquiora tossed aside. I backed out of melee range using hirenkyaku with Uryu firing his maximum 1200 arrows at once at Ulquiora to cover my withdrawal. While Ulquiora stood in the dust kicked up by Uryu's arrows, I charged a crimson cero in my left hand. By the time my arm finished regenerating, the cero discharged.
Healing Ichigo was going slowly. My cero hadn't done a thing to the arancar and even with his soul being overclocked by the bakoto, Uryu's arrows weren't piercing Ulquiora's wings.
Turning away from me, Ulquiora rushed Uryu with a burst of soinido and punched the quincy through one of the towers situated on top of the dome. Eiher that put enough distance between us that I was out of range of Uryu's bakoto, or Ulquiora had just ripped Uryu's arm off like he had mine. Whichever the case, my soul reaper powers were back. I silently summoned my own bakoto and again let the parasitic weapon dig into the flesh of my right arm.
Ulquiora was rocketing away from the tower he'd smashed Uryu through and straight toward me. I held my bakoto clad right arm toward Ulquiora and fed every drop of spirit energy I could muster into the bakoto. Green light poured from the eye holes in my hollow mask as the weapon greedily drank up my spirit energy. In return for my life, a blast of green energy stronger than anything I could have managed on my own fired directly at the charging espada.
In a single fluent motion, Ulquiora summoned a lance of green light and hurled it at my blast. The two attacks met in a massive explosion between us. My blast had more power, so the resulting explosion enveloped Ulquiora who barely had time to curl his wings around himself protectively before vanishing amid the light.
Then the pain came. I screamed as the bakoto on my arm which had already drained every drop of my spirit energy sucked on the dray arteries, decomposing the spirit particles that made up my body. My mask shattered and my resureccion broke down, reverting me to my humanoid form. It was starting to break down the rest of my body when Uryu arrived at my side. Blood pouring from the stump where his left arm used to be, he held a seele schneider in his right hand and used the glowing blue energy blade to sever the bakoto's core from the tendrils dug into my flesh.
"Don't you die on me," said Uryu. "I am not going to be the one to explain to Sloth that you had to sacrifice yourself because we couldn't handle one arancar she already killed."
I sat up and took a self assessment. I was so drained of spirit energy, I wouldn't even be able to levitate a feather. My right arm was hanging useless at my side, with bits of the destroyed bakoto woven through my flesh and mostly plugging up the bleeding.
"Give me your arm," I said, taking a bottle of diatiny from my utility belt with my left hand and splashing it on the stump of Uryu's left arm. It stopped the bleeding. I was digging through my belt for an injector of Mayuri's flesh supplement that I could use to regrow Uryu's arm completely when the explosion finally faded and we saw Ulquiora wasn't dead.
The arancar's wings and tail were gone, his ears had been burned to half their previous length, and all four of his limbs had been reduced to stumps, but he was alive. Worse, his high speed regeneration restored every inch of destroyed flesh in seconds.
"You are full of surprises," said Ulquiora as he landed near Uryu and I. "If I'd taken even a moment longer with my lance, that attack of ours would have killed me. But it looks as though you're spent. Are there any last tricks in that utility belt of yours?"
"Just one," I said, closing my fist around a small cube in my pouch. I threw the small black cube at Ulquiora's hollow hole. A caja negaccion wouldn't hold an espada permanently, but it would give us time to withdraw, rearm, and recuperate. Ulquiora caught the device and crushed it to powder before it was anywhere near him.
Not far away, Orihime was in a sobbing fit, calling out for Ichigo as though doing so might heal him faster. The hole in Ichigo's chest still hadn't closed, but I could see him start to move.
Uryu was focused on Ulquiora, holding his seele schneider in a defensive pose and missed Ichigo's transformation. Ichigo's hair grew to ankle length in seconds and cascaded down his back. His skin turned chalky white and tufts of fur appeared at his wrists. A new mask covered his face, with vertical black markings and a pair of forward facing horns. His hands and feet were clawed and the hole in his chest smoothed out into a proper hollow hole.
Ichigo got to his feet and roared. Holding out a hand, his zanpakto flew to him. The air pressure from a practice swing tore chunks of stone out of the dome and sent Orihime flying backward.
Ulquiora charged a black cero which Ichigo countered with a red cero of his own from between his horns. The blasts neutralized eachotther perfectly. Ichigo soinidoed behind Ulquiora and tore the arancar's arm off.
