Chapter 21: The mission
The basics of Shunpo weren't that hard to understand. It was one of the most advanced forms of Hohò, a defensive footwork technique of the Shinigami, with the focus being on speed. The idea was to get from point A to point B with as little steps as possible. In theory, it was rather simple. Translating theory to practice, well, that was a lot of things. Easy wasn't one of them.
Shortly after Makoto had given her and Akito an untypically intense explanation of what was going on, they had taken off. Makoto was leading the way while Kiara and Akito were traveling with the twins, the latter with Hiroshi and the former with Kenjiro.
Kiara had experienced Shunpo herself exactly one time, which had been about a month ago, when Makoto had taken her to visit his foster father. But this time it was different. With Makoto it had felt like the world was turning into a wild stream that was rushing past her with incredible speed, always fluid and at a constant rate. With Kenjiro , it felt almost as smooth, but it was always interrupted by a little stop in between.
"If I may ask", she heard Kenjiro begin next to her. "Where are we heading exactly?" Ever since the mission had begun the twins had been like they were exchanged with other people. Incredibly formal, polite and restrained with their choice in words with no trace of their usual jokey manner.
"District 68", was the short answer from the person leading the small group of five. "A reconaissence team has reported multiple Hollow sightings over the duration of the past week and we are going to take care of it."
And that was all they got for the moment. The rest of the day went by without another word spoken, just the five of them rushing through the woods. It wasn't until the sun set in front of them and the night began that Makoto finally slowed down a bit and led them to an area surrounded by large rocks that served as cover. "We'll rest here for the night. All of you need to be at maximum power tomorrow. Kenjiro, gather some firewood and search the surrounding area for potential threats. Hiroshi, set up defensive Kido around the perimeter. Kiara, Akito, you two stay here and start preparing our camp for the night. Dig a fire pit, clean the area around it, that sort of thing."
"Understood", they all answered simultaneously. He nodded and then disappeared via Shunpo. Kenjiro and Hiroshi followed his example pretty soon afterwards, leaving just Kiara and Akito. "I'll do the fire pit", she voluntarily exclaimed and stepped to a position in about the middle of what would be their provisational camp for the night. Then she started to make use of her newly learned Kido spells and began to chant weak versions of Hado Nr. 1: Sho to one specific place. Sho was just a simple energy wave concentrated into one direction, but it was pretty effective. Kiara reckoned that with enough Spirtual pressure it could have frighteningly phenomenal destructive capabilities.
When she bothered enough to turn around and check on what Akito was doing, she noticed with some surprise that he was using the same Kido spell, but even weaker so that it was essentially just a blast of air, to clean the area. "Who taught you Kido?", she asked a little baffled.
"3rd seat Ayasegawa Yumichika-sama", he answered scarcely.
"How did you get him to do that? Do you have leverage on him? As far as I can tell he's one of the laziest people around."
A self-statisfied smirk appeared on Akitos face. "I persuaded him."
"…how?", Kiara insisted.
"Would you believe me if I said I can be persistent?"
"Ah", she dryly remarked. "That's how you did it."
"He didn't really teach me to be honest. He gave me the basics so I'd leave him alone. I did consider to ask the twins for help, but stopped that train of thought pretty quickly for obvious reasons. So I just kinda hung out in other squads and near the academy to pick up some stuff."
"Didn't they kick you out?"
"Oh they did, but uhm... I don't care."
She tilted her head a bit, then nodded with a "Huh" and continued her work. After a while, she was done digging out a firepit and wanted to help Akito prepare the ground, but he seemed pretty much finished himself, so she kinda searched for questions to continue the conversation. Nothing really came to mind, until…
"So this has always kinda interested me, but why did you challenge the captain to a swordfight?"
"…where's that coming from all of a sudden?"
"Just wondering. As far as I remember, you were barely a week into the 11th division at that point and you straight up yelled at him to fight you. You had to have known just how laughably strong the guy was, so why did you do it?"
"...I wanted to see how he was different from me." Strange. Akito was normally pretty talkative, but just now he seemed almost hesitant to answer at all. Was he insecure about that topic? "And why exactly were you in the need of that knowledge'", she persisted. Several seconds of silence followed until he answered.
"You're gonna laugh at me if I tell you." So he was insecure about it.
"Well that's a first. Never thought you'd be coy about telling things to literally every other person on the planet", she said with a cynical tone.
"The exception makes the rule", he said without a care in the world and shrugged his shoulders, ignoring the very obvious insult. Kiara was surprised. Despite having been around him for some time now, she wouldn't have thought that he would be the type to just take jabs like that in stride. She decided not to push the topic, because Kenjiro appeared right behind them with his arms full of firewood. He walked straight to the firepit and immediately began to stack the wood so that they could ignite it. He then stopped halfway through, looked at the sky, to the rest of the wood he hadn't stacked yet and to the wood he was currently putting inside the pit.
"Damn, I miscalculated. You two", he said, got up quickly and turned to the two novices. "Don't ignite the fire and don't let the other two do it, if they get back before me. I'll be right back." With that, he disappeared again, leaving the two alone once more. Kiara thought about picking up the conversation again, but considering the fact that they could be interrupted any second, she decided not to. Being forced to not continue a conversation because somebody else entered the picture was pretty shit.
She prompted Akito to go with her to look for soft objects that could substitute for a matress in the meantime. They found a lot of bushes and plucked the leaves off from them. They worked fast and silent, as none of the two attempted another conversation. This was the first mission for each of the two of them and they began to feel the pressure. They had no idea what to expect and were pretty alarmed by the behavior of their usually relaxed travel companions.
