THREE BLADES
Chapter Leitmotif- VWLS- Emergence
"Surrender Soul Reaper! We have you four to one, and there is no way left for you to escape!"
Fireheart blinked, his eyes readjusting to the light, before getting to his feet with a low groan. His scarred hands wasted no time in reaching over his back, a smirk lighting up his face as he drew Yurusanai, before settling into a half-crouch, sword at the ready.
"That's where you have it the wrong way round." he growled. "I'm not in here with you, you're the ones stuck in here with me!" A Heilig Pfeil slammed into his left shoulder, barely bruising the skin, before the song of blades began.
A quick lunge got Fireheart well within reach of the apparent leader of the Soldat, who attempted to take a swing at him with a short sword, but quickly lost out to the speed of Fireheart's movement, as the fourth seat slammed a fist into his gut before following up with a vicious underhand slash that split the front of his head apart. Even before the corpse dropped, Fireheart was lunging back to dodge the arrows from the other Quincy, before leaping back in and impaling another with a quick thrust, swinging a leg in a wide arc to force back the remaining two Quincy swordsmen, following through by hurling the Soldat's body into their comrades before deflecting a Heilig Pfeil off his left vambrace. His eyes switched to his next target immediately, the lone remaining bowman, and a millisecond after that, his body followed, slicing a Heilig Pfeil in half before sprinting past the swordsman, too fast for him to bring his sword up in an attack, before bringing his left hand in a quick grab around the bowman's throat, before a vicious jerk of his wrist broke his opponent's neck. In the same motion, he spun around, using the corpse as a shield from the final Quincy's slash before kicking his opponent in the chest. Throwing aside the corpse, Fireheart walked up to his grounded opponent before finishing him off with a stomp to the throat.
"I'm not even winded." Fireheart muttered. With a burst of Shunpo, he was gone.
4th Division, a short while later
Isane could only sigh in relief as Gremmy's body tore itself apart under the stress of his attempt to imitate Kenpachi's strength, even as she continued her attempts to shift as many of the wounded to a safer location as possible. Even as Zaraki dropped to a knee, there was a medic at his side, the green aura of Kaido gleaming from her hands as she did her best to staunch his wounds.
There would be time for grieving later. Right now, she had her duty to attend to.
A crash and a rush of air brought her back. In less than half a second she had spun around, her drawn sword resting against the neck of a familiar orange-headed boy, with a human-shaped hole in the wall behind him.
Isane relaxed. After all, their last hope of defeating the Quincy rested on the young shoulders of Ichigo, and knowing the kid, he was well up to the task. "Apologies, Kurosaki-san. Your arrival was rather…unexpected at this moment." Ichigo was quick to reassure her with a smile, before flashing Kenpachi a smirk, which the towering 11th Division Captain responded to in kind.
Thundering footsteps were heard barely a second later. Ichigo got into combat position, yelling to Isane- "Defend the wounded! I've got this door!", only to be cut off as the door flew open to reveal a bloodied, but hale looking Fireheart, whose flaming eyes calmed down the moment he spotted Ichigo and Isane. With a quick nod to Ichigo and two long strides, Fireheart crossed the room and enveloped Isane in a hug, his lips brushing her forehead, before turning back to Ichigo. "Good to see you here, kid," was the only thing Fireheart said, before pointing towards the first division barracks to show the the structures of Wahrwelt rising into the sky above them. "The centre of that's where you will find Yhwach. I'd get going if I were you."
A distant whoosh interrupted the four, and with a last "Go!" from Fireheart, Ichigo shunpo'd off, followed an instant later by an entire wall of the 4th Division barracks exploding inward into Isane's protective Danku barrier. Fireheart drew Yurusanai, the long black blade glinting menacingly in the noon sun, as the settling dust revealed their new enemies- four women, all wearing different versions of the standard white Quincy uniform, with the leader, a tall woman with lime-green hair, dusting herself off as she strode forward, lifting an eyebrow at the smirk on Fireheart's face.
"Couldn't wait any longer for your death?" she asked, manifesting a pale blue Reishi blade in the shape of a lightning bolt. On the other end, Isane unsheathed her Zanpakuto as Fireheart raised Yurusanai, pointing it at Candice- "I'm gonna have to ask you four to stop right there."
"What makes you think I have any intention of listening to what you command?" snapped back Candice. Without missing a beat, Fireheart replied, "Nah, it's just so nobody can say that I didn't ask you nicely." With that, he shifted into a combat stance, before surging forward in attack.
Candice POV
With a quick sidestep, Candice dodged the blade that would have taken her arm off at the shoulder, as her opponent disappeared into the freezing mists being generated by the silver-haired woman engaging Giselle on her left.
All the four women had at least one wound on them- Candice with a shoe shaped bruise on her chest and a cut across an eyebrow- the main source of her rage, as she did her best to keep up a relentless onslaught on the Shinigami in front of her.
It wasn't that she hadn't landed any hits, as the man was bleeding from a few cuts himself, with a blueish bruise leaking blood on his forehead that came from a hefty right hand by Meninas, but he was still way too fast and powerful, and the woman, no, lieutenant, as could clearly be seen by the armband around her left arm, was both a competent warrior in her own right and far too good at using her mists like a smokescreen.
