Chapter Seven – Lightning Break
It isn't everyday that the outskirts of the Rukongai are flooded with enough reiatsu to shake the entirety of the realm in its sheer force. In fact, in all of Soul Society's history, only once had this happen before.
Genryuusai Yamamoto remembered distinctly what that felt like.
The commanding officer of all fourteen divisions of Shinigami had led a long, long life. He was amongst the first to have lived the entirety of his existence within its bounds, and somewhere amongst the official archives there exists a worn, dusty scroll documenting a Lt. Commander Yamamoto leading the charge against a single, naturally-created Arrancar, the bright flame of his sword piercing the mockingly human demon's tendrils of solid shadow.
The scars of that battle remain bright and vivid, burning with reiatsu whenever the old, wizened warrior is forced into battle.
But it wasn't the demon that inflicted the brazen, vein-like lines upon the old man… but his commander. His captain, that day on the ancient battlefield in Rukongai.
The first Shinigami, the founder of the Seireitai… she whose sword burned with the pure rage of ten suns…
The memory was long-buried- but not so much that the first division's captain had fully forgotten. The scars along his torso, face and hands are meaningless to him- the terror of his first battle, the agony of the loss of his friends and first love… the gibbering madness left in the wake of having your trusted leader's fire slowly melt, slowly diminish as the Arrancar's great shadow bound and consumed her, and the sheer fury of her struggle tearing apart the very spiritrons of the world around her…
"Mobilize all forces," uttered Captain Yamamoto through gritted teeth. "All captains are allowed the unleashing of their Bankai. Do. Not. Let. Her. Live."
A mass of human shadows dissipated, as if struck by a beam of white-hot light.
-----
Much to the twin's surprise, the fight had begun without them.
A bare-chested Zakari Kenpachi, the wounds of his previous exertion blazing as energy leapt out to bridge the gap between his nerves, tendons, muscles and veins, swung a giant, golden fourteen-foot halberd, the half-moon scythe of the ancient Chinese pike leaving billowing trails of undying fire in its wake. The tornado of heat and fury around him frantically twisted, gouts of fire leaping out in random intervals, fed energy by Kenpachi-taichou's fully unreleased state, for the eyepatch had long burnt off in Amaterasu's great rage.
But perhaps the gouts were not so random.
Flickering here and there, just barely within the eye's ability to perceive motion, was Kali, dodging the blasts, slashing through the great column of fire and leaving yet another glowing wound upon the most frightening, most demonic of the fourteen captains of the Seireitai. As each golden wound blazed closed, another one opened in its wake, deeper and longer lasting- made jagged from her nipping bites as she healed her own wounds and insatiable hunger off his great fount of energy.
Kenpachi-taichou had found his second wind, but he was losing the war of attrition.
Then again, brute force has never won against Kali.
"Same plan as usual!" cried out Gao gaily through the roaring fire, barely shorn off of his own skin by his own radiating reiatsu, fueled by his excitement. "You distract her, I slow her down! Maybe that big guy fighting her can do the finishing touch!"
"You seem awfully happy about turning on her!" yelled back Reiji. "I would've thought you'd be a bit more loyal to her!"
"The student must surpass the master! Besides, Snowy never did like her sword!"
"Good, neither did mine! Moonlight Reflection!"
Between one instance and the next, fire had been replaced by the winter's frost.
-----
Even in Kenpachi's maddened, most bloodthirsty, most thoughtless state… even he had to blink when his halberd stopped spitting fire, and started throwing snow everywhere.
To be fair, that ice barrier that replaced the roaring column of fire was doing a better job of keeping the wild bitch off his skin… but dammit, half-naked in a column of ice is not comfortable!
Kenpachi shivered, and knocked angrily at the jagged column of ice.
"Oi! Who's out there! Who interrupted my fight-"
Crash. The taloned hand of Kali tore through, and stabbed straight through his gut.
Blink. The hand was gone, and he was mostly healed.
Blink again, and little Yachiru and the spikey, orange-haired brat was looking down on him in concern.
"Zakari-san," said Ichigo, slightly concerned. "You alright?"
"Ken-chan! Ken-chan! Don't get up!" cried out Yachiru as she knocked the much bigger man back down, angrily waving at the mass of badly-wrapped bandages around his torso. "I just got it to stop bleeding!"
"Ooph, what the hell happened?" growled Kenpachi as he grudgingly settled. "One minute, I was buried in ice, the next minute-"
"What ice? We need to get you out of here," said Ichigo. "The whole Rukongai's on fire!"
And Kenpachi finally heard it, as if cotton was pulled out of his ears. The great roaring of a distant fire… and the steely ring of blades.
