The Iron Sole Alchemist and the Soul Reapers (Chapter 63) Aizen's Rise and Fall
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.)
Once the others had gone, the Sloths and the mes healed up, repaired our equipment, and compared notes silently through the telepathic relay Sloth's Soul Gem allowed. Sloth had succeeded in her mission. Her Soul Gem's similarity to the hogyoku meant she could track its emissions the same way she tracked a witch. Once she found Aizen's hogyoku, she switched it with a fake, charged with her own magic so Aizen wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
While we traded information, the two mes switched clothes. The white, amestrian inspired uniform turned black as the fabric reacted to my spirit energy. Once back in the world of the living, homunculus me would be immortal and have no need for armor.
"How exactly are you planning on getting to the world of the living?" asked Mayuri as we finished packing up.
"We'll be using the same garganta Aizen used," said visored me as he donned his mask. "Weave, AraƱa."
In my resureccion form, the skirting of my uniform laid across the back of my arachnid abdomen like a saddle blanket, providing some protection for that otherwise vulnerable area. After covering ourselves with spirit energy concealing invisibility cloaks, we gathered close together so visored me could cast the hour reversal charm and return us to before Aizen left Hueco Mundo.
We arrived in Aizen's throne room, with Aizen, Gin, and Tosen all gathered. None of them seemed to have noticed us. We had to wait through Aizen's speech again while the garganta was open so we could follow behind the three traitor captains without needing to form our own, highly visible path of spirit energy as we traversed the garganta.
In the sky above Karakura Town, all of the remaining captains and lieutenants were waiting. Aizen wasn't fooled by the replica of Karakura Town, noting that after he finished killing the forces gathered here he'd just go to the Soul Society, find the real Karakura Town, and make the Oken there. Then Aizen called for Stark and Baragan.
A single garganta opened, allowing Baragan and his fraccion entry. Stark had honored his end of our deal and had abandoned Aizen.
"Looks like our intruders took out one more espada than we thought, Lord Aizen," noted Gin in a good natured tone.
"No matter," said Aizen calmly. "Baragan and his fraccion will be more than enough to serve our purposes.:
Hidden by our invisibility cloaks, the four of us positioned ourselves behind the three traitor captains. Sloth telepathically coordinated us so no one would move early and inadvertently put our enemies on guard for the others. While we were getting into position, Yamamoto made his move.
Releasing his shikai, Yamamoto raised a wall of Ryu Jin Jaka's flames around Aizen, Gin, and Tosen, incidentally containing the mes and Sloths at the same time. It wasn't a bad plan. The wall of flame would break Aizen's line of sight and keep him from supporting the arancars with his illusions. Yamamoto sealed off a large area in case Aizen wasn't precisely where he thought he was.
"No one move," boomed Vaccine's voice over our telepathic relay.
"Who's that?" asked Sloth. Given the mind link which Sloth was academic.
"That's Vaccine," I thought. "He's Yhwach's horcrux and the embodiment of my quincy powers. What do you mean don't move?"
"Look at the traitors," advised Vaccine. "They aren't moving from where they were standing when the flames went up. Greed, reach out with your senses. Yamamoto's spirit energy saturates Ryu Jin Jaka's flames but the space in the center where he flames don't touch..."
Following his instructions, I thought, "There's a kind of structure of spiritual pressure holding back the flames. It's delicate, almost like a soap bubble. If any of us bumps into any part of the structure or if we exert more spirit energy than it takes to keep standing here, the structure'll collapse."
"And the flames will come crashing in on us and incinerate everyone here," finished Sloth. "Since he couldn't be sure where Aizen was, he made a mine field. How did you know?"
"I've battled Captain Commander Yamamoto before," replied Vaccine. "It was another life, but you don't forget fighting in a battle that threatened to reduce all creation to ashes. Do not underestimate Ryu Jin Jaka or its wielder."
"He still thinks we're traitors," I thought with sudden panic. "Even if we can get out of this trap, he's going to kill us along with Aizen."
"Assuming he gets the chance," thought the other me. "Baragan's two ranks above Ulquiora, and he almost killed us all at once. The gathered captains are going to have a tough fight on their hands."