Hiroshi came back to the camp shortly after his brother had left, looked around, saw the stacked wood in the firepit and then looked to the two novices. "Where's Kenjiro?", he asked.
"Off to get more wood", Kiara answered.
He simply nodded and sat on the ground, looking like he was meditating. Kiara looked to Akito, who returned her gaze and shrugged his shoulders. Then they both got back to work. Kenjiro arrived a few minutes after his brother and a few moments after that Makoto returned as well.
"Alright team, gather", he quickly commanded. They assembled around the firepit and while Makoto began to explain the situation, Kenjiro started a fire. "Our mission is simple; go to the attacked area, kill the Hollows and rescue the villagers. Now before you ask why we are camping here instead of running straight into battle", he said and directed his gaze towards Kiara and Akito, "it's because the Hollows appear sporadically. As in, they suddenly turn up, wreak some havoc and then fuck off to who knows where again. Their attacks have no strict pattern except for that they only attack during the day. That's why we're going to spend the night here and rest. As for battle tactics; the twins and I will focus on fighting, while you two", he nodded to Kiara and Akito again, "will focus on evacuation and rescue of the villagers. Any Questions so far?"
"Yeah actually, I've got one", Akito remarked. "How long have these attacks been happening for now?"
"Acording to our information, about a week", Makoto answered.
"Then why haven't they evacuated themselves already? If the Hollows only appear sporadically, wouldn't that give the villagers a time window in which they could get away?"
"Good question, but it's not that easy. In addition to the attacks the village seems to be surrounded with some kind of sensory field. As soon as somebody tries to leave, it triggers a warning and the Hollows appear. We will go over more detailed battle strategies once we're there, no use in formulating one when we don't know the terrain. Any more questions?"
They all shook their heads.
"Good, then let's get some rest. We'll leave early in the morning."
ooo
A meadow, surrounded by a forest and shone upon by the blue light of a passing comet in the nightsky that never seemed to move. And in the midst of the forest, a person calling out to her. And yet something was different this time. The person was no longer an unfocused blur.
Before Kiara stood a girl about her age, with long white hair tied together in a ponytail and a strand of hair falling down on each side of her face. A light brown scarf was wrapped around her head, but she wore it more like a bandanna. Her upper body was covered by a tight shirt of thick fabric and ivory color with no sleeves and on her hands she wore brown fingerless gloves. Her pants were black and a little baggy and it looked they were part of a onepart clothing piece with the upper part being wrapped and tied around the girls waist.
"You know", just blurred out and didn't even look at Kiara."If you're not gonna start hearing me anytime soon, I'm gonna go crazy. There's literally nothing to do, we have yet to get into a real fight together and most important of it all, there are no damn blueprints in here."
"What? What do you mean with "no blueprints"?", Kiara asked confused.
"I mean there are no blueprints for me to mess around with and-", she suddenly stopped and looked directly at Kiara. "You can understand me?", the girl asked baffled.
"Yeah, fucking finally. I have been waiting for this for like forever-" She was suddenly interrupted by the spirit that immediately shouted: "MY NAME IS-!"
ooo
And then Kiara woke up. She was breathing a little heavy before a voice to her left resounded.
"Can't sleep?", Akito quietly asked. She turned to his direction and found him staring into the sky whide awake and strangely… calm looking?
"Something like that, yeah", she responded with a sigh after a short while and turned towards the sky as well. "You?"
"Pretty much that." The answer was short and after nothing followed for a while, she turned to him again.
"What is going on with you?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've been strangely… off ever since we got here."
He turned to her and raised an eyebrow. "Define off."
"As if someone strangled a dog in front of you and then wore it as a festive hat."
"Besides being oddly specific, I wouldn't really say that's how I look."
"Besides being kinda right, you're also wrong. You don't look depressed, but you look too calm for... well, you", she stated bluntly.
He rolled his eyes turned back to the sky and then said: "Ok yeah, I suppose you could say I'm feeling a little bit downthrodden, but it's nothing major, so don't concern yourself with it. Why do you even give a damn anyway?"
"What, am I not allowed to care?", she asked almost a little offended. Maybe it was just the tension at the moment, but it seemed like Akito's usual carefree demeanor was giving way to something more similar to her own daily attitude.
"No, but you're not the type to." Now he was the one to use a blunt tone.
She looked at the sky. "That's not true", she denied.
He turned to her. "Really?"
She turned to him. "Really."
"You sure?"
"Absolutely."
She thought he would continue the conversation and pressure her on that specific topic, but instead he just shrugged his shoulders, said: "If you say so" and turned to the sky again.
She sat up from her sleeping place and rustled some of the leaves spread across the ground. "Why would I not be the type to care? Am I a total bitch to the rest of the world and just don't realize it or what? What makes you think that I don't care about others?"
"I didn't say that."
"Yes you did."
"Okay yeah I did, but what I meant was that I didn't mean it that way.*
"Then how did you mean it?", she persisted.
His eyes darted to her and he raised an eyebrow again. "Is today some kind of role reversal day? Normally I'm the persistent one and you the annoyed one."
"Who knows maybe the stars are aligned or something. Answer the question."
He sighed. "I meant to say that you weren't the type to care for other peoples feelings."
"What makes you say that?"
"Uhhh how about the fact that you never ask people how they are doing? You've never asked me and I've never seen or heard you ask anyone else, that would be if you'd actually try to socialize so one could actually observe whether you would or wouldn't yell anything else at people besides "fuck off"."
