Chapter 52: Shooting Star Project [B-Side Playlist]
"When the hell did you have time to make this?" Ichigo asked, pulling a confused face as he stared up at the towering object.
An enormous canon stood, floor to ceiling, in the middle of a ludicrously huge room, throwing a dark shadow over Ichigo, Chad and Orihime.
"I think the real question is: how did I mange to get Mayuri's permission to build it in the basement of the 12th Division Headquarters~?" Urahara chimed, breaking into a wide smile and tapping away at the control panel in front of him.
Ichigo and Chad nervously glanced towards the shop owner. "You mean, Mayuri doesn't know about this...?"
Breaking into a laugh, Urahara stopped typing for a brief moment. "I'm just kidding! He was the one who built this! After the arrival of the Royal Guard, he started work on this so that he could one day collect samples from the Soul Palace. I'm just borrowing it, without his permission."
"Somehow I feel like that's worse..." Chad said, hesitantly.
"Oh it's fine," Urahara chuckled, brushing off the remark. "Though this thing is really only good for one shot so... No one tell him it was me that used it, okay?"
Ichigo, who was in the process of clambering into the side entrance to the cannon, froze up. "What do you mean it's only good for one shot?"
"Well the techniques used by the Shiba Family to make canons isn't something that can be copied at the drop of a hat," the former Captain explained. "So please be gentle with it. It really is rather delicate."
"Um, are you sure that this thing is safe?" Ichigo asked, visibly shaken.
"Oh it's fine!" Urahara said, brushing him off in a light hearted manner. "As long as it's able to fire, alls well that ends well. The real problem is that, as things stand, we don't have enough energy to fire it."
As Ichigo and his two companions climbed into the canon and sat on the ground, there was a knock at the door. Akon poked his head around the frame.
"Um, Mr Urahara?"
"Yyyyyyyess?" he replied, playfully stretching out the word.
"She's arrived," Akon responded. "Do you want me to send her through."
"Of course! Thank you, Akon-Chan~!"
Stepping through the doorway, a dark-skinned woman clad in a skintight leotard and a long cloak entered the room.
"Welcome back Yoruichi-San," Urahara said, peering from underneath the shadow thrown by the rim of his hat, and breaking into an amused expression.
"Kisuke," she replied, breaking into a soft smile.
"Yoruichi!" Ichigo cried, sticking his head out of the hole in the side of the canon.
"It's been so long!" Orihime shouted in an excited manner, joining Ichigo.
Waving back at them, Yoruichi continued to smile.
"I take it you've got the goods?" Urahara suddenly asked.
Yoruichi's expression grew stern. Opening her cloak, she revealed several dozen bottles filled with a clear, glowing fluid.
Chad pulled a confused face. "What's that?"
"Before the Quincys attacked the Soul Society, they invaded and overtook Hueco Mundo," he explained. He ignored the shocked expression that gripped Ichigo's face and continued. "All of the Hollows and Arrancar that resisted them were killed. It was quite a hefty number... Because of this, the balance of Souls in the Universe began to distort and the dimensions began to slip and overlap. Temporal anomalies appeared in the World of the Living." Urahara turned towards Yoruichi. "When they appeared, a huge amount of energy was released. I had my good friend here gather that energy, to power the canon."
"Seems legit..." Ichigo muttered, a slightly simple look passing over his face.
"Now then," Urahara grinned. "Are you all ready to go?"
Zeit Mehre (The Omni-Direction) continued to belt his opponents with a rain of glowing blue arrows. Whipping around his body, his grey and red poncho danced with the force of the numerous shockwaves that were blown back towards him. Mimicking this motion, his white and black hair billowed backwards like wisps of monochrome flame.
Zipping from side to side, his flat black eyes followed Renji and Rukia's movements through the explosions. His keen vision managed to pick out even the smallest motion from the pair.
While long range fighting wasn't his forte, he was still capable enough to keep the two Shinigami Lieutenants at bay, while he formulated a plan.
I can't use my Schrift... It was dangerous enough to heal myself the last time. Christ, it feels like my head is being ripped in half. Damn those brutes earlier! Making me use my powers as much as I have. Damn them to Hell!
A shot of red spiritual energy erupted from the smoke and lanced towards Zeit.
Ducking underneath the blast, the white-haired man continued to bombard his targets. As the attack passed over him, it broke apart and disintegrated, being drawn towards him.
Kido? Surely you can do better than that. Don't you know Quincy can absorb Kido. Are you really that out of options?
In the distance a bright flash of light, and the crack of an enormous explosion, seared across the skyline.
Zeit's eyes momentarily flitted to the side.