With little else we could do, the four of us settled in to watch the fight going on outside the flames using the Mad Eyes, and look for an opportunity to act.
As his first act, Baragan had his fraccion assemble a throne of bones. Once seated on his hovering chair, Baragan assessed the situation and determined that four pillars, hidden by invisibility spells and positioned at the corners of the town were responsible for swapping the real Karakura Town with the fake. If the pillars were destroyed, the real Karakura Town would switch back.
To that end, Baragan dispatched hollows to the pillars. The hollows disrupted the invisibility charms, but were quickly slain by the soul reapers Yamamoto had left guarding the pillars. In response, Baragan sent four of his fracciones to deal with the pillars' guardians while himself remaining with the remainder of his fraccion to stare down the captains.
Three of the soul reapers guarding their pillars defeated the arancars sent after them, but he fourth pillar, guarded by Ikaku, third seat of Squad Eleven, was destroyed. The captain and lieutenant of squad seven had to intervene. Captain Komumura used his bankai to crush the arancar while Lieutenant Iba stopped the real Karakura Town from returning suing a set of stakes driven into the ground that stabilized things for the moment.
Baragan's two remaining fracciones stepped forward. Ignoring the pillars, they went for the captains themselves. Soi Fon and Hitsugaya rushed forward with their lieutenants to meet the arancars. Yamamoto, Kyoraku,and Ukitake stayed back, conserving their strength. The captains fighting toyed with their respective arancars, getting a handle on their abilities, even letting them go into resureccion, before finishing their fights in a way that left no doubt that they could have done so any time they chose.
More upset at his minions' failure than their deaths, Baragan rose from his throne. Shattering the bone throne, Aizen's last espada retrieved a great axe concealed inside. That's when things started to turn against the soul reapers.
Baragan was fast, keeping pace with Soi Fon and outpacing everyone else with his soinido. Kyoraku and Ukitake joined the fight while Yamamoto continued to bide his time. As they fought, I got a good look at everyone's powers.
A passive time dilation field around Baragan slowed incoming attacks and allowed him to easily dodge even Soi Fon's best effort. Whenever anyone got in close, they'd slow down. Baragan's lightest touch could age whatever body part he contacted, rendering bones brittle, joints arthritic, and muscles wasted.
I now had my answer about how he had survived my flesh bomb. The bomb had aged to uselessness in direct contact with his body. Meanwhile, the same effect had tried to take hold against me when I reached inside him to implant the bomb. Ran Tao's antiageing treatment had allowed me to fight off the effects by going into a coma.
Captain Ukitake used a long range lightning kido, which wasn't slowed enough by Baragan's time dilation field for him to dodge. At the same time, Captain Kyoraku performed a sneak attack from behind. The time dilation field did rob the attack of its momentum, but Kyoraku compensated by employing a special ability of his shikai that caused any hit to do damage based on how much of a particular color they were both wearing rather than due to conventional measures like force imparted over the area of impact. It was a devastating combo that Hitsugaya followed up by summoning a dragon made of ice and slamming it into Baragan from above.
Lying in the rubble of a building he'd been smashed into, bleeding profusely, Baragan closed his fingers around his axe, looked up at the soul reapers, and declared, "Rot, Arogante!"
In his released state, Baragan was a skeleton in elaborate purple robes and a gold crown. He wore loose gold bracelets that connected to chains under his robes. A shallow gouge ran vertically across one eye socket, corresponding to a scar he sported on the flesh of his sealed form.
Rising to his feet, Baragan said, "Respiera," and a black miasma flowed from his body. Whatever his miasma touched rotted away to nothing in seconds. Soi Fon, who'd been moving in for an attack with her two hit kill shikai when Baragan went down, was forced to reverse course and flash step away as fast as she could. It wasn't fast enough.
A finger on her left hand touched the miasma, and the flesh began rapidly dissolving off her hand and working its way up her arm. Thinking quickly, she had her lieutenant cut off her arm at the shoulder. The bone disintegrated quickly after the flesh had rotted away. That pt the captains back on the defensive.
