"The sky!"
Toshiro, Rukia, and Zilla all turned to where Uryu was pointing. So many hollows were gathering in one place that they were turning the sky black.
"What are they doing?" Toshiro asked.
"It's like they're preparing for something." Rukia said.
"There must be hundreds, maybe thousands of them." Zilla added.
Uryu took off.
"Hey!" Toshiro called. "What are you doing?"
Uryu turned his head back to him. "What do you think? I'm going to stop them!"
"Don't be absurd! Against that many it's suicide!"
"You may be afraid!" Uryu yelled. "But this is my battle, my responsibility! I'm going to see it through to the end!" He continued running.
"That idiot." Toshiro breathed, making to run after him. But before he could move a step, Rukia grabbed his arm.
"What is it?" Toshiro demanded. "There isn't time."
"I found out about the Quincies." Rukia said gravely.
Toshiro stopped and lowered his sword. He turned to Rukia.
"Hundreds of years ago," Rukia explained, "many humans with high reiatsus like yourself learned to control their power and used their abilities to fight hollows. They were the Quincies.
"The Quincies saw themselves as the natural allies of the Shinigami, but there was one crucial difference between them. The Zanpakuto of the Shinigami cleanse the souls of hollows and send them to the Soul Society. The Quincies, however, destroyed the souls of the hollows utterly.
"There is a balance of the flow of souls between the world of the living and the Soul Society, and one of the Shinigami's main duties is to maintain that balance. The methods of the Quincies, in destroying so many souls, was throwing that balance out of whack. If left unchecked it would have meant the end of the world."
Toshiro lowered his head.
"So the Shinigami killed them."
"It wasn't their first choice. The Shinigami tried to reason with the Quincies many times, but they refused to stop. Then two hundred years ago, the order came down to exterminate them."
"Exterminate, like vermin."
"It wasn't like that!" Rukia protested.
"Wasn't it?" Toshiro looked towards the place where Uryu was fighting at that very moment.
"Where did you hear this from?"
"From Urahara."
"Him again." Toshiro said with a slight air of skepticism.
Uryu spun around furiously, firing shot after shot as fast as he could. But the army of hollows surrounded him on all sides.
'Damn it.' he thought. 'No matter how many I kill, their numbers don't decrease! But I've got to press on. I've got to do it for you, grandfather.'
Boom
Uryu jumped at the sound of the explosion behind him. A huge hole had opened in the line of hollows, behind which stood Toshiro with his palm extended.
"What was that?" Uryu demanded.
"The highest level hado spell I can cast." Toshiro answered, drawing his sword as he walked closer. "With the full incantation."
'He's picked up kido that fast?' Uryu wondered. He pointed his bow in Toshiro's direction and fired two shots. One hollow that had tried to sneak up on Toshiro from behind was destroyed.
Toshiro ignored the hollows as he approached Uryu.
"I just heard about what happened two hundred years ago."
"The extermination?" Uryu asked. "I don't care about that. When I learned all the facts, I actually thought the Shinigami were justified in doing what they did."
He gave Toshiro his hardest stare. "I hate Shinigami because they caused the death of my grandfather."
Toshiro opened his mouth slightly, but no words came out. Uryu resumed shooting the hollows as he continued.
"He was my teacher. As one of the last of the Quincies, the Shinigami had him under constant surveillance. When those five huge hollows attacked him, they could have saved him, but not one Shinigami came for two hours!"
Uryu was shaking with rage, and his eyes were on the verge of tears.
"My grandfather pleaded with the Shinigami to let us fight with them, to put aside our differences! He wanted to make peace! And they just let him die!"
Toshiro looked at his toes.
"I know how it feels to have someone you care about taken from you. My sister was killed by a hollow." Uryu grimaced at the revelation. "That's why I want to keep on being a Shinigami. I won't rest until I've destroyed that hollow."
Toshiro looked up just enough for Uryu to see how his eyes were full of fire.
"What you've done today, it's exactly what the Quincies did two hundred years ago. You put this entire down in danger for your own reasons just like they put two worlds in danger."
Uryu lowered his bow. 'Is he right?' he wondered. 'Am I no better than those whose refusal to listen to reason was their undoing?'
He looked at Toshiro, who did the last thing Uryu expected; he smiled.
"So, truce until we clean up this mess of yours?"
Uryu smiled back. "Fine."
Toshiro leapt into action, summersaulting with his sword through a batch of hollows as Uryu blasted away hollows from the other direction.
Three hollows jumped on Toshiro, attempting to crush him. He pushed them away with the first hado spell.
Toshiro retreated back to Uryu, who was also hard pressed.