Another equally massive explosion ripped across the horizon, from the opposite direction.
What on Earth was that?
Clarimond Amsel (The Twilight) shook blood from the black formless shape that she held clasped in her hand.
Above her head, a pitch black halo floated, seemingly drawing in all light from the area. Beating from her back was a pair of huge feathery wings; one as bright as the sun and the other black as night.
Mayuri Kurotsuchi stood, clasping his shoulder and breathing heavily. A wide grin was plastered across his face and blood stained the front of his Shihakusho.
"Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful..." he chuckled. "'Vollständig', was it? Utterly splendid! This is my first time experiencing one up close and in the flesh. It far surpasses any of my expectations. At first I thought it comparable to a Bankai, but now I see that it is so much more than that!"
Clarimond ignored him and reached out with her free hand. Clenching her fist and turning it sideways, she narrowed her eyes maliciously.
The shadows beneath Mayuri's feet sprung up in think black tendrils and latched onto the Captain's limbs. Digging into his skin, they snapped taut and tugged down towards the ground.
Beginning to move her hands, like a puppeteer, Clarimond forced the Captain's limbs into uncomfortable positions.
"Cast der Schatten Gottes," she muttered under her breath.
Grunting in pain, Mayuri never once broke eye-contact with the girl. Clenching his teeth, he depressed a switch on the top of one of his molars. A burst of spiritual energy exploded from his skin, dispersing the shadows and freeing him, before his bones were broken.
Leaping into the air, he left the shadows behind and moved out of their range.
Hurriedly reaching down, he jammed his finger into the side of his leg. No sooner had he done so, two floating disks of glowing spiritual energy appeared beneath his feet.
Clarimond's eyes widened in shock.
"Oh! Do you like them?" Mayuri grinned, hovering several feet off the ground. "This is a little something that I developed after completing all of my research on Quincys."
"Hirenkyaku..." she hissed, through clenched teeth.
"Exactly!" he laughed, in response. Madness twinkled in his eyes. "I think I'll be making use of these, until I've found a way to deal with those pesky shadows."
"If you think that's my only trick, YOU'RE SORELY MISTAKEN!" Clarimond screamed, rage spewing from her lips.
Shadows yet again sprung up from the ground, however as opposed to wires, this time they took the shape of thin streamlined projectiles. Screaming through the air, several plunged into Mayuri before he had time to dodge.
Laughing like a lunatic, the Captain soared through the air avoiding the projectiles. The shadows-made-solid zipped up behind him, all of them missing by half a step.
Turning his head towards the Quincy girl, as he dodged, he shouted down to her. "You just keep finding new ways to pique my interest! However... I grow weary of this battle. I will have plenty of time to observe you abilities in my lab, after I have captured you!"
Clarimond abandoned the shadow blade clasped in her right hand, forming two crossbows from the airborne reishi around her, and began to pelt Mayuri with Heilig Pfeil, to accompany her shadow projectiles.
"Peel back your eyelids, and make sure you watch closely," Mayuri continued, all the while dodging the numerous shots coming towards him. "I haven't shown this to anyone before... With all this information I've gathered, I can finally give birth to it!"
The Zanpakuto gripped between Mayuri's digits began to crackle; spiritual energy sparking off of it.
Clarimond stopped her assault, to watch the Captain. The whole time she was fighting Mayuri, the one thing that she benefitted most from was caution.
Grinning like a Cheshire Cat, the crazed Shinigami lifted his Zanpakuto in front of his face. "Ban...Kai..."
Anticipating a spray of poison, Clarimond hurriedly formed a mask from shadows and fixed it to the bottom half of her face.
Erupting from his sword, mounds of flesh began to contort and bubble; expanding to massive size and warping, before melding into a gigantic humanoid shape.
"Konjiki Ashisogi Jizo: Matai Fukuin Shoutai.
The Bankai took the form of an enormous red-skinned baby. Horns extended from either side of its deformed and misshapen head, suspending a pair of lamps out into the open air. Tattooed across its stomach was a series of large black Japanese characters, and running from its sternum to its pubic bone was a huge lateral incision, sewn shut. It sat leaning against what appeared to be an equally massive sack of slimy glistening organs.
This was not the Bankai that Clarimond had read about, when she had obsessively studied the Daten concerning Mayuri Kurotsuchi. "What in God's name is that...?"
"A Modified Bankai," Mayuri chuckled. "I created the Matai Fukuin Shoutai by tinkering with my Konjiki Ashisogi Jizo. It is an alternate form of my Bankai. And with its power... I can give birth to other Konjiki Ashisogi Jizo, based on the information that I send to it."
