Chapter 4: To be taught
In the world of the living two Death Gods stood on the side of a skyscraper looking straight ahead at the stars above the world. It was an awkward place to be in, but they had been assured that the runner hollow would show up here. So they had come all the way out here and they had stood in the exact right place, patiently waiting for the precisely calculated moment when the hollow was going to show up. That moment had passed by almost three hours ago.
"It's not coming is it?" The first Death God, a bald man with a rather strange mark above his eyebrow asked.
"I don't think so." The other answered; he was a rather effeminate looking man with straight black hair and dark eyeliner.
"Better call head quarters then." The first one concluded in a rather disappointed voice, as if he looked forward to a chance to risk his life against a demon. He pulled out a simple phone from his uniform and stared at it for a few moments. "How does this damn thing work again?"
"You flip it open and speak in to the little holes on the bottom."
"And then it sends a message to Soul Society?"
"No the people in Soul Society hear you through it."
"That's rather amazing." He opened the phone, and said hello.
"You have to hold it the other way around." His partner corrected him. He grunted and switched it up.
"Hey! Are guys listening?"
"Ah, Ikkaku," A voice responded from the phone, "Its about time you checked in, we were starting to think that you both had died. I presume that you have dealt with this issue."
"It never showed up." Ikkaku responded.
"What?"
"We've been out here for three and a half hours and it never showed up."
"Ah, hold on." The voice said, when it spoke again it was much softer, "He says the hollow never showed up. What does that mean?"
"What! How the hell could have not showed up?" A very soft voice said, as if in the back ground.
"Boss wants to know how it couldn't have showed up?" The first voice translated.
"I don't know, we were here all afternoon and we never saw it."
"He says that they never saw it."
"Those idiots! They must be standing on the wrong damn building."
"Which building are you standing on?"
"We're not standing on a building we're standing on the side of a building."
"Yeah which one?"
"The really tall one."
"Well, that's not really descriptive, hold on I'll run a scan to make sure you're in the right place."
"I know I'm in the right place. The question is 'where is that damn hollow you promised me?'"
"It should be there. Well not there, it would've left by now, but it should've been there when we said it would."
"Well it wasn't."
"Boss thinks you're standing on the wrong building. Hold, on the scans complete. Huh."
"Is that a good 'huh' or a bad 'huh'?"
"Boss?" The voice asked to the world around it, and not to Ikkaku once again.
"Yeah what is it?"
"There in the right place boss."
"Impossible."
"Yeah well they are."
"And they haven't fought the hollow? What are they blind. It should've come through there, they must have missed it."
"No boss, I also ran a scan of the surrounding area, and there's no sign of the runner's spiritual energy."
"What's going on over here?" A new, high pitched, nasally sort of voice asked that, Ikkaku believed, belonged to the head of the science division.
"Those Idiots from the eleventh squad missed the hollow." The first quiet voice explained.
"No, the hollow they were supposed to hunt didn't show up."
"You mean the runner that the Captain Commander is so worried about? Should it have appeared by now?"
"Yes my calculations confirmed that the hollow should've broken through the void almost three hours ago in that spot."
"Well obviously you were wrong boss." The first voice from the phone tried to point out with wicked glee.
"Unlikely, I double checked those calculations myself." The science head explained. "More than likely, the hollow has simply been tied up in Hueco Mundo. Have those peons hold their positions. The creature should make its way there sooner or later. Run a full sweep of all sectors to make sure it hasn't broken the pattern all together."
"He wants you to hold position and wait for the hollow to attack." The phone's voice explained.
"Wait just a second here, you expect us to just wait here for the hollow? It's been three hours already? How long do we have to stay here?"
"Till it gets there?"
"Put your boss on the line." Ikkaku demanded.
"He wants to talk to you." The voice said to those behind him.
"I don't have time for that meat head. Just hang up and run down to the gates and seal them off to him."
"They won't like that. They'll want a good explanation."
"Grunts don't need explanations, they need orders. Get to it."
"Right." The voice concluded and hung up.
"What did they say?" The second Death God asked Ikkaku.
"They want us to wait here for it."
"Will we?"
"Well…. That poor guy who got so cut up by that damn thing promised me that it would be one hell of a fight."
"You're not honestly considering this?"
"Why not? Do you have somewhere to be?"
"My hair isn't going to hold in these conditions."
"You can go home if you want. I think I'm going to wait."
"Fine, I'll stay as well."
"This hollow better be something else."