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As twins, Gao and Reiji are similar only in appearances- comparable, in nature, to the brash, lightning-quick cheetah and the shadow-silk stealth of the panther. Both are enormous, graceful felines, predatory and capable of taking down prey much greater than themselves, but it is there that the overlaps end.
Or perhaps not.
There are certain characteristics that breed true in the feline clan. A tendency to play with their prey, for one…
Reiji's shikai ability is kidou-based- more specifically, not unlike Aizen, he is an illusion-adept. However, how their illusions are cast differ wildly. Whereas Aizen directly manipulates the senses of his intended victims, Reiji's ability is "merely" that of casting a hundred-meter radius hemisphere in which the internal environment is utterly under his domain.
Little wonder, then, why it is so difficult for a "natural" shinigami to manifest their bankai. As the secondary seal represents an increase in ability in the order of magnitudes, it would take effort truly legendary to achieve that hallowed state.
However, though under most situations, Reiji's "Moonlight Reflection" alone could win a battle, it was extremely dependent that the opponent be somewhere within striking range of his own power level.
Outside of a certain limit, and its effectiveness decreases steadily. With Kali, he then has a fifteen second window to utilize the Moonbeam- his shikai's secondary ability. Compressing all the energy within his bubble of existence, Reiji then has a single, all-out attack- usually fatal, even against the toughest denizens of the afterlife. Unfortunately, the straightforward shot is easy to see coming- and for Kali, easier yet to dodge, making it suicidal at best.
Reiji, however, rarely fights alone. That fifteen-second time frame is more than enough for his brother, Gao, to play with.
The bright, glowing sapphire blades of Gao's katars- Indian punch-daggers, usually triangular and balanced in shape, though in this case, with its outer edge sweeping a good foot downwards to a thin point- leaves trails of ice in its wake when activated. The powerful ice-based close-range weapon makes up for its short range with sheer lethality- if willed, every connecting blow against it causes a massive surge of spear-sharp ice to burst forth almost immediately from that one infinitesimal point, either shattering the opponent's weapon, arm… or body. Probably the only reason why Gao does not make constant use of it is that the sheer force of the ice-explosion is a dual-edged sword. Though it bursts away from him, it also knocks him away from the opponent, making it more ideal as a finishing technique.
It's also not powerful enough to stop Kali.
Flashes spark as dense ice scraped against the molten-silver wings extending off Kali's arms- sparks that turned to blue fire as her rage roared through, shattering the minor impediment. Gao was pushed back- and jumped barely in time as scalpel-thin edges soared past his throat in a rushing hiss of wind and fire.
"You're not distracting her enough!" yelled Gao as a timely burst of snow and wind intersected the two. "I can't get in close enough!"
"You're the one that's supposed to distract her," said a voice at his ears. "Now hurry up- the sphere integrity's thinning again. Her reiatsu's still too strong."
"Just one more burst- think you can manage a tornado?"
"Will do."
"Right. Snow Fox, ROAR!"
Reiatsu mingled and surged as what should have been a burst of jagged icicles instead turned into a near-solid storm of razors, all bearing down on the twisted, demonic facsimile of their mentor. Flames leapt out from her shikai's wingtips, taking the form of a thousand fanged mouths as it attempted to engulf the dense hail.
And in that moment, a flash of white light seared across Kali's torso.
"Drain complete!" snarled Gao. "NOW!"
Ice turned to fire. A snowy hillside turned back into the inferno caused by Kali and Zakari's earlier exertions.
And Kali was encased in a shimmering nimbus of blue light, tethered to the bloodstained edge of Gao's punching dagger.
This was the Snow Fox shikai's secondary ability- arguably the ultimate extension of the ice-based abilities of any soul slayer. In a single, short-ranged strike, and a significant sacrifice of his own reiatsu, the enemy was left helpless, drained of his or her speed, power and strength. Time itself froze for the Snow Fox's victim, leaving them plenty of relative time to experience the dread of their own demise.
"Get out of the way, Gao. Moonbeam."
Whatever was controlling Kali howled angrily as the blast of white light reached out at it, each passing second of its relative time spelling out its first defeat in eons. Its shriek of defiance only stopped when the searing blast tore out its vocal chords- and by then, the nerves of its body had been deadened to the point that it didn't even feel the hand grabbing it roughly by the shoulders, and tearing it away into the darkness beyond.
The light faded, and all that remained were ashes, and a single, silver feather.
Gao picked the feather up, and the brothers walked off, relief and guilt etched into both identical faces.
In the distance, eyes of silver gleamed.
PART ONE – REBELLION
STATUS – COMPLETE