"I don't understand..." the Quincy girl replied, uneasily taking a step backwards, with the aid of the Ranso Tengai that still moved her.
"You will soon..." he grinned, narrowing his eyes.
An ear-splitting scream tore through the air. Writhing and thrashing on the spot, the enormous baby began to convulse in pain. The sewn up wound adorning its stomach began to bulge, before being torn asunder to reveal another equally as grotesque creature.
Crawling from its parent and landing with a wet thump on the ground, the new creature began to crawl towards Clarimond.
Its head was at least as big as the remainder of its body, and bore two bulbous black eyes. A wide, thick-lipped mouth stretched from ear to ear, taking up the majority of the thing's face. The body (if it could be called that) was so out of proportion to the head that it was almost laughable, and bore dozens of malformed limbs that resembled the arms of a baby; like a long-doomed attempt to create a human caterpillar.
As soon as it opened its mouth, the creature began to suck in air.
All of the shadows of the surrounding area were subsequently drawn towards it, before being swallowed into its void of a mouth.
Clarimond's deep purple eyes widened in dismay and horror.
"This Ashisogi Jizo is able to consume shadows," Mayuri explained, revelling in his gleeful cloating. "Really a shadow is a region where light from a source is obstructed by an object. Typically not a physical structure... However... It occurred to me when I witnessed you Quincys transform the Seireitei into your city. Here, in the Soul Society, shadows are constructs of reishi. It's not such an alien concept, after all everything else here is made from Reishi, so why not shadows. And being made of reishi, they have their own unique reishi signature. This Ashisogi Jizo is able to identify that and selectively consume everything bearing that signature."
The black wing adorning Clarimond's back was ripped from her and sucked towards the monstrosity, before being swallowed.
"Had you used your abilities in the World of the Living, I dare say you would have had me on the ropes," Mayuri continued. "Now I know that you also are able to utilise light, however... During my observations earlier I made a very important discovery... Yes it's true, you are able to use light to power your attacks, but the less light there is, the weaker they are." He quickly glanced around at the sky. "And with the sun going down like this, you're going to run out of power soon."
Clarimond ground her teeth together with such force, they could have shattered. Finally giving into her compulsion, she utilised her Ranso Tengai to pull her hand up towards her face and began to gnaw on the gap between her thumb and index finger.
"Now..." Mayuri said, sadism dripping from his vocal chords. "Are you ready to give up?"
An enormous explosion ripped across the horizon. Light seared through the sky in a blazing white sheet, illuminating the entire of the Silbern.
NOW! Clarimond's mind screamed at her.
Her free hand shot out, jerked upwards by the reishi strings that moved her.
"GOTTES NOVA!"
All off the light was sucked down and compacted into a tiny ball, hovering between Mayuri and his pair of deformed infants.
The tightly compacted ball of light detonated with so much force that the whole Silbern shuddered.
Sylvanus Athala (The Nature) dropped out of the air like a stone. Behind his back, his wings dispersed into ambient reishi, just before he slammed into the ground.
Grimmjow Jeaggerjaquez was blown backwards by the force of the explosion, ploughing through at least two dozen buildings. Ripping from his body and morphing into the form of a sword, clasped in his hand, his Ressurrecion disengaged.
The resulting blast of their colliding attacks had significantly damaged both combatants.
Both men lost consciousness.
The fight ended in a draw.
In the distance, the blast from Clarimond's attack lit up the sky. Neither of the men were roused from their daze.
Ichigo, Chad, Orihime and Yoruichi were sat inside the cannon, when they heard the two huge explosions rumbling in the distance. The second of which cause the very floor beneath them to shake.
"What was that...?" Ichigo asked, uneasily. He shifted his weight to one side and narrowed his eyes, placing one hand on the floor.
"It's probably a fight somewhere," Yoruichi replied. "But I don't recognise any of the Reiatsu..."
"What if someone's in trouble?" A bead of sweat dripped down the side of Ichigo's face.
"It won't do us any good, sitting around and worrying about what might be happening," Chad said, crossing his arms over his chest. "All we have to do is focus on what we're going to be doing... Strategies for once we arrive at the Soul Palace."
Yoruichi laughed softly under her breath. "You're right, Chad. The worst thing we could do is sit here and waste our opportunity to strategise."
"So what are we going to do?" Orihime asked, knitting her brows together.