Hitsugaya raised up walls of ice. Ukitake raised a barrier with a high level kido. Baragan's respiera rotted through both in seconds. Those seconds gave the soul reapers time to prepare a counterattack. When Baragan got through the wall, he was facing down an enormous missile that was Soi Fon's bankai.
Kyoraku helped steady the slender, wounded captain as she lined up her shot. The missile fired and even Baragan's soinido wasn't fast enough to let him dodge. Instead, he used respiera, breathing out a cloud of black miasma between him and the missile. Detonating prematurely, the part of the spirit energy enhanced explosion hat hit Baragan wasn't enough to break through his hiero.
Concealed within a cloud of spiritually active smoke from Soi Fon's bankai, only the Mad Eye allowed us to assess the damage or lack thereof. To normal vision or spiritual senses, all anyone would be able to detect was Baragan vanishing as he was enveloped in the explosion. Aizen was just as convinced of Baragan's death as the captains fighting him.
A new gargana opened. Wonderweis came through followed by a massive, one eyed blob with gilleon masks for fingernails. The newly arrived arancar got behind Ukitake with a burst of soinido faster than Ulquiora had used and punched through the white haired captain's abdomen. Kyoraku tried to use the opening to attack the arancar but was swatted to the ground by Wonderweis.
As the two captains dropped, Wonderweis screamed out unintelligable. The force of his voice swept away the smoke obscuring the uninjured Baragan. A second wail from Wonderwies was some kind of order to the other creature. The bloated, blob like creature took in a deep breath and blew out Yamamoto's flames, freeing Aizen, Tosen, Gin, the Sloths, and the mes.
"I've got Aizen and Baragan," I thought to Sloth. "You deal with Tosen and Wonderweis."
"The won't know what hit 'em," thought Sloth.
A dark grey fist punched through Tosen's head, destroying his brain instantly. In the same instant, a yo-yo burning with the crimson light of Sloth's magic shattered the hilt of Wonderweis' sword before punching through the arancar's skull.
Baragan's time dilation field would have given him time to avoid an attack like that, so instead, homunculus me kept the invisibility cloak on until my hands had grabbed hold of Baragan's skull. In response, he breathed out a thick dark cloud of respiera that fully enveloped me. My Ultimate Shield was no defense. Diamonds age and decay over time, and Baragan's respiera reduced that time to under a second.
Diamonds age, but homunculi don't. When the cloud of respiera cleared, I was in my default homunculus form, with pale skin, black hair, and pointed teeth. The Mad Eye had crumbled to dust in my eye socket like every other object I carried except for the silver pocket watch wrapped around my waist. My purple, slitted eyes couldn't see Baragan, but both hands were still firmly wrapped around his skull. I squeezed and shattered that skull with my red stone fueled strength. With no way to see the enemy, homunculus me dropped to the ground, found a bench, and took a seat to wait out the rest of the battle.
Gripping my zanpakto in both hands, visored me swung for Aizen's neck with all the strength my resureccion form had to offer. I didn't have the massive strength and speed advantage over my opponent the others did, so as my invisibility cloak fluttered open, Aizen had time to react. Raising his left hand, Aizen stopped my blade with a finger.
"I'm disappointed," said Aizen. "With all of the clever tricks you used to disable my arancars, I'd hoped to see more than a straightforward, brute force attack against an opponent who's spiritual pressure dwarfs yours even in this hollowfied form."
Aizen too his sword in his right hand and swung for my waist. It was too fast for me to dodge. Without the shield spells woven into my uniform, Aizen would have cut me in half, separating my arachnid lower body from my humanoid upper body. My shield held and Aizen's blade didn't touch me.
"An automatic kido shield. Amusing," said Aizen. "It seems I'll have to put some actual effort into my swing to end your life."
"The shield spells just needed to keep me alive long enough for the poison to take effect," I said, smirking under my mask. Aizen's eyes widened and his breathing went ragged. "Touching my sword with your bare hand wasn't very smart. After I saw you do it to Ichigo, I decided I'd make you regret that arrogance.