"Do I really seem like the kind of person that's so complicated you can't safely deduce whether or not I care about other peoples feeling?", she asked with sincere bewilderment.
"To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what kind of person you are. I know what kind of personality you have, but I don't really know you. You're actually one of the bigger mysteries I've been trying to solve ever since I entered Seireitei."
"Ok I'm not that big of a mystery." He gave her a doubtful look. "Alright, humor me", she then said curiously.
"Six months ago a highranking officer brought you from the lower districts straight to Soul Society and took you under his wing for no apparent reason what so ever. You appearantly have amnesia, but somehow couldn't give less of a damn about it. You say you don't like fighting but then you accept almost every challenge that's thrown your way. You also learn how to fight pretty fast, but you don't really set yourself apart with something you'd be remarkably good at. I have genuinely no idea what you're all about, I can't get a read on you and so on and forth, you get what I mean?"
"Well, I mean if you say it like that", she replied. He just shrugged his shoulders and continued to look up to the stars. She didn't really want to admit it, but his words kind of strung a chord within her. For a longer period of time none of the two said anything until she broke the silence.
"It's not like I don't like fighting", she began slowly. "On the contrary I've come to realize lately that I actually do enjoy it. It's just that- whenever you like doing something and then you do it excessively and sometimes not even out of your own free will, you grow tired of it. I've been in Seireitei for a little more than half a year now, but to be honest there's not really a lot that I actually enjoy doing. Yes, there's fighting, but the longer I do that in excess the more tedious it becomes. I like learning new things and improving on them but I can never really do that because I rarely have some alone time for myself. I accept most challenges because I have a rather unhealthy need to prove myself. That and because I hope that I'm left alone afterwards. Not that that ever happens."
She laid back down and stared at the sky again. "One thing is as it seems though. The fact that I lost my memory doesn't really bother me, no. I don't even know how I died and I think that's a good thing. If I knew at least one or two details about my life in the human world I might constantly be bothered by it because then I'd want to know everything, but I don't, so I'm not. I don't really know what I lost through dying and if I try to go dig up my past I might just open up a pandoras box. I live here now, I have something that resembles a goal which is to become a Shingami and honestly, that's all I wanna focus on for the moment."
"You sure that you're not the least bit curious? Or that you might just be running away from it because you're afraid of qhat you might find if you start digging?"
"Absolutely. I'm not curious or afraid and it doesn't matter", she said and sounded way more confident than she actually was. Was he actually right? Was Kiara just running away from the answer because she was scared of them?
"I guess that's one way to look at it", Akito interrupted her inner debate. "But I've got a different question for you though; if you don't like doing things in excess, why have you been training with me on a constant basis lately?"
"Weeeeeeell", she started with a little guilt in her tone. "Whenever I'm training or fighting somebody, people usually leave me to my own devices. You're kind of an okay guy and a good sparring partner when Makoto wasn't around, so I guess I was… kind of… using you as a means to avoid everybody else?", she confessed.
Shit, hopefully she didn't hurt him with that, but hearing herself say it like that really made her sound like an asshole. She closed one of her her eyes in anticipation of him getting angry about it, but he said nothing.
"I'm so sorry, I really didn't mean to hurt you if I did", she quickly apologized.
"Nah, it's alright", he immediately responded. "Glad I could help." He turned around and showed her his back. "We should try to get some sleep now, I'm pretty sure tomorrow is not gonna be easy and we need all the strength we can get."
"Yeah you're right", she said and facepalmed. That went about as well as her early sparring matches against Makoto. She tried to shake of the guilt that had wallowed up inside her, but failed utterly, so she eventually turned to the side as well and tried to get some more sleep.
ooo
"She's a real charmer." Susanoo's voice echoed amused within Makotos head.
"Yeah", Makoto dryly whispered.
"And the way she thinks about her past certainly complicates things. You sure you still wanna tell her how she died?"
"Might even do it after this mission. Now that I know, I shouldn't really wait any longer, now should I? The longer she continues with that mindset, the worse it's gonna be when I do tell her. There's no point in waiting it out any longer."
"You don't need to do this just yet."
"Of course I do. I owe it to her."
"You owe it to her, or you owe it to yourself?"
"Both. I don't want to live the rest of my life knowing that I keep lying to her while she sees me as someone she can look up to and I don't want her to live the rest of her live relying on somebody that's not honest with her."
"You know, sometimes ignorance is bliss", Susanoo said a little more concerned than usual.
"Yeah, probably. But the truth is everyones right. I might break something with it that would possibly never recover, but let's be honest here, I deserve whatever is coming my way."
"Can't argue with that. But hey", he said with a more optimistic tone. "We're in this together since the beginning. We'll finish it just the same way, even if that just consists of me bullying you out of depression after you dod the dirty work."
"Thanks buddy", Makoto said with a smile and closed his eyes.
ooo
Kiara opened her eyes and realized somebody woke her up. She grunted and sat up, just to see that the sun hadn't even risen yet. Everybody else was already awake and well rested. Kenjiro walked over to her from the fire with a cup in his hands. He kneeled down to her and gave her the cup. "Drink this, it helps shake off morning grumpiness. It also kinda wakes you up, so", he said with a smirk.
She grimaced sinisterly at him, much to his amusement. She took the cup and put a finger into it to check the temperature. It was warm, but not hot, so she took a sip.