Skip
The Grand Fisher lunged forward at his foe swinging his massive sword in a wide arc at the hollow it had been hunting. That hollow easily leapt to the side avoiding it; then it stared at the blade for the sometime as if unsure of what to make of it. It looked and smelled like a Death God's Soul Slayer, but the hollow wasn't sure. It felt different, it felt wrong somehow, like it was lacking something.
"You didn't see this coming did you, you little punk." The Grand Fisher smirked as he pulled his mask apart and revealed his face behind it. "That's right, I am more than any lowly hollow such as yourself or anything you have ever met! I am an Arrancar! A new breed, no the next evolution of all hollows! You are like a roach compared to me….
This was wrong, the hollow thought to itself. A hollow should never willingly reveal its face. A hollow's face was its very soul, which was weak and fragile. A hollow needed its instincts to protect itself, no sword could ever replace them. To expose itself like that was insane; and stupid.
The Grand Fisher saw its foe narrow its eyes and rebalance its stance. His power didn't intimidate it. He sighed. Such a foolish enemy, when will it realize that it is outmatched? He swung his blade with a wide slash at his enemy's chest. The hollow jumped over the sword, hardened then energy around its feet and charged the Fisher, who quickly brought his sword back up to block the claws driving toward him. The hollow grabbed hold of the blade with his bare hands, pulled forward, flipped over the sword and kicked the Fisher in the face. Blood poured from the Fisher's nose as two bones cracked in his face, causing him to fall back in pain.
The hollow jumped up above him, faint traces of blood fell from his hands where he had grabbed the edge of the sword. He drew his claws out and began to descend on his fallen foe. Desperate to gain some breathing room, the Fisher lashed out wildly at the enemy before him, his blow lacked power and the hollow brushed its aside and landed on his chest, claws first. More pain and blood escaped from the Fisher's chest as the hollow lacerated him relentlessly. He swung with his free arm, catching the hollow in the face to knock him off and back. His greater strength drove his foe away but only for a moment.
The Fisher rolled back over his head trying to regain his footing, no sooner was he up than the hollow leapt at him fangs bared. The hollow saw that his enemy's grip on his sword was weak and struck quickly. He planted one hand into the sand pivoting around it; hit the Fisher's sword hand and knocked the sword free. The Fisher was startled and hesitated. The hollow saw the opening and attacked again, this time at the legs, driving his claws deep into the Fisher's thigh. He then threw his arms up and set the Fisher back on his back, the hollow then leapt into the air and came down on top of foe, going for the neck with his fangs.
The Fisher grabbed the hollow's side and tried to push him away, but the hollow dug its claws into his chest and held its place. For what seemed like an hour the two strove against each other, the Fisher trying to tear his enemy away or switch his hand positioning and strangle him, while the hollow tried to pull itself closer to his neck.
"What the hell are you all waiting for!" The Fisher screamed into the dark air around him, "Kill him already!"
No one answered him. Not a single voice sounded, or a single shadow moved in the forest around him. The Grand Fisher cursed himself for letting this situation progress this far.
"ORRRRARRRR!" A deep low voice roared in the distance. It wasn't a forceful roar, or a dangerous sounding roar. It was a roar that casually announced that a hunt had begun.
"Damn it!" The Grand Fisher cursed, "Those are the Menos Grande! They have realized what we're doing and are coming here to stop it. If you don't let go of me we are both going to die!"
"AHHHHHRAAAAARRRRR!" The hollow cried in response, digging its claws in deeper and pulling itself forward.
"You idiot! Do you want to die?" The Fisher reasoned as he redoubled his own efforts to push his enemy away.
"I dare say he wants to kill you." A new voice concluded from above them, and as it did it casually unleashed the power it had been holding back to hide its presence. The power was heavy. Not so heavy that it was difficult to breathe, but more than enough to make both warriors realize they were out classed. Even the hollow snapped its head up to look at the intruder.
He had a face. That was the first problem. The second was the look in the eyes on that face. They were filled with hunger like any hollow's eyes should be, but it was a strange kind of hunger. It was a focused hunger, more of a lust than anything else. The eyes were focused on them, but not any one of them as it would if the watcher were lusting after them, but on what they were doing. Those eyes were lusting for battle, for destruction. The third problem was the body around that face. It made no sense. The Fisher at least looked like a hollow who's mask had been broken, but this looked like something completely different.
He was covered in a purplish grey armor that wrapped around his body highlighting the taunt muscles that held him together. He didn't have feet, he had paws. He arms were human and were the only things that weren't armored. He had long blue hair that framed his head like a lion mane, with a crown and cat ears set on his brow. His wicked smile was almost hidden buy a white jawbone, with large pointed teeth, set on top of them. He had a sword at his side, but it seemed damaged as if it had been abused and ill kept.