"If I'd just coated my blade with venom from my fangs, your spirit energy would repel the spirit energy in the poison and keep your skin from absorbing it. So, I took the time to develop a spiritually neutral neurotoxin based on VX, adapted to soul reaper physiology. The toxin prevents your muscles from relaxing once they contract. For most of your body, you could strengthen an opposing muscle with spirit energy and rely on your added durability to keep the muscles from tearing as you force them to extend. The thing is, the heart doesn't have any opposing muscles. So, once it contracts once, that's it.
"Your heart beat for the last time a moment ago. You're dying slowly because your spirit energy is limiting the damage lack of blood flow is doing to your other tissues, but no amount of spirit energy can keep you alive like this for long."
It was amazing Aizen managed to stay in the air as his limbs folded him into a fetal position, his face twisted into a grimace, and his skin discolored from the stagnant blood beginning to pool. It was a horrible way to die. A better person than me might have felt some regret about that, but I remembered Aizen trying to hurt my friends and I couldn't bring myself to care.
Suddenly, a stream of energy shot from one of the pouches on Sloth's utility belt to Aizn's chest. The surge of power burned away enough of Aizen's shirt to reveal the fake hogyoku Sloth had left behind embedded in his chest. The energy surge shattered the fake, as Sloth took out the real hogyoku, which was the original point of the energy stream. The hogyoku Sloth was holding shrank to nothing and the energy stream coalesced back into the hogyoku in Aizen's chest.
Aizen stood back up, completely relaxed as his normal color returned. A triumphant smile was playing on his lips, trying to keep out from where it was hidden behind a confident smirk.
"You hay have tkaen the hogyoku from me, but it acknowledges me as its master," explained Aizen. Then he made good on his promise to put effort into his sword swing and cut me in half at the waist, shattering the kido barriers that sprang up in his way.
As my two halves fell, I employed a quincy technique to create reshi strings. When fully mastered,t he technique allows the quincy to keep fighting through crippling injuries until their body is literally reduced to dust by using the reshi strings to control their own body like a puppet. I was nowhere near mastering the technique, but I had enough control to use the reshi strings to pull the two halves of my body together. My high speed regeneration fused the two halves properly, and I managed to stop my fall just before I hit the ground.
While I was pulling myself back together, Gin glanced at homunculus Sloth and said, "Hakufuku." With neither spirit energy nor active defenses, Sloth succumbed to the sleep spell and tumbled to the ground. Her magical girl self threw a yo-yo at Gin, which he easily dodged.
"You burned through a lot of power making sure Wonderweis was dead," noted Gin. "You don't have enough left to fight a captain. And to recharge, you'd have to open the protective cover on your Soul Gem. Just guess how well that's going to go."
"Or, I could do this," said Sloth as she clapped her hands.
Gin and Aizen both flash stepped to avoid the flame alchemy Sloth used. The air which would have been inside their lungs and sinuses exploded harmlessly. While they were dodging, Sloth flash stepped down to her homunculus self.
I flash stepped to Sloth's side, releasing my shikai and said, "Go ahead and clean your Soul Gem. I'll cover you."
"Actually, why don't you both take a break," said Shinji Hirako as he and the other visoreds arrived on the scene. His toothy grin was as broad as ever, and all of the other visoreds likewise looked eager.
Shinji dispatched Hadji to help reinforce the barrier surrounding Karakura Town, then went to consult with Head Captain Yamamoto. Aizen and Gin waited patiently for the two leaders to come to an understanding. At the conclusion of their conversation, the captains and lieutenants of the Thirteen Court Guard Squads lowered themselves to the ground just in time for Shinji to take out a bakoto.
"You have to admire Greed's total lack of respect for Central 46 and its laws," said Shinji to Aizen with a nod in my direction. "This illegal weapon he brought us has the ability to seal soul reaper powers, which includes your Kyoka Suigetsu."
Shinji struck his bakoto and zanpakto together. The bakoto rang like a tuning fork as tentacles dug into the flesh of his right arm. The other visoreds dropped nimbly to the ground while Aizen and Gin fell out of the sky suddenly as their powers failed them. My Tsumi no Rensa sealed itself back into sword form as my soul reaper powers were sealed.