"Careful", Kenjiro quickly tried to add, but she had already taken a gulp and her tongue was assaulted with an unpleasant taste. "It's pretty bitter." He smiled sheepishly while she shot him an annoyed look. "You should hurry up with that though, we're leaving in a few."
She hurried up with the tea (which didn't really help with the taste) and got ready to go. Everybody else seemed already set for departure, save for Kenjiro who was throwing dirt on the fire to put it out. Then he walked to Kiara, put his arm around her and turned to Makoto. "Ready."
Wordless, Makoto nodded, turned around and disappeared. Kenjiro and Hiroshi followed his example. The world around Kiara became a whirling stream of colors again, steadily interrupted by small stops.
The rest of their travel wasn't nearly as long as it had been on the day before (thank god), but instead it simply took a couple of hours until they arrived at their destination. And when they did Kiara began to feel pretty uncomfortable.
She had gotten glimpses of what villages looked like in the lower districts, but this was taking things up to the next level. Houses looked like they were barely stable enough to withstand normal rain, much less a storm and that was only the ones that were actually still standing. Others were more akin to ruins than anything else.
The group was still a good distance away from the village, right on the border of a forest, but Kiara could almost taste the despair from their current location. She took a quick look around to see if she was the only one and just chickening out, but as soon as she laid eyes on Akito, she realized that whatever unease she felt right now paled in comparison to the shock on his face.
And apparently, she wasn't the only one that had noticed. "Like I said kid", Makoto began and turned to Akito. "Nobody's gonna blame you if you turn around."
Akitos face slowly moved from horrified shock to something that could only be described as angry determination. "I will", he said with a sinister tone. Makoto raised his eyebrows to that comment for a bit, but then nodded to it and turned to Hiroshi.
"Alright then. Hiroshi, you're the Kido expert. How fast can you check the area and tell me what exactly is going on?"
"Two or three minutes", the twin responded. He began to draw lines of Spiritual energy in the air which took a rectangular shape and several symbols appeared on the edges of what seemed similar to a screen.
By looking through that screen, everything looked different. The landscape no longer appeared in colors, but was instead framed by energy lines. And around the village itself was a gigantic web of lines, entangled within one another, which resulted in them looking like a sphere.
"I'll go around to check if there are any weaknesses in the structure of the energy field." And with those words, he disappeared.
"Kenjiro, how much tactical education did you receive before you left the Onmitsukido?"
"I'd say a moderate amount", Kenjiro responded.
Makoto nodded. "What advantages would you say we have over the Hollows?"
Without a single word, Kenjiro disappeared. Makoto wasn't phased by this at all, much to Kiaras perplexion. She was about to say something, but then Kenjiro reappeared again.
"I'd say that the terrain is our biggest pro. The buildings aren't exactly stable, but as long as they do stand, we can maneuver through them and confuse the enemy. That's gonna come in handy when we evacuate the villagers. The damaged and destroyed buildings are also gonna be pretty neat, since we can hide under some of the rubble. We should only do that with houses that have completely crashed though, or else one that is still half intact might just kick the bucket while we're hiding in it. It's a risk we can't take. Judging from the damage that's been dealt to the houses and streets, we can also say with some certainty that the attackers aren't that large in size or have that high of an attack power."
He turned to Makoto. "But that leads me to the cons. The unknown factors. We can assume the enemies are small and weak, but we can't be absolutely sure. We also don't know their numbers, we don't know if they have any special abilities or if they have aid from an outside source. I don't wanna assume anything here but uhhhm… it wouldn't be the first time a Shinigami has put Hollows to use for his own ends."
"So there's a high possibility this could be a trap", Makoto mumbled to himself. He glanced at Kiara and clicked his tongue. Right in that moment, Hiroshi appeared right next to Makoto.
"Reporting my conclusions", he said directed towards Makoto.
"Go ahead", the latter responded.
"We're dealing with something similar to a forcefield. It tracks movement inside its parameter and Spiritual energy signatures, but it's not exactly a real field. It's more like a really closely knit web of strings with a dome like shape that reaches high up into the sky. I couldn't really make out how far, but even if we knew that, we couldn't get inside from the top."
Makoto squinted his eyes. "And why is that?", he asked cautiously.
"At the top of the dome is a Garganta", Hiroshi stated bluntly.
"God damn cheap son of a bitch", Makoto cussed. He put his hand on his chin and seemed deeply fixated on finding a solution, while Kiara was finding herself to be completely fucking lost.
"Sorry for having to be the newbie, but what's a Garganta?", she asked shyly.
"To give you the quick version, it's basically a pocket dimension through which Hollows travel to the human world and very rarely to Soul Society." Makoto's answer was pretty monotone, almost as if he was on autopilot while putting his entire focus on the invisible problem in front of them.
"You said it's a net, right?", Kenjiro asked slowly.
"Yeah. A tightly knit web", Hiroshi answered.
"Could you temporarely change the webbing? Make it disappear?", Kenjiro suggested.
"No", his brother answered. "Like I said, the net tracks physical movement and Spiritual energy. We can neither change its composition, strength, attributes, nor its… shape." Hiroshi said that last word as if it he had reached some form of enlightenment from it.
"Makoto-sama. I think I could be able to alter the shape of the net for short periods of time. That way we can make a way for one or two of us to get inside, get the villagers out and be out of here before the enemy even shows up."
"Elaborate", Makoto simply said.
"I can subtly add my own Reiatsu to the net over time and acclimate it. Once it's used to the new component, I think I can temporarely manipulate its shape."