The fourth thing wrong with him was the feel of his power. It felt similar to the Fisher's spiritual energy, yet it was somehow better, more complete one might say. It was still missing something though, this was clearly an older more developed power. Even in the hollow, it provoked a very basic terror and fear for its existence.
"You're Grimmjow Jaggerjaquese." The Fisher managed all but dumbfounded, then he heard the roar of the Menos closing in on him and remembered his present predicament. "Don't just stand there help me! Get this damn pest off of me before he kills me!"
"Hey there kid." Grimmjow said with a broad smile to the hollow ignoring the Fisher's pleas. "You are one serious kind of bastard aren't you?"
The hollow glared and growled in response. It lifted one claw out of the fisher and turned ready to face this new force, to the death if needed. Somehow, Girmmjow's broad smile got even larger when he saw this.
"That is some powerful Reiatsu you're putting out." Grimmjow continued, "It's so powerful that your mask is cracking and might break soon if you're not careful. A hollow's mask will only break if it meets an enemy it knew in life. So that means that in life you met that Grand Fisher and lived to remember it. Right?"
The hollow froze, how did he know that? For just a moment its grip weakened, if the Fisher had been paying attention he could've escaped. But he wasn't he was dumbfounded by what he was hearing.
"That means you must've have been one powerful little bugger in life. Now here's what interesting. When a powerful soul dies all of Soul Society and all of Hueco Mundo knows it and there is usually one hell of a battle over that soul's fate. In fact, I think I remember hearing about a Menos and a swarm of hollow being drawn over to some no name little town not to recently, so that is all quite possible. But, if your soul was caught up in that battle that means one of two things should've happened to it. Either you got rescued by a Death God and sent to Soul Society, or you got eaten by a hollow and became part of it.
"But you aren't part of another hollow; if you were your mask wouldn't break at the sight of the Grand Fisher, so you must be dominant over that body. That means one of two things. One: a hollow ate you and then you rebelled against its rule and consumed its soul from the inside out. Two: you managed to not only live through that massive battle over your soul, but fought past both sides so that you quietly devolve into a hollow on your own. Judging by how sharp your fighting instincts are and how quickly you've reacted to me I'm guessing that the latter happened. Am I right?" Grimmjow finished with a grin so wide it looked like the moon was rising over them.
"So what are waiting for? Kill him already." He added, as the hollow's eyes narrowed and it swiftly turned back and bit down into the Fisher's side before it had time to react.
"Why?..." The Fisher asked as the hollow began to devour him.
"What the hell kind of question is that?" Grimmjow asked all but laughing as he did, "He's stronger than you, with a greater chance to grow, you should be grateful for a chance to become part of something like him."
The Fisher's eyes rolled back, and he went silent. That silence died quickly as a Menos roared one last time as they came within sight of the hollow standing over his new prey.
"Ah," Grimmjow noted as he saw them, "Gillian, you know they don't take kindly to hollows eating each other around here. I would move if I were you."
No sooner did he finish than an eerie red light began to gather around one of the Gillian. An instant later the world turned red as a cero poured out of the desert turning the sand into glass. The hollow had leapt far up into the air to avoid it, still dragging the Grand Fisher's corpse in tow. Grimmjow appeared out of nowhere right beside him.
"Nice moves," He commented, "But you will need to do better than that to avoid the next one. Or five."
Several Gillian had now gathered and were charging their ceros easily tracking their target even at this distance. They fired again, the ceros intersected at were the hollow had been, and then they exploded sending the hollow flying away and lighting the Fisher's corpse on fire.
"Here, move like this!" Grimmjow ordered as he slipped through the air nimbly dancing around the incoming ceros. The hollow had no choice but copy him. He came pretty close to death once or twice but managed to stay alive.
"Ahhahahahaha!" Grimmjow laughed as he watched the hollow awkwardly dance about, "Keep it up. Now try this one."
In a moment Grimmjow vanished, in a slight thump of noise. He reappeared a moment later. "What are you waiting for? How many times to have to demonstrate it? Listen and learn already." He added, appearing and vanishing between each sentence. The hollow did watch, and listen. At first a voice within suggested that the sound was from a sonic boom as Grimmjow broke the sound barrier. The instincts all but laughed at a ridiculous idea like that. But then it saw the answer. The sound wasn't form the speed it was the source of the speed.