On the ground, Aizen got to his feet and said, "I should thank you, Captain Hirako, for making it possible to eliminate the captains and lieutenants of the Thirteen Court Guard Squads in a single stroke. It makes up for the abysmal performance of my espada." At that point, the blob creature that had arrived with Wonderweis vomited up hundreds of gilleons.
"Soske, you have so little faith in us," said Shinji shaking his head. "Did you manage to forget that we've had a hundred years to maser the hollow powers you gave us? Once we've cleared up the gilleons, we'll get back to killing you, assuming the captains haven't beaten us to it."
The visoreds donned their masks and started shredding the gilleons. Mashiro went into resureccion, becoming a grasshopper like hollow and killed the blob creature in one kick. Shinji was the only one capable of high speed movement, but as slow and lumbering as gilleons are, high speed movement wasn't needed.
Meanwhile, Yamamoto, Hitsugaya, Komumura, and Kyoraku surrounded Aizen and Gin. With her severed arm, Soi Fon stayed back to keep an eye on Ukitake. Outnumbered two to one with all combatants having their spirit energy sealed, Gin and Aizen went back to back. The moment the did, Gin's zanpakto stabbed Aizen in the back.
With no spirit energy mitigating the damage, all Aizen could do was look down at the blade coming out of his chest in disbelief. He stumbled forward a few steps and collapsed.
"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for a chance like that," said Gin as he bent down and reached for the hogyoku. Aizen's hadn caught his wrist.
"From the very beginning," said Aizen. I cold feel spirit energy flowing fro Aizen. It was nowhere near his full strength, but it was plenty to dispatch all four of his fully sealed soul reaper opponents. "I knew what you intended before I turned my back on you. I needed the fear of imminent death to communicate to the hogyoku what I needed from it."
Aizen cut Gin down with a diagonal slash across his chest. I fired a bala at Aizen's wrist, causing him to lose his grip on his sword. Sloth wrapped a yo-yo string around Kyoka Suigetsu and pulled the sword to her hand. Once she had it, she stepped on the blade and broke it in two. Unconcerned with the loss, Aizen moved inside Hitsugaya's guard, grabbed Hyonimaru, and planted a kick in the young captain's chest that collapsed his rib cage.
As Aizen turned toward Yamamoto, I used hirenkyaku to interpose myself between them. Aizen's spirit energy was still being hampered by Shinji's bakoto, he was using an unfamiliar blade much longer than he was used to, and he didn't have the luxury of focusing all his attention on me. I got inside his guard and stabbed him twice, piercing his soul chain and soul sleep. Doing so destroys a soul reaper's powers. He still had spiritual pressure, but if what I'd just done had worked, what he was able to use now thanks to the hogyoku was now all he had in him.
The gilleons were dead, so Shinji and the visoreds made their way back.
"We'll handle Soske from here," said Shinji. "Can you two help the wounded?"
Sloth and I nodded. I picked up Hitsugaya and moved to where Soi Fon, Ukitake, and the lieutenants who'd gone up against Baragan were. It didn't take us long to get everyone back in fighting shape. I handled the missing limbs and destroyed organs while Sloth dealt with the more esoteric conditions.
Shinji disarmed Aizen, returning Hyonimaru to Hitsugaya. Then the visoreds proceeded to deliver one of the most brutal beat downs I'd ever seen to Aizen. Through it all, however, Aizen's spirit energy was growing. Drawing this out was playing into Aizen's hands.
"Everyone get back," I yelled, tossing six disks with red stones and transmutation circles on them at Aizen.
The visoreds backed out of range as Aizen was contained inside a box covered in glowing blue transmutation circles. Inside, a supercritical mass of plutonium was transmuted. The resulting nuclear explosion was fully contained for a moment, then the lid blasted off, sending a jet of nuclear fire into the upper atmosphere.
Aizen didn't have enough spiritual pressure to withstand the blast, but when the flames cleared, a humanoid figure covered head to toe in white with a blade emerging from his atrophied right hand climbed out. His spiritual pressure had vanished. With speed I'd only ever seen from Ichigo's bankai, Aiszzen cut down all of the visoreds, myself included. He'd deliberately gone for crippling injuries that would leave us alive and conscious, but unable to move, and which wouldn't heal through high speed regeneration.