"That could work", Makoto nodded, still with his hand on his chin. "You sure you can pull that off?"
"Absolutely", Hiroshi said.
"How long would you need for that?"
"Half an hour, maybe more. The tricky part will be to cast it subtly without being detected."
"Good", Makoto deduced. "Then I've got another question for you. How good are you with light manipulation Kido?"
The twin blinked. "Light manipulation? I'm afraid I don't understand what-"
"This energy field over there", Makoto interrupted him and pointed towards the village, "may not just mean that they can sense us, it could also mean that they can see us. So let's just assume that everything goes according to plan, which it hopefully will, and they don't realize their field is being tampered with. It could still happen that they, whoever they are, take a look out of pure curiosity and then see us. Then all our plans go out the window. And that might just happen during or, even worse, before our rescue attempt. I'd kinda like a contingency plan in case that happens. In short, I'm asking if you can create an invisible tunnel that leads straight to the forest", Makoto said and pointed behind himself with his thumb while facing the village.
Hiroshi nodded and put his hand on his chin in deep thought.
"I should be able to do it. Light refraction is not my speciality, but it's possible."
"That's good", Makoto nodded
Kiara whistled acknowlegdingly. "I didn't know you were this much of a strategist."
"I didn't get to the 4th seat with pure luck you know", he said and winked at her. Then he turned to Hiroshi. "Please take care of the tunnel right now. In case things go south I want to have at least that."
"Understood." The twin sat down and began mumbling some vague incantation.
"In the meantime", Maktoto continued to the rest of the team, "let's go over battle tactics. If everything works according to plan, we won't really need it, but it's always good to have a back-up." He signaled everyone to gather in front of him. "Like I said yesterday already, Kenjiro, Hiroshi and I would be drawing the attention to ourselves. All the battles will most likely be on the ground. Just because the Garganta is up in the sky doesn't mean new ones on the ground can't open. I'm guessing most of the people will be residing within the intact houses, so we'll try to keep the fighting among the ruins, if we have to fight. Kiara and Akito, you two will guide the villagers out in the meantime. In case we will have to do it that way, you will always act as a team and never separated. Lead everyone out and to the tunnel, then get to safety. We'll do the rest."
"Hey, that's not fair. We can fight too", Akito protested.
"Not against something like that. Have you ever seen a Hollow before kid?", Makoto asked.
"No", Akito answered, slightly uncertain.
"Just trust me on this; you are way too early to fight one of those things. Both of you", he said and also looked to Kiara. "Neither of you went to the academy and while you are formidable fighters already when compared to others, you need to be more than that to face something like a Hollow. Just stick to rescue, the three of us will take care of the rest."
He turned around to the twin that was sitting on the ground and waited until he finished his spell, then he signaled him to take the lead and put his arm around Kiara to carry her via Shunpo. Kenjiro did the same with Akito and then they carefully approached the invisible dome.
They stopped about 10 meters in front of the village where Hiroshi signaled them to wait. He took a few steps to their left and cast a strange red smoke on the ground. The smoke disappeared, leaving a red stain on the grass. "This is the entrance to the tunnel I cast back there. It goes all the way to this spot", he said, directed towards the rest of the group. "The only thing you have to do is show it to the rescued people, they can figure the rest of the way out themselves without accidentally passing through the invisble walls." Then he slowly approached the invisible barrier and got to work. The way it looked was actually quite fascinating. Hiroshi's output was very restrained, so his Reiatsu looked more like a feint mist.
It touched the field in various places and made it looke like spiderwebs were randomly appearing out of thin air. It looked like everything was going well. Kiara knew it was premature, but she allowed herself to take a relieved breath. Only to get the feeling that she jinxed it with that.
Suddenly, the visible parts of the field trembled with unorthodox twitching movements. It made a very high pitched noise, making it sound like the net itself was screaming.
What followed next were entirely different screams though. Screams Kiara had never heard before. Screams that crawled under her skin and gave her goosebumps. As if something rotten and evil had come creeping out of its hole to bring death and destruction over anything that crossed its path, simply because it could.
"Holy shit…", Kenjiro whispered next to her. She turned towards him and noticed he was gazing at the sky.
She looked up to the sky as well and shuddered. Several dozen literal monsters were raining down on the village. Gross and with dirty colors, furr, feathers and strange extra limbs with even stranger proportions. But they all had something in common; a white mask on their face and a hole in the middle of their chests.
"So that's what a Hollow looks like", she mumbled to herself. Everything else that happened after this point happened incredibly fast. Almost simultaneously, Makoto and the twins drew their blades.
"Hiroshi, fucking blast that dome to kingdom come", Makoto demanded. "If it's not there, we can't be trapped or sensed, now DO IT!"
"Yes sir", Hiroshi answered and put his hand upp in the air, reciting some sort of chant at an incredibly fast rate. He finished after about ten seconds and yelled out loud: "Hado 63: Raikoho!"
A large orb of lightning erupted from his palm and shot towards the invisible energy field. It collided with a blinding explosion, followed by a shockwave.
"This was a damned trap from the very start", Makoto said and turned around to Kiara and the rest. "The original plan is fucked, we gotta improvise. With numbers as high as those up there, we absolutely cannot let the fight get to the ground. Kenjiro, Hiroshi, you two are coming with me. Use high level Kido, forbidden Onmitsukido techniques, I don't care what it is as long as it keeps them in the air. You two", he pointed to Kiara and Akito. "Lead the villagers out of here as fast as you can. Keep close to the intact buildings and use the narrow streets as cover. As soon as the last one is save you get the hell out of here, we'll take care of the rest."
