Disclaimer: The ideas and concepts used in BLEACH belong to Tite Kubo, as well as any regular characters. Most of the characters in this story belong to me. Thank you.
Standing with his pigtailed hair blowing in the gusts of wind was mighty Hoji Araijin! His sinewy arms crossed across his manly chest and feet sternly planted shoulder width apart, he resonated with a heated, warrior's vibe which sent the weaker specimen of the room spinning. His spiritual pressure had a crazed strength added to it by the sheer audacious presence that he emitted from his dramatic and theatrical entry. The cold air steamed off his exposed skin and made him ethereal, more so than was normal, and gave him a sinister appearance for both the Hollows and shinigami who saw him.
"So this is where the party's at!" Hoji shouted, announcing his presences even louder than his natural offensive pressure did. "Tch! I'm upset!" He started marching forward, swinging his arms as he strode, looking around at the carnal scene. "You guys started without us, didn't you? Ah, I can't get mad about that. We took our sweet, damn time getting here, I'll admit that, but really! You couldn't wait just a few minutes before we showed up to start? I thought you guys had manners. Etiquette. I didn't think it would be possible to walk in on a party already half-over!"
"Don't be such a pessimist" Suichi said, walking out calmly from the hissing cold steam from where the humid night air hit the chilling, dry ice. "I think this party is just half started."
"Tch" Hoji scoffed, emitting an animal glare in his direction. Suichi had a tough grin on his face to rival Hoji's own arrogant charisma, but he wasn't strutting without purpose. He was analyzing and studying the enemies and their positions. One Hollow with huge arms, obviously one with incredible fighting power. One that was lithe and human-formed and had more power within than it was demonstrating. Then, of course, there was the tall one with wings. Suichi could tell the danger that it emitted without having to look. He could feel its hard glaring eyes through Hoji's field of wind-whipping pressure.
"Well..." Vicente began, "this is an unprecedented turn of events, isn't it?"
"Could it be" Moon began with a haughty whisper "your all-seeing eyes couldn't see this happening?"
"I knew something like this would happen" Vicente said. He shoved his hands into the folds of his lower robes and slouched forward. "I didn't quite know when, but this was an obvious outcome." Garuda turned his attention away from the door and looked down at Vicente.
"How long did you know?" he asked. Hoji turned his head and Suichi flinched at the booming sound of the Hollow's deep voice. Despite the demand for knowledge from the wide-winged creature Vicente was steadfast in revealing nothing.
"You little bitch!" Moon rasped. Hoji dashed across the room and drove a shoulder-powered tackle into Moon's torso, reeling the Hollow back off its feet while he retreated before a single blow could be thrown against him. He flipped and hopped across the room and drew his sword while still upside-down mid-motion, holding it flat and horizontal in front of his face while he leaned far down and forward. Suichi sighed at the brashness of his act and drew his sword out defensively, reverse grip in his right hand, striking a pose against Vicente. The Hollow lazily cracked its neck with a swift jerk from side to side and clacked the rows of its skeleton teeth together.
"You're a pretty concise fighter" Vicente said.
"I'm an assassin" Suichi explained, spinning his blade with the flick of his wrist. "It's not my job to drag things out, but rather make things drag." Vicente tilted his head. Even Hoji gave an animal grunt of curiosity and looked over at him. Suichi's face fell flat. "Things as in...bodies. Hmmm...Well, I guess I know what kind of humor not to use."
"You're going to fall" Vicente said. He dashed forward and jabbed his arm at Suichi who dropped straight back and rolled onto his back when he hit the floor. Vicente stomped where Suichi's gut was and contacted the panels of wood under him. Suichi had already rolled to the side, recovered, and was coming in with his sword in his left hand for a quick series of slashes and stabs. Vicente read every move and dodged the attack effortlessly until the swings became longer and looser and much less predictable. He backed off with a leap and saw a chain coiling in Suichi's hand, extending from the tight metal spiral around his forearm.
"You can incant without speaking?" Vicente said. "Is that even possible?"
"It is for me" Suichi said, spinning his chain around in a looping symbol before drawing it all back to the spike on his finger. "What good is an assassin who has to announce his attacks?"
"Good point" Vicente said. They stood off while the floor shook rhythmically. Hoji and Moon had started their fight as well. Hoji hopped around on all fours, loosely straddling the ground on the tips of his fingers and the toes of his feet. His sword was in his mouth, and with each powerful air-blasting swing Moon threw the fight drew closer and closer to the hole in the wall. Hoji smiled with a lowing growl as he led the Hollow closer and closer to his spontaneously-articulated trap.
"Feel free to step in anytime" Hoji roared I Garuda's direction. "Don't think I can't fight more than one of you at once!" Garuda growled and stabbed through the kido barrier around the secure wing door. The glowing glass-colored energy burst apart and shrapnel of slicing energy sank uselessly into the steel feathers of Garuda's wing. He swept his wing away and disposed of all the glass shards, bursting them into nothing with the tension of his feathers, and glared at the door to move.
"Hey!" Katana called. Garuda turned around and received a steel blade to his top layer of fanged teeth, a failed mask-splitting cut by the wild warrior. "Are you stupid, or did you forget? Those guys aren't the only two shinigami here!!!" Katana's body started to fall through the air but not before he began a mad flurry of slices, stabs, cuts and hacks against Garuda's steel-hard skull. The winged Hollow brought up one of its long, skinny legs and kicked Katana across the room, not expecting him to recover, let along simply land and rush back in for more.
"...useless" Garuda growled. He extended his wing and gave a strong flap, blasting the air in front of him, blowing Katana away once more.