"First we need to assess the enemy force," Yoruichi said, slowly. Her voice carried a weight to it, that indicated the seriousness of the situation. The gathered group found it slightly reminiscent of when they knew her solely in her cat form. "From what I can tell, the enemy has left a number of soldiers still on the ground... More than likely to ensure that the Shinigami are too preoccupied to follow them up to the Palace... However, what I'm most worried about are the soldiers that they've taken with them." A bead of sweat dripped down the side of her face. Ichigo and his friends found themselves realising that this was the only time they had ever seen her visibly rattled. "The Royal Guard aren't pushovers, so it's safe to assume that the enemies up there are either incredibly strong, or incredibly dangerous... Probably both."
Chad and Orihime both nodded. Ichigo remained motionless, staring intently at the dark-skinned woman.
Yoruichi paused for a second, to take a deep breath, before continuing. "Kisuke has provided me with some data of all enemy soldiers that have appeared in this invasion, for us to look through. Now this isn't everything, and there may be some gaps, but it's better than nothing."
Pulling out a small device, Yoruichi depressed a switch on the side of it and left it to float in the centre of the seated group. A holographic projection, in the shape of a cube, appeared around the device. Each side of the cube displayed the same image, so that every one of them could see the same thing.
"The enemy had, in their ranks, twenty six individuals with power comparable to, or greater, than the average Captain," Yoruichi elaborated. "They're called Sternritter, and each of them have been assigned a letter, with a specific power related to that letter."
Chad and Orihime leaned close to the images and studied them. After a few seconds, Ichigo followed suit.
"From observing the battles in the Soul Society, we know that there are twelve of them left. That isn't including Yhwach and Uryu, so really it's more like fourteen." Her deep gold eyes narrowed slightly. As she spoke, the images of three men appeared in front of the group. "Two of them were killed in the first invasion: the letters Q and Z. Kisuke was also able to incapacitate and capture the letter F."
"Gillaume..." Ichigo muttered under his breath, as he laid eyes on the picture of the old man with the burn scar. "He was dangerous... If Urahara hadn't helped me, this guy would have kept me in Karakura town..."
"He was that strong...?" Chad asked, his face stoic.
"From what information we've received, he's actually one of the weaker members of the enemy army," Yoruichi explained. "It was his ability that made him as dangerous as he was."
A new set of images flashed up onto the screen, this time depicting an array of individuals dressed in variations of a white military uniform.
"C, E, H, I, J, K, L, R, U, W and X..." Yoruichi said, listing off the individuals in order. "These are the other enemy soldiers that were killed in this invasion..."
Chad's eyes opened wide as his vision fell on an image of Sideyatosiya Kirmie. "What the Hell is that thing...?" he gasped.
"That's the Sternritter that killed Byakuya..." Urahara said, his voice somber as he stepped inside the canon.
Ichigo's heart lurched up into his chest. "Wh-what?!"
It was true that, since Ichigo arrived in the former Seireitei, he couldn't sense the Captain of the Sixth Division, however he assumed that was because he was away during the attack, like Komamura and Ukitake. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined Byakuya dying.
"That particular enemy could control insects..." the former Captain explained. "He had filled the sewers underneath the entire of the city with bugs. He could create more indefinitely and as long as even one of them survived, so could he. Byakuya sacrificed himself to destroy all of them. He saved everybody."
Ichigo felt like he was going to be sick. Rage and anger bubbled inside him, churning his stomach. The knowledge the Byakuya had died saving everyone had lessened the blow, but not by much.
"So that one's dead...?" Ichigo managed to grind out, through his gritted teeth.
"Yes..." Urahara replied, slowly.
"Good."
"So which ones are left?" Orihime hesitantly asked, breaking the silence that had settled on her group. She cast her eyes downwards and clasped her hands together atop her lap.
"A, B, D, G, M, N, O, P, S, T, V and Y..." Urahara said, pulling the rim of his hat down and darkening the shadow over his eyes.
Images of ten individuals appeared on the holographic screens, reflecting in the eyes of the group.
"As things stand now, we haven't been able to assign letters to some of them, and two of them we haven't so much as caught a glimpse of; hence the lack of two pictures," Urahara elaborated. "What we do know is this..." He pointed at a picture of a beautiful white-haired individual, of indeterminable gender. "Is Sternritter Y. He's able to control the weather to create blizzards. He is the man who killed Captain Hitsugaya in the first invasion."
Ichigo clenched his fists and gritted his teeth even tighter.
"And this..." Urahara let the tip of his finger hover over an image of a man with messy black hair and glasses. "Is Joseph Fehler. Sternritter M. So far, we have no idea what his unique ability is; only that he is extremely powerful. He fought Byakuya in the first invasion and managed to beat him soundly. He didn't even receive so much as a scratch. Luckily, he was kind enough to identify himself and state his letter."
"Isn't that..." Chad began, indicating a photo of a sultry young woman with black and red hair.