He didn't leave any room for questions or objections, he simply went straight into the battle field. The twins followed his example and left the two young novices standing there in shock.
"Come on Kiara", Akito said after a while and mostly shook her out of her paralysis. "We need to go."
Still slightly dazed, she looked at him and saw that his left hand was at the sheath of his sword. Then she remembered how Makoto and the twins had drawn theirs before going into battle.
Battle. That's what they were in the middle of right now. And there was no going back. "Yeah", she said with newfound conviction and drew her own blade. "Let's go."
ooo
As they were running down the streets, the two apprentices could see more and more Hollows fall down from the sky towards the battlefield. They could also see Makoto and the twins doing everything in their power to keep the Hollows in the air while fighting there themselves. They were slicing down one monster after the other, but they just kept coming.
Hiroshi resorted to Kido blasts from time to time while Kenjiro used Shunpo to jump around from one enemy to the next, quickly killing them at a very even pace. Makoto had been flexing his Reiatsu from very the start of the battle and was sometimes just using brute force. Kiara could clearly see how he grabbed one of the ugly monsters by the face and threw it into another one with his bare hand.
Focus, she scolded herself. Her part in this mission was not to be wowed by the mayhem going on up above, but to tend to the rescue. That was all she could do for the moment.
She and Akito kept close together, pressing themselves against the houses as they were moving through the ruins while checking the barracks through the windows if anybody was inside. She was currently overlooking an almost fully intact lodge when she heard him whistle. He pointed towards some rubble on the ground and on closer inspection Kiara could see that some parts of it wasn't actually rubble, but human limbs. She almost threw up, but then she noticed that the limbs weren't bleeding. And moving. She took a few seconds to realize htat some of the people had actually disguised themselves as rubble in order to survive.
Crafty, she thought to herself.
Akito whistled towards the camouflaged residents and got their attention. He signed them to come over, but was met with some resisitance. Frustrated, he resorted to a more… energetic approach and signaled them again, this time with more suggestive signs. He also pointed to the sky, himself and the saferoute out of the village, and although the locals were a bit offended, they began to make slow but steady efforts to move.
Akito hastily looked back and forth between the village folk and the ongoing fight in the air up above. Kiara was already anxious herself and the agonizingly slow moving people didn't really help with that. Said people mimicked Kiara and Akito by pressing themselves on the walls of still standing houses on the other side of the street.
One after another, they quickly ran over to the other side and soon Akito signaled Kiara to move back the way they came. They built a single line with Kiara as the head and Akito as the tail. Step after step, house after house they safely made their way back unnoticed. As soon as they got out Kiara looked for the red spot in the grass and led the people there. She quickly sent them in one after another until they kinda got the gist of it and did the rest themselves.
The two novices turned around and went back into the city while the mayhem above them continued to get more chaotic by the minute. They kept close to the walls again, but hurried up given the situation up above.
Most of the buildings they came across were empty, while others had a foul smell coming out of them when Kiara took a peak inside to check for survivors. Kiara didn't think much about it and attributed it to the poor hygene in the lower districts, but she realized pretty fast that that assumption was very very wrong when she saw the first corpse.
At first she had thought of it as a villager hiding in fear and not being able to move out of shock. She had signaled Akito with a whistle and together they had entered the house through the front door, ready to save the next victim.
Now, she was the one who wasn't able to move out of shock. She was standing in a simple room with no walls or separations, a simple one room apartement. When she had just taken a peak inside before, most of it had been obscured by shadow, but now that the front door was open, light was able to enter. And present Kiara with a body of a dead person.
A blood trail was leading from the entrance door to one of his legs. Or, more accurately described, where one of his legs should have been. Instead, there was only a short, rotting stump. There were no clean cuts or signs of a clinical amputation and the leg looked like it had been violently ripped off its owner.
Kiara's stomach seriously rebelled at that sight and she had to throw up. Panting, she leaned herself at the wall for a few seconds. Strangley enough, Akito was much more calm than she was. He didn't lose his mind, he didn't hyperventilate, he didn't even grimace at the foul smell. He just stood there with a sad glance in his eyes.
When he spoke, he didn't seem shaken up or angry, he was just calm. "Come on, we gotta get going." He walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder for a few moments until she thankfully nodded and stood upright again, still breathing a little heavy. He nodded as well and took the lead again while exiting the house.
They eventually managed to find a few more survivors, but from that point on out Kiara almost had to force herself to go into a house again. Everytime they entered a building she readied herself for the worst and expected to see a decomposing, lifeless body again. To her relief, they found more surviors first, so they had to turn around again to guide them to the outside borders and into the invisible tunnel.
While she was still recovering from her initial shock, Akito seemed to do fairly fine all things considered. Sure, he was tense because the battle began to sound more like an all out war. Explosions (probably from Kido spells) happened more often the longer they fought and severed limbs and dead corpses began to hit the village, especially the sections in the ruins. Everytime Kiara looked up she could see body parts coming down and most of the time they began to erode into dust even before they hit the ground. Even so, some were just falling too fast and so they still did some damage before disappearing into thin air.
And still, through all of that, no matter how strange the raining down limbs looked, no matter how loud the explosions got or how many times they passed buildings with that suspicious foul smell, Akito stayed strangely calm. As a matter of fact, Akito was behaving rather strange in general.