"So much for that idea. There really are too many for both of us to take at once."
"Toshiro!" Uryu warned. "The sky!"
Toshiro looked up. "What in the-"
A crack had appeared in the blue of the sky, a crack that was growing.
"How is that possible?"
"Something big must be coming out!" Uryu yelled.
Even as he spoke, a gigantic white finger poked through the crack, pulling it farther open. Behind the crack was a total blackness.
As the hollows they had ignored while staring at the crack in the sky all charged them at once, Toshiro and Uryu realized their mistake.
"Crap!"
Boom
A series of explosions annihilated the hollows immediately surrounding them, kicking up a large cloud of smoke.
"This is-" Toshiro began, spinning around to see where that attack had come from.
As Toshiro had expected, he saw Ururu holding up her rocket launcher. Behind her were Uruhara, Jinta, and a large man Toshiro had never seen before.
"Hat and Clogs!"
Urahara waved happily at him. "Hi, Toshiro! We're here to help!"
"You-"
"And don't worry about your friends. They're safe, just like I promised."
"Toshiro!" Uryu yelled. "It's coming out!"
Toshiro turned again to the crack in the sky, and his mouth dropped in horror.
The white finger had become two white hands, which tore the crack so wide open that it filled the sky. The hands disappeared, and a face replaced them.
A white mask, seemingly without a body, poked through the crack. It alone was far larger than any hollow Toshiro had ever seen.
Nearby, Rukia and Zilla, who had come to observe, stared in shock.
"No." Rukia whispered. "It can't be."
The mask forced its way past the crack and into Karakura Town, and Toshiro realized why he had not noticed its body before.
This monster wore a billowing cloak so black it blended in perfectly with the world behind the crack.
"Ahhh!" Zilla screamed. "What is that thing? It's as big as the real Godzilla!"
"Menos Grande." Rukia whispered again, unable to raise her voice. "A terrifying beast created when hundreds of hollows merge together. I-I've never even seen a real one before. This-this is beyond any one Shinigami to handle."
'It's happening again.' she thought. 'Just like with the Grand Fisher. He's getting drawn into fights he can't win, fights he's too young to handle.'
"Run, Toshiro!" she screamed.
"Where?" Toshiro asked gravely to himself. He looked at Uryu, who was backing up unconsciously.
"What do we do?"
"I-I don't know." Uryu said. "There's still all of the little ones down here."
"Let us worry about those." Urahara said. "You two just focus on that big one."
Toshiro gulped. "How? What good is a sword against something like that?"
"We'll try attacking from different angles." Uryu said. "See if we can confuse it and keep it too unfocused to attack us back."
"You don't think that'll work either, do you?" Toshiro asked.
"No." Uryu admitted. "Can you think of a better plan?"
"No."
As they moved against the menos, Rukia ran up to Urahara.
"What are you doing?" she screamed. "Are you trying to get Toshiro killed?"
"Hardly." Urahara answered. Without taking his eyes off of the Quincy/Shinigami duo, he held two fingers up in front of Rukia. Her arms locked into place behind her and she fell to her knees.
'This is a bakudo spell!' she realized. 'But he didn't even say the name, let alone the incantation!'
"This is a necessary fight," Urahara said, "for both you and him.
Several blocks away, Chad and Orihime watched from an overpass.
"Is Toshiro really going to fight that thing?" Orihime asked, referring to the menos. Even at the distance from the battle they stood, the monster's size was still terrifying to behold.
"Yes." Chad said. "And Uryu as well."
"What are we supposed to do?"
Chad shook his head. "There is nothing we can do against a monster like that. Not with powers we've only just discovered today."
"So we just watch."
He nodded.
'Watch,' Orihime thought, 'and decide. Is that what Urahara meant? But what are we supposed to decide?'
Toshiro and Uryu were close to the menos now, close enough to see how much they were dwarfed by its foot. The menos gave no sign that it even noticed their presence, which made them feel even more insignificant.
"Are you ready?" Uryu asked.
"No." Toshiro said. "I think I need a bigger sword."
"On my mark, raise your reiatsu to its maximum and go."
"It already is."
"What?" Uryu asked, taken aback.
"Most of the time I keep my reiatsu hidden," Toshiro explained, "but when I'm fighting I don't hold anything back. I never saw the point."
"You must be joking." Uryu said. "You've been fighting for the better part of a day, and your reiatsu has been at its peak the entire time?"
"Yeah."
"That's impossible! If anyone had their powers at their peak for that long they'd have long since burned themselves out! You've got to have more power to still be able to fight at this level!"