Having had the chance to fully recharge with Grief seeds, Sloth stepped up to face Aizen. He swung his blade through her head too fast for her to dodge, cutting right through the soul synthesized glass that was supposed to be indestructible. Then I realized the blade hadn't cut her. It had passed through her. She smirked and threw her yo-yo through Aizen's chest. She put all of her magic into that attack save the tiny scrap necessary to stay sane. The power of the attack obliterated most of Aizen's torso, leaving head, arms, and legs only vaguely connected by a rough ring of skin and sinew.
A burst of light flew from Aizen's nonexistent chest and the wound partially closed, forming something akin to a hollow hole. Sloth dropped to her knees in the face of this latest transformation. Everything she had to throw at him and he just wouldn't die.
"Do you understand what's been happening?" asked Aizen. "The structure around your Soul Gem is an advanced technology I couldn't duplicate in a thousand years. It serves as a kind of user interface that lets you use the power of the central crystal at will. The hogyoku lacks such a structure, so I've been forced to communicate my desires to it in the form of more basic, primitive emotions. By fighting me as hard as you have you've made me desperate and afraid, and the hogyoku responded by bringing me closer to my goal of becoming a transcendent being. Thank you all for your efforts."
Sloth's Soul Gem was almost completely black, and Aizen's taunts were threatening to tip her over the edge when a garganta appeared and Ichigo, Uryu, Chad, and Orihime burst out. Aizen was hit by a black getsuga tensho, Chad's El Directo, and a barrage of soul destroying quincy arrows. Orihime put her triangular shield between Sloth and the explosion Aizen was enveloped in and immediately cleaned away the grief in Sloth's Soul Gem with her healing shield.
"I'm disappointed, Ichigo Kurosaki," said Aizen as the dust cleared. "I had expected you to reach a new level of power against Ulquiora. As you are, your efforts won't be able to aid my evolution at all."
Aizen toyed with them for a while before cutting down Chad and Uryu, turning his back on Ichigo and entering a senkaimon to the Soul Society to make good on his plan to destroy Karakura Town and create the Oken. Once I was healed, I clapped my hands and destroyed the three remaining pillars using flame alchemy. The real Karakura Town and all its inhabitants returned to the world of the living.
"That won't slow Aizen down for long," said Kiske arriving on the scene.
"Where were you?" asked Shinji.
"We would've been here sooner, but someone was using a bakoto," said Yoruichi.
Dropping out of resureccion and removing my mask, I said, "We have to go after him! I know his weakness!"
"Is there some reason you haven't used it until now?" asked Gin dryly. "Maybe you were waiting for a dramatic climax."
"It doesn't matter what weakness he has," said Ichigo. "You felt how strong he was. We'll never get a chance to use it."
"Wait, you could sense his energy?" asked Ishin who'd come with Yoruichi and Kiske. "Greed, Ichigo, you both come with me. Everyone else, stay here and try to slow him down if he comes back."
Ishin opened the senkaimon and the three of us ran in. In the dangai, we noticed the cleaner was gone, likely Aizen's doing. Ishin halted the restrictive current so we could take advantage of the greater density of time here.
"What's this weakness you spotted?" asked Ishin.
"It's the hogyoku itself," I said. "It's responding to his subconscious desires, his base emotions. Without his will to live and grow, the hogyoku won't save his life and evolve him. If he gets suicidally depressed while linked to the hogyoku, it will kill him."
"Your dementor things?" confirmed Ichigo.
"Yes, but there's a catch," I replied. "He has to stand still long enough for them to effect him. If I'd realized what he was doing sooner, I could've finished this before he got this strong. As he is now..."
"That's why Ichigo's here," said Ishin. "If you can sense his energy, then I can teach you a technique that'll put him down long enough for Greed's plan to work. It's called the final getsuga tensho."
"Final getsuga tensho?" asked Ichigo.
"Sit down and meditate," explained Ishin. "Enter your inner world and communicate with your sword. I'll hold back the restrictive current s long as I can. That should be about three months. That's how long you have to get Zangetsu to tell you what the final getsuga tensho is for you."
"Wait," I said. "Before you go in, there's something you should know."