The hollow gathered a bit of spiritual energy around his skin, compressed it down into a point and released it all in a quick burst. Then he rode on the waves of power rippling out from the epicenter and vanished in a moment. He reappeared a few hundred yards away. Grimmjow was waiting for his with his wicked grin.
"What are you still carrying that corpse around for? Crush his soul and eat him before more of his power leaks out." The hollow set its jaws to work but not before Grimmjow slugged him in the gut and knocked his prize out of him. "Don't use your body, what a damn waste of time. Use your spirit. You might not get to taste his blood but it will go a damn sight faster."
The hollow noted that Grimmjow was standing between him and his meal, so he didn't have much of a choice. Grimmjow didn't seem to want to kill him, and if he changed his mind there wasn't much the hollow could do to stop him. So it was best to do what he said. The hollow focused on its desired meal and tried to think of a way to break it. Reluctantly he turned to its memory for idea. He then remembered how Grimmjows power had fallen on him when he first appeared, perhaps he could do the same.
The hollow calmed itself, breath out, and then tensed up focusing on the Fisher's corpse, surging his power out and trying to beat it down. Within seconds the Fisher dissolved into thin black wisps of smoke the circled around the ground. The hollow inhaled and pulled the smoke into him. As he did his body swelled in size, his thin figured bulked up with well defined muscles as his shoulders broadened considerably. Grimmjow dropped his smile to a smirk but somehow he seemed much more eager and pleased.
"You're a fast learner, I'll give you that. Now let's see how you fight!" He screamed and drove a kick into the hollow's side. It hurt like hell. It sent him flying far into the air, and back into the sights of the Gillian who hadn't forgotten him yet. Ceros exploded and Grimmjow was now above him.
The hollow flashed below with his new sonido. When the worst of the ceros had passed he surged through their tail back at Grimmjow and clawed at his face. His claws almost broke when they hit him, and Grimmjow swiftly returned the blow to his face.
"What the hell kind of attack was that?" Grimmjow demanded to know, disappointed that his face hadn't been ripped off. "What happened to the fury that you lashed out at the Fisher with? Just because you don't have a history with me doesn't give you an excused to lessen up."
Grimmjow materialized in front of the hollow with an opened hand. For a moment terrible noise erupted through the world around them. It sounded like a scream of young wife watching her children burn. It was followed by an unspeakable silence as red light poured into Grimmjow's hand and solidified into a ball. Grimmjow spoke filling the void with the erratic sound of his over excited voice.
"This is hell! You have to remember that always. You are here because of what you suffered in life, and you have to remember every last moment of it. All that you ever suffered through, all the suffering you ever caused someone else, all the suffering the souls that you are digesting even now. Take it along with all the hatred you have ever felt, all the hatred you have ever inspired, all the fury that your instinct could ever muster and bring it together. Once you have, you have to hold it. Build it up till it's about to burst, till it goes horse from screaming at you. Then you release it.
"Remember how the world abandoned you to be here. Remember how no one came to save you. Remember how everything you had was stolen from you. Remember every indignity the world has ever made you suffer. Then you can return the favor. You have power now, power born from what the world made you suffer, but you will show it. You will shock it. You will burn it. Come at me and reduce this world to nothing. Reduce the whole world to zero!"
His words resonated with the hollow's soul, conjuring up images of his family, of his friends, of everything he had lost. Then he remembered the one thing he was about to lose. He remembered the black haired girl. More importantly, he remembered that tall proud Death God who had stolen her. Who even now was waiting for a chance to execute her. He could barely hold the power back.
Grimmjow fired his cero as he saw the hollow began to glow with a strange energy. Around him was a shining white layer, like an armor protecting him, but beyond that black power seemed to rise above him like fire of darkness. The hollow couldn't concentrate that power, but he didn't need to. The hollow smashed the cero aside and lunged at Grimmjow. This time Grimmjow dodged the blow allowing it to slam into the side of a stone tree that all but disintegrated beneath the blow.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Grimmjow laughed while screaming at the sight of the power his new friend could wield. "This is awesome. I don't know what you have suffered but I love its effect. You learn so quickly! You wield such power! It's amazing! It's wondrous! But it's still not enough! You could be one of the most powerful hollows to ever walk this desert! But you will need more, and I will give you more! You need to suffer more, so I will torture you! You need to hate more, so I will enrage you! You need more souls to concentrate your power, so I will feed you! From now on, you're mine to screw and teach! When I'm done this world will rue the day you met up with someone like me. And then we will have such have awesome fight together."
End