'I didn't want to think about it before.' Uryu thought. 'But I realized when he appeared without even being short of breath that his true power must be monstrous.'
"Think! Have you ever felt like there was something more, like there was an even greater power within you?"
Toshiro sighed. "There was one time."
"Rooaaaaaah!" Toshiro screamed as he landed, swinging his sword down in an overhead strike that the Grand Fisher just avoided by moving to the side. A handful of his hairs fell to the ground.
The Grand Fisher looked back as the force of Toshiro's attack smashing into the ground continued to crack the pavement for six meters past the tip of his sword.
"Good!" Uryu said. "What was different about that time?"
"I was angry."
"You took her…"
"Can you focus on that anger?"
Toshiro nodded. "I think so." He closed his eyes and bowed his head to the ground.
Toshiro pictured the g\Grand Fisher's face in his minds
"You must have had a woman with you at the time. Even if I have targets with high reiatsus, females are just so tasty."
As Uryu watched, a wind began to blow around them.
'The air feels cold all of a sudden.'
Toshiro growled.
"Why are you acting so butt hurt all of a sudden? If she was anyone of any importance, I'd remember eating her."
The air around Toshiro seemed to burst, and Uryu shielded his face with his arms.
"That's it!" he yelled.
When he lowered his arms, Uryu could only gape.
Toshiro was surrounded by glowing white aura.
'This reiatsu…How could he have this much in reserve?'
By Rukia, Urahara put his hands together.
"He's close, now."
The menos looked down at Toshiro and Uryu: the sudden increase in the reiatsu near it having caught its attention. A red glow began to surround its mouth.
"Um, Toshiro," Uryu said nervously, "you might want to open your eyes now."
"That monster." Rukia said. "It's really going to fire a cero here?
"Get out of there!" she creamed with all her might. "If that hits you there won't be an atom left!"
The menos opened its mouth, and a red beam of energy shot forth. Uryu jumped out of the way, but Toshiro just stood his ground.
"You idiot!" Uryu screamed. "Move!"
With a roar, Toshiro raised his sword to block the beam. The impact of the cero on the blade drove Toshiro to one knee, but the metal held under the onslaught.
Uryu watched in awe as Toshiro struggled against the cero.
'He still has his eyes closed! Does he even know what he's doing?'
Uryu had no way of knowing the voices that were going through Toshiro's mind, those of his late sister and of the Grand Fisher. But a third voice appeared as well, unbidden.
Hear Me
Toshiro opened his eyes, feeling the pressure against his sword suddenly decrease. He screamed as he swung with all his strength, and the cero was deflected back at the menos.
The beam struck the gigantic hollow just above the hole in its chest, knocking it back. As the menos fell, it grabbed the edges of the crack in the sky to right itself.
"Great." Uryu muttered, readying his bow. But the menos did not come through the crack again.
It pulled the crack closed.
Toshiro leaned forward, completely out of breathe.
"Did-did my sword get longer for a second?"
Urahara closed his eyes. "He almost had it."
"Toshiro..." Rukia said in shock.
"It really left." Uryu said. He looked at Toshiro. "He really did it."
Toshiro looked at Uryu and smiled. He dropped his sword and collapsed.
"Toshiro!" Uryu ran over to him.
'He's just exhausted.' he thought with relief. 'And after that he has a right to be.'
"You know something, Toshiro? You're one scary kid."
In a dark, barren world, a terrible sound resounded for miles, frightening away all creatures.
It was the sound of a wounded Menos Grande screaming.
The monster writhed and twitched as it continued to scream. It fell forward, causing a cloud of dust large enough to be considered a sandstorm to arise.
The dust circled the beast as if it was the center of a tornado, and when it cleared, there was no longer a black figure on the ground.
Now the figure was bright, and instead of tall, it was long.
"Shini…gami…" it breathed.
"Now that was an eventful day!" Urahara said happily as his group walked back to their store.
"We could have taken on the menos." Jinta said dejectedly.
"Yes." Tessai said. "But that was not the point. I think I see what the manager sees in that boy now."
They crossed the fence between the sidewalk and the store, and Urahara stopped.
"What is it?" Jinta asked. Urahara was staring at a spot on the ground unusually seriously.
There was something there, something staring at them all.
"What?" Jinta asked again. "It's just a cat. Or do you think black cats are cursed or something?"
"Jinta." Tessai warned.
Urahara threw his hands up.
"Yoruichi!" he squeled.
The former Menos Grande slithered through the sand.
'I'll get that Shinigami.' it thought. 'He will regret what he did to-to'
'What is my name? I can't remember. Better think of one.'
The hollow thought long and hard before deciding on a name.
"Tier…Harribel."