"What's that?" asked Ichigo.
"The being you know as Zangetsu isn't your zanpakto," I said. "He's a manifestation of the quincy power that acts to stabilize the balance between your soul reaper and hollow abilities."
"How do you know that?" asked Ichigo.
"Do you remember when Muramasa manifested our zanpakto spirits? I recognized yours as the same being as the quincy manifestation in my own soul."
"Does this have to do with why you fainted?" Ichigo asked.
I nodded. "The quincy manifestation pulled me into my inner world and tried to kill me when I figured out what was going on. We came to an understanding and are allies again, so it's not hopeless or anything. But you needed to know what was going on inside you before you tried this."
"Thanks for telling me," said Ichigo. "I'll talk to Zangetsu, sort this out, learn the final getsuga tensho and we'll defeat Aizen."
"Do you really think this'll take three months?" I asked Ishin once Ichigo was under.
"It might," said Ishin looking own at where Ichigo sat cross legged with his sword in his lap. "Our swords don't really want to teach us this technique."
"Why not?" I asked.
"It comes with a price," said Ishin. "Once you use it, you lose all of your spiritual powers. I'd do it myself rather than put this on Ichigo, but he's the only one close enough to Aizen's power to still be able to sense him."
"That's why I couldn't sense him? He had so much more spirit energy than me that my senses couldn't process it? Like how I couldn't sense spirit energy at all when I didn't have any myself."
"You really hadn't figured that out on your own?" asked Ishin.
I slumped down and said, "I haven't been at the top of my game this whole fight. I let Aizen cut me in half when I had an intangibility device on me. I didn't realize the hogyoku was evolving him after every major injury he suffered even after he spelled it out to Gin. When I noticed his power spiking, I did the exact wrong thing and tried to kill him with overwhelming firepower instead of thinking through my options. It's my fault Ichigo's going to lose his powers to give us a chance to stop Aizen. If I'd realized what was going on sooner, I could have finished it before things got to this point."
A shallow cut opened on Ichigo's shoulder. He didn't move from his deep meditation pose. I closed his wound with a wordless healing spell.
"I'm not gonna tell you you didn't screw up," said Ishin. "But to be honest, we didn't have any kind of plan besides beating Aizen down either. Well, Kiske might've had one, but he didn't tell any of us about it if he did."
"Aizen was going out of his way to make enemies," I said. "He hurt Momo to piss off Hitsugaya. He ruined the visoreds lives and gave them a power up at the same time. He had a vasto lorde arancar with orders to keep beating Ichigo down and letting him heal until Ichigo got strong enough to kill him. It was all in service to this plan, so everone hitting him with everything they've got would cause the hogyoku to evolve him into a god. Even destroying the cleaner to give us this time to train is a part of that plan."
"It takes a strange and twisted mind to come up with a plan like that," said Ishin. "Or to understand it."
"Oh, shut up," I said, getting to my feet.
"What're you doing?" asked Ishin.
"Training," I said. "We're here for the next three months. When Ichigo's ready to go I'm going to be as ready as I can be to support him. And make sure he doesn't end up sacrificing his powers for nothing."
In the dank cavern between worlds, a dozen hollows flew at top speed in every direction trying to dodge. A glowing blue arrow struck each directly in the center of its mask. A metal ring fell to the ground for each hollow as it disintegrated. I opened my eyes, took a breath, and allowed the glowing blue bow in my left hand to fade away. The hollows reappeared as I fed spirit energy back into the dropped chain links of my bankai.
"That was good, guys," I said. "I think we should double the distance and try again."
As my training partners headed down the tunnel to comply, I suddenly sensed a dramatic change in Ichigo's spiritual pressure. I'd gotten some distance to do my training, but even well outside visual range, I was forced to my knees as Ichigo's power swelled to the very limit of my comprehension. Then it went higher, vanishing to heights I couldn't percieve and thus, fortunately, couldn't be effected by, unless Ichigo wanted to effect me.
The holows had been curshed to death by Ichigo's spiritual pressure. I didn't bother resummoning them. It was time to emerge from the cave and finish what we came here for. I was back with Ichigo and Ishin in a single flash step.