"The woman that attacked us," Ichigo completed. He looked up at Urahara. "She was after you, as well. She was strong too... Damn near killed me. If Komamura hadn't shown up when he did, I might have died."
"I know," the hat-clad man replied. "Fortunately she's still engaged in combat. It's one of the few locations where some of Mayuri's spy cameras haven't been destroyed."
"Komamura's been able to hold her off for that long?" Yoruichi asked, mildly impressed.
"Not exactly..." Urahara said, bringing up a live video feed of the battle, to replace the photographs.
"Oh my God..." Orihime gasped.
"That's... Four Captains..." Ichigo said, horrified. "She's fighting four Captains!"
"Believe it or not, this is good for us..." Yoruichi muttered. "If she's that powerful, then it's in our favour if she's down here on the ground, rather than up there, where we're going to be."
The screens shifted, once again, to show the images of the remaining Sternritter.
"I recognise some of these..." Ichigo said, reaching out towards the holograms. He pointed at six of the individuals: Basilisk, Sylvanus, Zeit, Aya, Clarimond and Snow. "These six are definitely down here on the ground. When I first landed, they all attacked me."
"Which means the remaining three, plus the two we don't have pictures of, are likely the ones we'll come across in the Royal Palace." Yoruichi shifted her seating position and rested her elbow atop one knee. "Add into that Yhwach and Uryu, and that makes seven of them in the Palace."
"Those aren't as bad odds as I thought..." Chad said, a vague sense of relief radiating from him.
"Don't jump for joy just yet," the dark-skinned woman retorted. "The fact that there are so few of them is unsettling... If Yhwach is confident he can take over the Royal Palace with just six of his subordinates he's either crazy, or each one of them is insanely strong. And seeing that Joseph Fehler is one of them... It's probably the latter."
"So..." Urahara smirked. "Are you ready to go and meet them?"
Ichigo's face grew steely. Determination shone from his eyes as he nodded.
"WAIT!" suddenly shouted a voice, from the entrance to the lab. The doors swung open and slammed against the bordering walls, revealing a large man dressed in an extravagant green and yellow outfit. He sat astride an extremely rotund wild boar with a small pink now atop its head. "You're really tryin' to blast off, without this handsome devil!?"
"Oh dear God..." Ichigo groaned, sticking his head out of the side of the canon and breaking into an unreadable deadpan expression. "I thought that voice sounded familiar. What the Hell are you doing here? What, were you bored or something?"
"What the hell are you talkin' about?!" Ganju Shiba shouted, in reply. "This ain't somethin' you come to when you're bored! What, you think this is some drinkin' party or somethin'?" He pointed a huge sausage of a finger at Ichigo in a dramatic pose. "Who do you think launches the Great Heavenly Canon in the first place!?"
Ichigo's face remained devoid of all emotion. "Your sister."
Ganju flustered for a brief second, before he resumed shouting. "W-well, yeah... B- But that's besides the point!" He whipped out a long ornate scroll and pulled it open. "Look! I'm the one with the map through the barriers, to the Royal Palace! You ain't getting anywhere without me! How's that, huh?!"
Ichigo glanced sidelong at Urahara. "Do we really have to take him with us...?"
"Well he does seem very enthusiastic about it," the former head of Research and Development replied, simply.
Ichigo paused for a second before he spoke. "You do understand how serious this is, Ganju?" He stared into his cousin's eyes and broke into a serious expression. "This won't be like anything we've seen before. It goes way beyond a 'last man standing' sort of thing..."
"Don't you think I don't know that, dumbass?!" Ganju shouted, in reply. He pointed his thumb back towards his face. "Why do you think I decided to come in the first place?!"
Ichigo broke into a smile and shifted over. "If you say so."
Urahara climbed out of the canon, and Ganju dismounted Bonnie and climbed into the giant metal structure. The hole that he entered through sealed up behind him.
As Urahara began the countdown, Orihime broke into a soft smile and looked around the group. "This really takes me back..." she said, softly. "That time, when we all went to save Kuchiki-San..." She looked over at Yoruichi and laughed ever so slightly. "You were still a cat back then."
"Hey, I can still transform whenever I want," came the playful retort.
Orihime's face grew slightly somber. "And Ishida-Kun was still with us..." She stared down at her lap. "I wonder... If he'll ever come back to us..."
"Of course he will."
Everyone turned to stare at Ichigo.
"We're going to beat Yhwach... And while we're at it, we're going to beat Ishida too, and drag him back with us. That's what we all agreed, didn't we?"
Orihime broke into a wide smile. "Yeah!"
Urahara pressed a large button on the control panel in front of him. The canon erupted, launching the group into the air.