His cheery personality was gone, but not like Makoto. Makoto just seemed like he knew he had to be serious and that was all there was to it. Akito was almost like an entirely different person. She wanted to continue that train of thought but was interrupted as a large body hit the ground right next to them.
Anxious, she turned towards the corpse, sword at the ready. It was dark, bare skinned and had body shape reminiscent of an ape, but with wildly different proportions. It didn't move for a couple of seconds and she was already letting out a sigh of relief, already turning around to the scared villagers, when she saw the Hollow twitch from the edge of her vision. She hurled around, took a step back and sided next to Akito, who was also on high alert with his hand on his sword. And then the Hollow growled in pain.
It was still alive.
A huge bleeding cross wound was clearly visible on its back, but despite all that it still struggled its way back up on its feet. Then the Hollow looked into their direction and the malice in its eyes let Kiara freeze all over again.
The Hollow howled an echoey roar and reached for the group of people, but everything came to a standstill when a Spiritual pressure from somewhere up above suddenly exploded and paralyzed every person on the ground merely by existing.
ooo
"As soon as the last one is save you get the hell out of here, we'll take care of the rest", Makoto commanded the two novices and turned around. He didn't want to give them a window to start arguing, so he immediately used Shunpo to get up into the sky, closely followed by the twins.
(Bleach OST: Power to strive extended)
Makoto didn't waste a second and released his Reiatsu right away. "Whatever happens", he said to the twins while not facing away from the threat at hand, "we cannot let any of those get through to the kids. They are not prepared for this. Use any means necessary, but try to avoid using Shikai if possible. Everyone down there could be frozen in place from the pressure and lose valuable time."
"Yes sir", the both of them answered at once.
And with that, Makoto headed straight into the fray. He pushed himself off from the Reishi he concentrated under his feet and flew towards the Hollows. A few of them came at him, which he all disposed of with quick, strong slashes. His sword got stuck in the last one and a spider like Hollow tried to exploit that opening, but to no success.
Makoto simply grabbed it by the head and threw it into another one that was coming at him from above. He ripped his sword out of the Hollow it got stuck in with brute force, made sure to check if he was above the ruin part of the village and sent the Hollow flying down with an axekick.
One was trying to attack him from below and Makoto cut off all its limbs to incapacitate it before slashing its mask in half. The next one was trying to come at him from a blind spot, but he recognized it just in time to shunpo behind it and vertically slice it in half. Two were attacking him from both sides in an attempt to cut off his escape. He responded by jumping towards one and shoving his sword deep into its skull like mask, shattering it in the process. Then he turned around, used Shunpo to get above the other and shredded its head to pieces.
While he was making quick work of every single one of the attackers, the twins were contributing their fare share as well.
Kenjiro was using Shunpo at a constant pace, jumping from one enemy to the next. His Zanpakutou wasn't a traditional Katana, but instead two Wakizashis, which he held in reverse grip. His fighting style was quick and effective, never wasting more than a few seconds to create and exploit an opening from his enemy. Makoto smiled. Just as expected from a former Onmitsukido member.
Meanwhile, his brother also showcased a fighting style fitting to the unit he previously belonged to. Hiroshi effortlessly weaved the usage of Kido into his combat style, taking out every third Hollow with a Hado technique in the 30 levels and below, laying traps to temporarily stun and incapacitate the attackers, which were partially taken advantage of by his brother.
The two made a pretty good team.
The fight went on for a while and things were going fairly well all things considered, so Makoto kicked into overdrive for a few seconds to take out as many Hollows as possible to buy himself some time. He copied Kenjiro for a bit and used Shunpo to jump around various Hollows, but instead of letting them make mistakes he just powered through their defenses with violence.
After he created some space, he took a few moments to check on the situation below. He felt several Spiritual signatures on the move, recognizing Akito and Kiara among them.
The rescue was coming along. So far so good. He directed his attention towards the battle again and looked up to the giant Garganta several hundred meters above. His optimism disappeared. They had taken out a very good amount of Hollows already, but from what it looked like there were now even more than before.
"God dammit, what the hell is on the other side of that gateway, a friggin' army?"
He klicked his tongue and went right back at it. Since they just kept coming, he started to resort to Kido as well. He didn't want to waste his Reiryoku, so he just used Hado spells around the 30 levels, like Hiroshi.
The twins must have noticed the increase in numbers as well and were responding accordingly, especially Hiroshi, who was basically spamming Hado number 31: Shakkahou like there was no tomorrow.
Kenjiro resorted more to Bakudo spells that hindered the enemys vision or mobility and occasionally a Hado spell, but he still mostly focused on his Onmitsukido techniques.
And so the battle went on for another while. The increase in numbers made itself noticeable especially in the attack patterns, as most of the monstrocities kept attacking from all sides at once.
Makoto was beginning to have difficulties, as all his openings and escape routes kept being cut off, but he had a method of how to deal with those situations.
Just focus on one, he thought to himself and remembered the training from his old man. If you're surrounded, just attack one and you have your breach.
He jumped towards the Hollow in front of him and slashed through its head like it was butter.
Then just work your way around and keep erasing their opportunities to circle you.
In theory, this always worked out pretty well. The key was to be fast enough to take out that first enemy. If he could break through the circle the hardest part was already done.
The problem was that the Hollows kept filling out the gaps he created. Everytime he killed one and mowed his way through the others in front of him, others took the place of their fallen kin and attacked him from behind, interrupting his rythm and forcing him to start all over again.