Ishin had passed out from the spike in Ichigo's spiritual pressure. I checked him over as the restrictive current began to flow again. Ichigo opened his eyes.
The young man was in bankai. He had been the entire itme, but its appearance had changed. The sleeve of his right arm was gone. The chain attached to his sword's hilt had grown longer and now snaked around his arm all the way up his shoulder. The hand that held the hilt of his sword did so using a black gauntlet that didn't look like it was even capable of opening.
"Your dad's okay," I told Ichigo as I picked up Ishin. "He's just unconscious."
"Good," said Ichigo. "Let's go."
He wasn't flash stepping, but I needed to to keep pace as we exited the precipice world and saw the sun of the Soul Society. I clipped a dozen links from my bankai to the chain around Ichigo's arm. Ichigo sensed Aizen and vanished from view with a flash step so fast he might as well have apparated.
Sensing a familiar spiritual pressure, I actually did apparate, taking Ishin with me to where the bount Ugaki had set up a card table and was sweating heavily as he laid down cards.
"Report," I ordered as I set Ishin down next to the card table.
"Soske Aizen arrived in the Soul Society about an hour ago," said Ugaki. "Militia scouts spotted him approaching the fake Karakura Town. The real one had just returned to the wrold of the living. We opened fire on him with kido guns, but they had no effect.
"No one can sense his spirit energy, but anyone with spirit energy of their own who gets close is disintegrated almost instantly. I've been using Gesel to observe him from a distance and coordinate our efforts.
"Koga and Ryo went to fight him, but even with the Jokai crests' power, they were outclassed. They only survived because Aizen left them for dead and they were able to use the ambient spirit energy to regenerate."
"I need you to move any of our people in the area away from Aizen," I said. "Ichigo's already on his way with a technique we hope'll be able to stop him."
"Ichigo Kurosaki's already fighting Aizen," said Ugaki. "He took the fight to an unpopulated area and Gesel's having some trouble getting close enough to give us a clear picture of what's going on."
"Can you show me what you do see?" I asked.
One of the floating eye creatures that formed a part of Ugaki's doll appeared in front of me. The eye acted like a television screen, showing what a differant eye a considerable distance away was observing. Massive shock waves were buffetting the eye at a distance of miles. Mountains were being reduced to rubble and gashes were being torn in the earth as Ichigo and Aizen clashed. This dwarfed what I'd seen from Ulquiora during the final battle in Hueco Mundo.
When the shock waves died down enough for Gesel's eye to get close, I saw Ichigo without a sword standing over a creature I presumed to be Aizen. He'd evolved further over the course of the battle and was now only mildly humanoid. Ichigo had bisected him the long way. I could see his wounds starting to mend themselves. This was probably our last chance.
The chain links from my bankai Ichigo was carrying transformed into a dozen dementors. I'd had plenty of time to explain what they needed to do. Ignoring Ichigo, they formed a circle around Aizen. I apparated to the scene.
Aizen's wounds had completely mended, but he couldn't bring himself into a sitting position despite several attempts. A layer of frost covered the ground beneath Aizen as the dementors drew in the heat from the area along with every happy memory Aizen had. When his will to live had been thoroughly drained away, one of the dementors glided toward Aizen and rolled him onto his back.
Leaning down, the dementor drew back its hood. Aizen tried to defend himself, but despair had sapped his strength. The dementor's kiss was every bit as hard to watch as people said. Even when performed on someone like Aizen, there was something inherently wrong about watching something as precious and sacred as a soul go to feed a creature of darkness and depression. I ended the manefestation of the dementors as the one that performed the kiss drew up its hood.
Aizen's spiritual body was laying on the ground, still technically alive, but emptied of sentience, will, animating force. I plucked the hogyoku out of his body, put it in my pocket, and formed a bow. A dozen arrows annihalated every remaining scrap of Aizen's body. It was over.
Author's comments:
Aizen's plan was basically get everyone mad at him and get them to beat the shit out of him until the hogyoky made him a god. Everything else was set dressing and him being dramatic. For all that Greed blames himself for not seeing it, this was an absolutely insane plan that no one would have seen coming.
