Three dozen. Three dozen, fifty-year-old wind demon apes circled around Ichi Guo as the boy stood with Zangetsu at the ready. The bright green creatures actually looked more like monkeys since they had tails, but that didn't seem to matter to whoever had named them. They were fast and moved around as a group.
Even so, the seven-year-old Ichi Guo was calm as he waited for them to make the first move. They didn't attack one at a time, but in groups. The first wave of eight of the screaming chimps threw themselves towards the young boy, arms waving about as spit flew from their open mouths.
Giving a short intake of breath, Ichi Guo spun about, the flat of his sword knocking four of them aside in a single swing before he did a half step back and used an elbow to take out a fifth then dodging out of the way of the rest as he turned to a ready position.
More and more of the monkeys came in and he was made to dance about as his sword spun through the air, knocking out more and more of the creatures in a violent storm of blows. It took nearly three minutes, but by the end, he had knocked out more than half of the apes, and the rest wised up and ran.
"Dammit" Ichi Guo mumbled, letting his essence spirit disappear back into its seal.
In the seven months since he had regained his weapon of choice, he had re-mastered it, learning to compensate for the new center of balance that came from the fact that the sword was now way too large for him. He had also practiced with the Hollow Mask, finding that he had complete control over it, even if only one quarter of the mask appeared. But even so, his power had not increased even a little since their awakening.
He knew what he had to do in order to advance. He had to actually kill an essence monster and absorb one of the rings that appeared when the monsters died into one of his essences. But he was hesitating. The entire thing stank of Hollow like actions, killing and consuming a soul. He couldn't convince himself that it was alright. Maybe if the monsters were actually as monstrous as they appeared, rather than just being wild animals. Even these monkeys were only defending their territory from him. They didn't kill for the sake of killing.
So, at the moment, all he could do was train his endurance and hope for the best.
It was while training like this that he discovered that even though he could control either Zangetsu or the Hollow Mask just fine for up to thirty minutes at a time, he couldn't maintain them both. Calling on both spirit essences provided him with a massive power boost, slightly more than doubling his strength output, but he could only use it for about five seconds before becoming completely exhausted of all his spirit energy.
He sighed and started to return towards the village. Five seconds. Would that be enough?
It was raining, the night everything happened.
Rukia was sitting at the table with her 'family', her father and mother not really doing any talking. She hated eating with them. Her mother wasn't as good at cooking as her Ichi-nii and her father always stank of alcohol. Not to mention that they were boring people. While her brother could talk for hours about the nature of spirit power, or tell her fantastic stories, her parents hardly ever had the going arounds of the village to talk about and since the village was so small, everyone knew what happened every day with almost everyone. Only Rukia and her brother ever snuck out of the village to play in the forest. She wished she was over at the village elder's place with her brother instead of with her parents.
A smaller drip could be heard, just barely audible underneath the hammering of the rain on the roof. "The leak. I thought you said you were going to deal with it." Lang Du said to her husband. She was stupid to even mention it, and Lang Lee turned on her in an instant.
"I've been busy! Why didn't you do it!? It's not like you ever lift a damn finger around here!" The man shouted, smashing his hand against the table so that the dinnerware shook slightly. "Oh I think I know why, you were out eyeing those essence monster hunters that came in yesterday morning! You thought I wouldn't notice that you slipped off to the inn, you damn whore!"
Whore. It was a word that was often used by people to describe Lang Du, though Rukia didn't exactly know what it meant. She had asked her brother about it, but he had told her that it had nothing to do with them and that she shouldn't worry about it, changing the subject or distracting her whenever the topic was brought up.
"I... I wasn't." Lang Du said, trying to shrink away from her husband. Not having had enough, his hand came around and struck her across the face, knocking her off her chair and to the ground.
"Bull shit! Everyone knows you're a fucking whore, they just need to look at that freak to figure that out!" Lang Lee shouted at her while she begged for him to stop. He wouldn't.
It was the nature of this world, those who had power could do whatever they pleased. Lang Du committed the ultimate sin, she was weak, and for that she would be punished.
But it wasn't long before the man's eyes spotted his daughter watching the scene. "Don't look at me like that." He growled angrily. "You've been spending time with that freak again; your eyes look just like that brats."
Rukia knew that her father meant her brother when he said 'that freak', though the comment about her eyes couldn't be right. Her brother's eyes were a deep gold while hers were silver. It was probably just more of his stupidity talking. With a grunt, he threw a bottle at her which she simply moved calmly out of the way of.