After getting some distance and regenerating his arm, Ulquiora created another green energy lance and hurled it at Ichigo's head. Ichigo bent his neck slightly and let the attack fly past him. When it hit the ground some distance from Las Noches, it exploded with the force of a small nuclear bomb. I glanced down at my mangled right arm, contemplating the fact that the bakoto had been able to draw enough energy out of me to overwhelm that attack.
Ulquiora created another lance. Ichigo soinidoed in close, grabbed the tip, and muffle the atom bomb level explosion in the palm of his hand before slashing across Ulquiora's body diagonally with the zanpakto he held in his other hand. After Ulquiora fell to the ground, Ichigo stood over him, charged up another red cero between his horns, and fired it straight down.
Orihime protected herself, Uryu, and I from the blast with her shield. We could only hope none of our friends was directly below.
When the dust cleared, Ichigo was holding the top half of Ulquiora by his wing. The arancar had been bisected by the cero along the deep gash Ichigo had carved across Ulquiora's body. Ichigo contemptuously tossed Ulquiora down near Uryu, Orihime, and I.
Ichigo walked to where Ulquiora's body laid and adjusted his grip on his zanpakto, preparing to execute Ulquiora. Uryu grabbed Ichigo's hand.
"Stop, Ichigo," said Uryu. "It's over. You've won the battle. It's true that he was our enemy, but there's no need to mutilate his body. You've won, Ichigo. Let it go."
"Uryu, get back!" I yelled. "He's not in control right now!"
"Didn't you hear me?" demanded Uryu. "You've won! You have to stop now! If you go through with this, you will not be human anymore! You have to stop now, Ichigo!"
Uryu's attempt to get through to Ichigo failed. The mass of undefined instincts piloting his body, neither Ichigo nor his inner hollow, identified Uryu as a threat and stabbed him in the stomach with his zanpakto. Uryu's vest kept it from penetrating, but he still had ribs and organs crushed by the force of the impact. Dropping his sword, Ichigo began charging another cero between his horns. Orihime begged him to stop to no avail.
Ulquiora made good use of the distraction. He had partially regenerated, summoned a lance and soinidoed behind Ichigo. In a desperate, all or nothing attack, he severed one of Ichigo's horns.
That destabilized Ichigo's cero which blew up in his face and shattered his mask. Ichigo collapsed and reverted to human form. His injuries were fully regenerated and from how his chain mail vest laid, his hollow hole had closed.
Ichigo woke with a start and quickly took inventory, surprised to find the hole in his chest healed. Then he noticed Uryu's condition and his expression turned to one of horror.
"I see you finally snapped out of it," Uryu managed haltingly.
"Am I the one responsible for that wound?" asked Ichigo, his eyes wide.
"You're a hard guy to kill," said Ulquiora, drawing everyone's attention back to the fact that the arancar was on his feet again.
It would be more appropriate to say he was on one foot. Ulquiora's high speed regeneration had stopped after growing one full leg and the beginnings of a skeleton of the other, He was too drained of spirit energy to finish the job, and the organs in the lower half of his body would have to be replaced by conventional medical techniques since high speed regeneration didn't work on internal organs.
Despie all that, he still had the strength to soinido to Uryu and grab Ichigo's sword from where he dropped it. He tossed the sword to Ichigo and demanded they finish their battle, summoning a new green energy lance for himself.
I injected Uryu with the flesh supplements to heal the damage to his organs and regenerate his severed arm. It was all I could think of to do to contribute while Ichigo and Ulquiora prepared to face off again. Then I heard something incredibly stupid from Ichigo.
"Am I also the one responsible for cutting off your left arm and leg? If that's what happened, then you should cut off my left arm and leg."
Even Ulquiora looked at him like he was an idiot, so shocked that his energy lance dispersed.
"The entity fighting you earlier was a hollowfied being with no consciousness," explained Ichigo. "It was not really me. If we're going to settle this fight, I have to be in the same condition as you or we won't be evenly matched."
"Hold on, Ichigo," said Uryu. "Are you crazy? You can't be serious about this! It's suicidal!"
"Is that it?" I asked. "You lost control again and you want to die? We'll get this under control again just like we did the last time!"
"I'm fine with it," said Ulquiora, taking a step toward Ichigo.
That was as far as he got before his one remaining wing started dissolving.
"So, this is how it ends," mused Ulquiora. "Kill me, Ichigo. You don't have much time left. I no longer have the strength to even walk. If you don't take this opportunity now, our duel will remain unsettled forever."
"I can't do it," said Ichigo, barely keeping himself together.
"What are you saying?" demanded Ulquiora.
"I don't want to... not like this. It's wrong. This is not the way I want to defeat you!"