"Just a few Hollows my ass", he yelled after he chopped two Hollows at once in front of him and blasted the ones behind him away with Hado 33: Soukatsui. "What kind of intel were the higher ups recording here?", he continued shouting at the Hollows he killed.
Another wave of monstrosities tried to encircle him again, but he had enough. He began whirling around his Zanpakutou with overwhelming speed, while gathering a good amount of Reiryoku in it and performed an overhead swing to enable a special technique.
"Hado 58 modified: Tenran Tasumaki!"
Normally, Hado 58 createdd a tornado right in front of the user, but not Makotos modified version. This new application of the spell created a whirlwind sphere with the user at its center, suited for battling enemys of high numbers. And the technique was very effective.
The Hollows around Makoto were blasted away and his field was suddenly clear again. The reason why he hadn't used this spell before already was because the Hollows were blasted in every direction, which also included the direction of ground. He quickly checked how many Hollows had been blasted towards the village, raised his Spiritual pressure and rocketed down to eliminate them. He luckily reached all of them in time and managed to kill every single one of them with precise blows to their mask, so that the only thing that would reach the ground was their lifeless bodies.
He quickly turned his attention to the sky again and was about to shunpo into the horde of monsters when he saw it.
Kenjiro was currently pushed into a corner and had too many enemys to get a clear shot at their heads, which lead to one of them falling down towards the intact section of the village, wounded, but not dead.
He was on the other side of that village and knew he would never make it in time, not like this. He knew what this meant especially since he could feel Kiara being right at the crash site of the stray Hollow.
"Reign over trickery", he commanded while raising his Zanpakutou over his head.
"Susanoo!"
ooo
Kiara couldn't move. Instantly, it was like the air around her got ten times thinner, it was that hard to breathe. And it was not like that just for her. Every person present had faces strained with exertion as they tried to keep breathing. Including the Hollow.
And then something rocketed down into the Hollows body like a shooting star. A tiny shockwave knocked her and everyone else away and she fell down to the ground. The pressure on her entire body suddenly got smaller and she found herself able to move again. She struggled back on her feet again and turned her attention towards the settling dustcloud. Slowly but surely, a Shingami uniform became visible, with smaller details like a yellow waistband waving in the wind, tattooed arms and brown hair.
Makoto. But something was wildly different about him. He was giving off an oppressive presence so strong Kiara could have sworn she could feel his conviction and willpower almost crushing her. And that was not the only thing. Makoto was no longer fighting with a standard Katana anymore.
No, the blade he ripped out of the Hollows back and used to chop its head into pieces was definetly no Katana. Instead, it was a thick black great sword with silver edges and several silver encarvings on it.
His Shikai, she thought to herself, amazed by the sight despite the dire situation.
He put his sword on his shoulder and turned towards her and the rest of the group. "Everyone okay?", he asked as he effortlessly jumped down from the eroding carcass.
"Ye-yeah, we're fine" Kiara stuttered and turned around just to be sure. "Right?"
"We're alright", Akito groaned as an answer.
"Good. Kiara, Akito, release you Reiatsu. It'll help you move. How many were you able to evacuate?"
"About 15 people so far, the ones present not accounted for"; Akito answered.
Makoto looked like he was about to say something, but stopped and took a quick moment to think. He closed his eyes and after a few seconds he said: "Wait right here", then he disappeared.
Not long after, he reappeared again with two children on each shoulder. He let them down to the ground safely, then he shunpoed away again. He did that about three or four more times which led to an assembly of about 25 vilagers in total, some covered in dust, some injured, but all of them alive.
"Those are all I could find. Originally, I was gonna let you handle the rescue, but there's no end to the Hollows, so I'm speeding things up a bit", he said, specifically towards Kiara, probably because he assumed she was about to ask a snappy question. "Just in case you wondered why I didn't do that in the first place little one", he said with a faint smile and winked at her, but quickly fell back into his serious attitude.
"Now get all of them away and go with them through the tunnel, things are getting seriously out of hand here-" He interrupted himself again, but this time not because he was thinking about something. He had turned his attention back towards the battle mid conversation and from the looks of it, he was startled by something.
Kiara followed his line of sight and saw that the giant Garganta above them was getting smaller at a rapid pace until it disappeared entirely. Kiara felt a small wave of relief coming from Makoto and allowed herself to relax a little. Now that the gateway was closed, there would be no futher reinforcements, meaning that the end of this battle would finally be in reach.
The initial small feeling of safety didn't last long though. The first thing that disrupted it was a Hollow scream from ground level that was close to their initial location. Dangerously close. Then another one. And another one. Several Hollows were crying out and from the sound of it, they were coming closer.
Had this many already made it past the twins? Kiara checked the sky to see if there were more raining down, but there weren't. Makoto suddenly got anxious again, jumped several meters up in the air and began pacing around in mid air. He looked around in every direction and his eyes kept getting wider.
"Run", she could hear him whisper in fear. Then he turned towards her and the group of people and said it again, this time louder.
"Run!"
Author's Notes:
Actually there are no notes on this one. I mean yeah, I could go ahead and dig into it, but I'll reveal my thoughts in the next one, seeing as this is a double-feature, which is totally me releasing these things the way I want them to and totally not me putting out a double feature because I feel sorry for the two people who actually read and want to read this story and wait themselves half dead and think this story is dead because I take months to update. (I love you by the way, thanks for giving me that one view more per month that keeps me going).
Also thanks to all of you who keep being patient and don't just throw this out the window because you have to wait insufferably long. My update schedule (scoffs internally) is extremely frustrating, I know.