She was just a little too late to notice the hand that grabbed her by the face and threw her headfirst into the rubble behind her, ruining the hair she had woken up early that morning to fix. "You're gonna FUCKING REGRET THAT, YOU BASTARD!" she yelled, blasting him straight in the face with a Galvano Javelin.
As the smoke from the blast cleared, she spotted Fireheart straighten up from his knee, before a colossal wall of Reiatsu slammed into her. The swirling wind around the battlefield picked up, the howl of the wind resembling that of a massive wolf.
Picking herself back up, she noticed blood dripping from Fireheart's face, the wound going through his left eye, which was still closed, before it opened, revealing an undamaged eye, which, however, was different, with a flat black sclera with a flaming blue-white pupil, much like a high mountain glacier. It was then that six words came out of Fireheart's mouth- the very six she had wanted to hear- "Bury Them in the Depths, Yurusanai."
The onslaught of Reiatsu on the Sternritters grew even more furious as Fireheart vanished in a blaze of blue-white flames, which assumed the form of a massive wolf head with its jaws set in a menacing snarl.
As the flames dissipated, Fireheart stepped forward, his Zanpakuto having changed from a black Odachi to a twin-bladed glaive.
Fireheart POV
The familiar rush of power from his Shikai engulfed Fireheart's vision for a second, the twinblade in his hands giving off occasional bursts of pale blue-white flame.
Not something he used frequently, Yurusanai's Shikai was not particularly easy to control, with its immense power requiring a powerful, but skillful hand.
A gaping maw rushed at him from his left, with Fireheart leaping out of the way as it crunched up a good portion of the floor at the exact point he had been.
Liltotto, without retracting her mouth, launched it at him once again, only to recoil with a howl of pain as Fireheart viciously drove one end of his twinblade into it, before spinning out of the way to unleash a swift beam of blue flames at Meninas, forcing her to drop her attempt at striking him and go for a Heilig Pfeil instead. This one struck Fireheart's face, this time near the right eye- again.
The cold glare that came their way was the only warning they got before Fireheart howled and spun his glaive, a tornado of blue-white flames building around him and hitting both Meninas and Liltotto with the wide ranging blast wave. Meninas could only watch as her arm burned and disintegrated into nothing, the skin aging what seemed like centuries in seconds as the flames burned away on the bloody stump. With an agonized yell, she leapt at Fireheart, only for Isane to come up behind her, having shaken off Giselle, and slice her across the nape of her neck.
"That's one." growled Fireheart, his amber eyes focusing on Candice, as Liltotto was too busy examining her wounds to care. Candice slammed another Galvano Blast in between Fireheart and Isane, and even as the latter leapt out of the way and moved to press the attack on Giselle, Fireheart spun the glaive once before slicing his palm across a blade, causing both blades to erupt in red-gold fire.
Dodging a swing of Candice's blade, the flaming Yurusanai darted in and out, leaving a long, bloody gash on Candice's left thigh, the limb starting to age rapidly as she used her Vollstandig wings to keep her balance. Sweeping out another of her bolts, she swung at Fireheart, who knocked it aside with contemptuous ease before slamming a fist into her forehead. A swift forward lunge brought him back in range as Candice barely managed to block the blade that would otherwise have impaled her throat. One of her two blades flared painfully bright before vanishing in a flash of gold, having been accelerated to a point in time far into the future.
"Give up." Fireheart growled. "If you do, I'll let you leave and forget this battle ever happened."
Candice smirked. "You know, misguided mercy can get you killed," was her reply as she and Liltotto went after their quarry. Fireheart simply raised the glaive in reply.
About 4 minutes later
"Why must they be so fucking stubborn?" muttered Fireheart, sealing Yurusanai back into an Odachi as the Sternritters' corpses disintegrated behind him.
Shunpoing off to the location Isane and Kenpachi had told him to meet up at, Fireheart arrived at what seemed to be a combination medical centre/meeting place set up hastily in the barracks of the Fifth Division, where Kyoraku and several of the other captains were holed up.
"Where is Unohana-taichou?" was the first question that left his lips. The grim mood in the room immediately turned somber as Kyoraku looked first at Isane, then Kenpachi and finally at Fireheart himself, before quietly answering, "She passed in combat with Kenpachi, under my orders."
While he understood what the intention was, Fireheart did not bother to hide the anger that crossed over his face. "A fair point," conceded Shunsui. "He was like a son to her after all," he mentally added, before looking up into flaming golden eyes that were fixed on his, before Fireheart growled, "If we lose, I'll first come for you before I take my own life."
The threat hung in the air, one which the other captains assembled knew, was no idle one. After all, when a thin line separates loss and victory, and one in which they were being pushed to increasingly desperate straits, the loyalty of Fireheart could never be doubted, but his ferocity was something which had always been more than enough to give the strongest among them a serious gut check.
After all, the Lone Wolf of the Sereitei had carved his bloody name into the annals of Shinigami history well over 200 years ago, a day which no one had forgotten.
After all, at the end of the line, it would boil down to everyone for themselves.