I walked up to the dying arancar, drew my zanpakto awkwardly with my left hand, and cut off his head. With his body practically falling apart, even my blade with no spirit energy behind it had no difficulty doing the job.
"Why did you do that?" asked Ichigo near tears.
"How could you not?" I asked gently. "Couldn't you hear him begging for his life?"
"Begging for his life?" asked Ichigo confuse. "You killed him!"
"Ichigo Kurosaki, are you a soul reaper or not?" I demanded sharply.
"What does that have to do with anything?" asked Ichigo.
"What happens to a hollow that is killed by a zanpakto?" I asked, holding mine up to serve as a visual aid. "How is dying to a soul reaper's zanpakto different from dying to, say, a cero?"
"That's right," said Ichigo collapsing to his knees, utterly exhausted. "Hollows purified by a zanpakto move on to the Soul Society."
"Now, let's make sure everyone below is alright, shall we?" I suggested.
The captains had cleared the area of any of the stronger hollows or arancars left after the espada had been eliminated. The weaker hollows had fled. True to their word, they had not harmed Nel, Pesche, or Dondachaka.
Rukia, Renji, and Chad had made it back down from the tower to link back up with the captains. Magical girl Sloth had dug my and Sloth's homunculus selves out from under the rubble of the building that had fallen on us. Ichigo, Orihime, and visored me rode Uryu's platform down to link up with the others.
"What's that on your arm?" asked the tall, grey haired Lieutenant Isane Kotetsu of squad four when she was looking over my injuries.
"It's a damaged bakoto," I said. "I've been stockpiling a lot of dangerous, illegal weapons for the fight with Aizen."
"Isn't that the same weapon Shuske Amagai used against Head Captain Yamamoto?" asked Captain Unohana.
"That's right," I said. "It should be able to shut down Aizen's Kyoka Suigetsu and eliminate his illusions. It neutralizes all soul reaper powers in range."
"Then even if we could get you to the battle over Karakura Town with it, it would be useless," noted Unohana. "It would end Aizen's illusions, but leave our forces completely defenseless against his arancars."
"We can get them to the battle," said Mayuri. "After going over the materials in the eight arancars's labs, I found a device I can use to open and close the garganta."
"And if you close it while we're partway through, we're lost forever," added visored me, who'd assimilated all of Zaelaparo's notes long before the rescue party arrived.
"I assume this means we're going to see this peculiar gate of yours first hand," said Mayuri. "I've been looking forward to the opportunity to examine it up close."
"If I have anything to say about it, you'll never get that chance," said homunculus me. "Besides, we have more than just the two options."
"What are you talking about?" asked Ichigo.
"Nel," said homunculus me to the little arancar, "if your full powers were restored, you could open us a garganta, couldn't you?"
"Nel could," she acknowledged. "But Nel doesn't know how she turned back big again."
"Orihime's powers can heal things ordinary healing abilities can't," said homunculus me. "If you want her to, I'm sure she can undo the damage Noitora and Zaelaparo did to you that forced you into this form in the first place. If you want to stay like this, that's fine too. There are still other ways for us to get to Karakura Town."
"Why would Nel want to stay small?" she asked. "Of course Nel will help you get home. You'll come and visit Nel, right?"
"Of course we will," said Orihime. "You're our friend."
Orihime's oval shaped healing shield covered the scar on Nel's face and the crack in her mask. The crack closed and the scar faded. When both were fully restored another small explosion accompanied Nel returning to her adult form.
Nel threw her arms around Orihime saying, "Thank you! Thank you so much! You promise you'll visit?"
"N...Nel-" choked Orihime who was being crushed by the arancar who didn't know her own strength.
Sloth and I used the red stone fueled strength of our homunculus bodies to pry Nel off Orihime before she did any permanent damage. Captain Unohana restored Ichigo's spirit energy and Nel opened the garganta As Ichigo, Chad, Uryu, and Orihime entered the garganta, Ichigo paused and looked back.
"Are the rest of you coming?" he asked.
"The captains and lieutenants have been ordered to guard Hueco Mundo," said Renji.
"We've got another way back to Karakura Town that might beat you there," said visored me.
"I've seen Aizen's shikai," said Rukia. "If he does retreat to Hueco Mundo, try to destroy his zanpakto before he goes so those of us here won't have to rely on Captain Kurosuchi alone. Now, go!"
Author's comments:
The stress Ichigo was under during this battle is extreme. He was seeing his friends litterally ripped limb from limb by a monster he couldn't hurt, then he was the monster who ended up hurting one of his friends. Someone who understands what he's been going through talking him down and making sure his friends are all okay by the time he comes to his senses makes recovering emotionally after the battle a lot easier.
