Chapter Forty-Six
The tip of Kurosaki's blade nicked Kagehyo's throat, but it went no further. The black cat's gaze traveled up the length of the sword to the face of his former captain, eyes widened in shock.
Then, they both turned their heads to find the intruder.
He stood in the air, hands outstretched, every muscle tensed as he struggled to control the captain. Kagehyo's blue eyes dilated in astonishment as his human brother slowly, agonizingly, forced Kurosaki Taichou to pull back his Zanpakuto.
Kurosaki stared at his own hand as if it was infested with some alien insect. The muscles in his neck twitched, his upper lip began pulling back in a snarl, as Steve's strings tried to drag him backwards, away from Kagehyo.
No, away from Edward. The synchronicity between lives fell away even as he watched his little brother overwhelming Kurosaki Taichou, his battle fur melting away along with his feline thoughts.
"Are you... alright?" asked Steve, sweat beginning to trickle down his forehead. He didn't dare take his eyes off Kurosaki, not even to blink, as if that might be enough to make him lose control.
Edward ached all over without the shielding distraction of his release, but he still forced himself up enough to scramble away from his captain. Steve's lack of confidence did not instill much in him.
"Barely, but you're just in time," he croaked back, then collapsed on the ground with a groan. "Erina! Help, please?"
A harsh breath broke the discouraging silence that followed his call. Kurosaki had managed, against Steve's strings, to turn halfway to face him, his eyes aglow with growing fury.
"Let... me... go," he ordered, his voice low and dark with warning. "I have a job to do."
Steve gritted his teeth, shaking his pale hair out of his face. "If you were in your right mind, captain... you would be helping us. Just... stop fighting."
"My mind is fine!" snapped Kurosaki. "You guys are the ones who forced this fight."
"Yes, because Caro is evil. You know that, you just refuse to believe it because Caro told you not to. That doesn't exactly scream 'good guy', now, does it?" An idea popped into his head, pretty desperate, but he didn't hesitate to second-guess it. "What would your daughter think of you?"
Kurosaki did not reply. He cracked his neck to one side, straining with every muscle against the invisible, barely-existent strings that held him still. Steve, already as tense as his thin frame could be, began sliding forward, inch by inch. His eyes widened in horror and pain as a thin trail of blood welled up along the back of his dominant hand, a paper-thin cut from within as his own carefully-controlled spiritual energy was stretched too far and began to tear.
"Edward..." he began, but got no further.
Kurosaki snapped the strings. They did not truly exist, but he snapped them, and the whiplash slashed razor-thin lines across Steve's face and robes. He stumbled back with a cry, raising one hand to try and slow his enemy down with whatever he had left, and the other to cup his stinging right eye.
The captain wasn't there anymore. He was next to Steve, and in that moment his pale hand snapped up to catch Steve's raised arm.
"No one controls me," he snarled in Steve's ear, and there was something very wrong with his voice. His fingers, already like a vice, tightened, his nails digging into Steve's narrow wrist.
"K-Kurosaki Tai-" Steve gasped in pain, turning to try and appeal to what was left of his captain's self-control one more time, but his words died in his throat. It wasn't Kurosaki Taichou staring back at him. Yellow eyes, more maniacal then even Kurotsuchi's, stared hungrily into his own.
"Hollow," squeaked Steve, and his opponent grinned. A crack seemed to fill the air and Steve screamed in pain, his wrist crushed in the Hollowfied Shinigami's iron-grip.
"Hah!"
I thought Ryohime fixed that problem last year, Steve thought desperately as he wrenched his wrist out of the Hollow's grip. The pale fingers had relaxed just slightly after the crack, just enough for Steve to jump away. But, no, he was white that time. They even called him that. What is the Hollow called when it is the captain?
Pain made him ramble, even when there was no one to ramble to but himself. Ningyozukai had fallen silent and sullen, stubbornly refusing to be interested in this fight. He held memories Steve felt should be helpful, but (Steve thought as he barely dodged a kick that would have shattered ribs) the best place to find a strategy against Shiro the Hollow was their fight during the Aizen Incident. Ryohime had relayed the story before, but (as he clutched his broken wrist to his chest and glanced around frantically for some form of backup) he could not seem to come up with any relevant information out of it.
"Why are you fighting me?" he called, desperately trying to stall for time. "Do you serve Caro, too?"
The Hollow laughed at him. It was there one moment and gone the next, and cold fingers closed on the back of Steve's neck before the echoes of laughter had time to change position.
"I serve me," the twisted voice replied, and then Steve slammed into the ground. The fall barely registered, it happened so quickly. The Hollow's breath was right in his ear, harsh and uneven. "You, Caro, everyone, trying to jerk around our thoughts. Nicely done, you broke him. Now you get me."
He picked Steve up and slammed him face-first into the nearest wall, then his foot came out of nowhere. In that one safe corner of Steve's brain that never got distracted by pain, he realized that his body was hurtling through space roughly in the direction of his injured brother, but there was nothing to act on. He hit the ground and skidded, tumbling head over heels right into another miraculously-standing wall.
The stone collapsed around him, adding filthy cuts and ugly red bruising to the collection of injuries this battle had given him.
I hate this, his functioning brain complained while the rest of it screamed. I am a ranged fighter, a combat controller. This hand-to-hand nonsense is Edward's job.
He pushed himself up on his good hand, though his arm trembled at the effort. He looked and found Edward on his hands and knees not far away, his pale blue eyes wide and horrified. He had his Zanpakuto in one hand, but Steve could tell just by the feel of his erratic reiatsu that his brother's release was far from viable. Any adrenaline Edward's feral side had received from the idea of fighting their own captain, an admittedly exciting notion under more optimistic circumstances, was gone.
The Hollow charged. They only had a moment. There were no other options.
"Ningyozukai Daisenshi!"
His white robes began to shimmer. His spiritual energy flickered across the surface like holographic light. Steve raised his hands, a shimmering blade of pure energy coalescing before his eyes-
Shiro struck. The black bankai flashed, and blood sprayed into the air.
Edward screamed.