"All of you! You're all against me! What did I do to deserve being mocked by all of you!?" He shouted, getting up out of his chair, knocking it over in the process. He was stumbling a bit, Rukia was sure that if he tried anything towards her, she could simply avoid it. "All I wanted in life was a beautiful wife and a child of my own. Yet the gods just gave me this crap and called it a day. My wife is a whore and my child loves her bastard half-brother more than her own father." Another word that Rukia had asked her brother about - bastard. It meant that the child didn't have a father. Though the five year old figured that was a good thing. Not having someone like this man that they had to go back to day after day. "Well fuck it, let the gods strike me down right now! Just get it over with!"
A scream echoed through the air, penetrating the rain and confusing the moment. It was only one word, but it made the world stand still. "Monster!"
The world seemed to explode with sounds after that, screams underneath the heavy sound of wood snapping like twigs. "Of course some damned monster would come out in a night like this." Lang Lee grumbled as he went towards the door. His essence spirit started to appear around his hands as he opened the door and stepped out into the night, but after that he froze in the doorway.
Outside, the inn had been smashed to pieces and a cooking fire had quickly spread across the entire wreckage. The smoke and light from the fire outlined a massive form. It was a ghost wolf, but it was nothing like the small ghost wolves that Rukia had practiced against around the outer edges of the woods. It was twice the size of the two room house her family lived in, its curved tusk like teeth were black and had split into a set of three on each side. As it dipped its head into the wreckage of the inn and lifted out a screaming man by his leg, Rukia clamped her eyes closed in order to stop herself from seeing what happened next. But the sound of his screams dying away still made her shiver.
Now that she wasn't distracted by her father, she wondered how she had not sensed the creature earlier. Its presence dwarfed everything she had ever felt before. A dark purple spirit ribbon formed in the air as she focused on the things terrifying essence.
It was a thousand year old essence monster.
It was her mother's shriek that made her open her eyes again. Her father was gone, more than likely fleeing the village. In his rush to save his own life, he must have forgotten about his wife and daughter, either that, or he didn't want to save them.
Staying would be suicide; Rukia knew she couldn't fight against a monster of that size. Whenever they were in the forest, she and Ichi Guo had always used their sixth sense to avoid running into such beasts all together. "Mom, we have to get out of here." Rukia said, grabbing her mother's arm and trying to pull her towards the doorway. The woman was unresponsive and actively fought against her daughter's attempts to drag her away. With her spirit energy, she was overpowering her mother, but the woman was slowing her down. "Mom, please."
She had pulled her all the way out of the house and the rain was falling down hard onto her shoulders. The water made her fingers wet and her mother pulled her hand out of her daughter's. Rukia stumbled away, falling into the mud as her mother backed back into the house, slamming the door shut. It was only a few moments later that the essence monster descended on the small house, crushing it into a pile of splinters.
Rukia could only stare as the place she always hated so much was destroyed right in front of her, taking her mother along with it. The tears didn't come. She only felt numb. Her mind couldn't understand it. But as the monster pulled an arm out of the ruins of the girl's life and turned its eyes toward her, she could only feel one thing; the ultimate sin, weakness. The shadowy form of the monster moved, preparing to lunge at her.
The air rushed through her ears as the beast pounced for her. But before it could reach her, she found that she had been moved a good thirty meters away. "I've got you, Rukia." Ichi Guo said, his arms holding his little sister up bridal style.
"Ichi-nii" She said, her voice unsteady with shock. She threw her arms around his neck and buried her head in his shoulder. She was holding on for dear life.
Ichi Guo didn't have time to check on his sister's well-being, the beast that had already torn up a large part of the village was turning his way, its eyes locked onto him. He had to move quickly. He Shunpoed again and again, moving quickly through the dark night, but while carrying his little sister, his moves weren't nearly fast enough to escape.
Ghost wolves were speed focused monster, and a thousand year old one was frankly insane. The difference in speed was like the difference in speed between Ichigo when he was first starting to learn Shunpo and Yuroichi, the Goddess of Flash. The only advantage Ichi Guo had was that Shunpo could change directions in nearly the blink of an eye, while the wolf had to deal with heavy momentum and ground slick from rain fall.
The monster was no long trying to just wreak havoc on the village, it was choosing to target the two siblings in particular, its anger rising with each failed attempt to land a hit.
Shunpoing in front of one of the village look-out towers, Ichi Guo stood still, waiting for the monster to make its next lunge for them. Then right after its legs kicked off the ground, he shunpoed out of the way, leaving the ghost wolf to smash into the guard tower, temporarily dazing it.
Using the time he had just bought he took his sister to the other side of the village. "Rukia, I need you to be a good girl and wait for me here." He said and he unwrapped his sister's arms and lowered her to the ground.
"Where are you going?" Rukia asked him, though she might as well not have bothered, she saw the way he was looking at the ghost wolf.
"No one gets away with attacking my little sister." He said holding out his right hand as the massive blade of Zangetsu started to appear. "One thousand years. Time to see how strong you really are."