"You call that an attack!?" Hoji roared. "Tch! You're nowhere near my level!" Hoji ducked under one of Moon's straight punches and stabbed his sword straight through its slender torso. With the Hollow reeling in shock and pain he planted his feet near the wound and kicked away, grabbing his sword and incanting while flipping slowly in the air. "Rip and Tear, Torakaze!!!" He threw his arms out while the spiritual wing roared around them and landed in a perfect pose. His arms straight, his head high, his legs together and firmly planted. His fists blew open with bladed, golden claws, whipping sharp wind around the shining, gilded gauntlets.
"Both of them can release?" Vicente observed. "I think it's safe to say that we're dealing with some markedly dangerous shinigami this time around. I can't predict a good way out of this besides retreat."
"They're just two punks!" Moon harshly growled.
"....No" Vicente said. "There's another around here...."
In the dark, quiet forest surrounding the foothills of the Unohana manor a heavy-footed beast began stalking through the shadows of the night. A long mane of fur around its face, pale white and full of hunger. A huge maw and distended jaw, weak from hunger, marked its vicious intent as it lowed and stomped through the woods. It crept up to the border of the woods, where the clearing had been made to situate the house of orphans in the great estate, and there it stood and glared through two of its four eyes, glowing and white. In a of the lowest floor the glaring gaze shone through and stirred awake a light sleeper. A young boy stood up from his mattress on the soft tatami floor and walked tiredly over to the window to see if the moon was shining too brightly or if the sun was rising already. Outside that window he saw the sight that scared him wide awake.
His mouth dropped open and a bead of snot escaped from his nose. He was quick to snort it back up and began a stuttering shake of noise as he backed away from the window and tripped over the feet of a long-legged young girl.
"Ow!" she exclaimed, then turned over and groaned sleepily. "What happened?" She looked up, her wide eyes over her youthfully freckle-spotted nose catching the young boy pointing and shivering at the window. She whipped off her covers and stood up in her full, near adult height, looking down at the boy with tired and angry eyes. "What's wrong with you? Why did you trip over me?"
"M-m-mo-mo-momm...." he began in a wild stutter. She raised an eyebrow at him, trying to silently coax the words out of him, until he finally managed to blurt out the word "Monster!" in a dry-voice of panic. She sighed and shook her head.
"I can't believe you" she said. "This can't be the first time you've ever seen a Hollow, can it?"
"What's going on?" a tired young boy said, turning up in his covers. The girl turned to him now.
"I don't think Jishida's ever seen a Hollow" she said.
"Really?" the boy asked, rising up tiredly.
"Well, until now, I guess" she said. She started walking over to the window. Jishida tried to work up the nerve to voice his concern and stop her before she reached it but to no avail at all. His throat was closed and wrung dry in his intense fear. The girl made it to the window, looked out, angled herself to look out from the sides and saw nothing but the edge of the forest and a soft wave of wind blowing the short grass and loose leaves from the trees away.
"There's nothing out there" she whispered. The boys walked over and looked past her to see for themselves, standing on their tip-toes to see what she could see as plain as day, even though it was night. They backed away, one disappointed and the other still chattering his teeth in fear, while the girl turned to them both. "Just go back to sleep, Jishida. You might have had a bad dream, or something, and didn't even know it." A loud thud and the fading of light shook the room from outside. The boys were frozen and white-faced with fear. The girl turned around, her eyes already wide, and saw the mask of a Hollow too wide to fit the entirety of the window glaring in at the room full of sleeping souls. The girl backed away and nearly fell over herself. The boys huddled together in a single bed and pulled the sheets over their heads. The girl was left to stare the Hollow down, face to face, eyes to eyes, waiting for it to move or growl or something else to equate its fearsome image with the fear she felt in her thin belly.
Suddenly a man's hand came up and lifted the jaw of the Hollow's wide-mouthed mask up. Another hand came from the side to steady the mask as it was lifted, and gradually the form of a lanky, defined man was revealed to be hiding under the huge mask. The body of a shinigami wearing the robes that were tattered and torn, with stains of blood that wasn't his across his tall, wide chest. Finally the hands passed a face and suddenly thrust up. The Hollow's mask was thrown behind him and crashed to the ground where it groaned and vanished into an ethereal cloud of darkness, back to whence it came. The girl was still stunned with fear for she didn't know this man taller than anyone she had ever seen, and his wide, manic eyes struck in her a terrible sense of madness and anxiety that drove her heart to beat audibly from her chest. The unfitting innocence in his beady eyes covered by blood-red bangs only made him look worse, more discomforting, but at the same time brotherly.
"Hello" Jin greeted from the other side of the window. The girl was shocked that it could speak. "It's a nice night, isn't it? Shouldn't you be sleeping this late, though?" he asked. Again, unfitting innocence rang in his voice, and having been thrown over an intolerable point of fear the girl's body fell numb until she was on the floor, eyes wide open, consciousness lost. Jin stepped away from the window and looked around.
"Hmmmm" he hummed in thought. "I guess there isn't a door here after all. I could swear there was something back here though..." Jin scratched his head and looked around for a sense of familiarity. He hadn't realized yet what side of the estate he was on, the farthest south tip where the orphans were, and his nostalgic memory failed him for being in a place he had never been before. Suddenly, with a childish grin, he received an epiphany. "I'll just go to the roof and run around until I see something that looks familiar!" he said. With a powerful jump straight up he reached the roof and saw the hold still steaming in the bridge from the main estate buildings to the orphan wing. "Oooo! I don't remember that but it looks cool!" Jin started running on the roof, light steps at a mighty speed, and drove straight through the wall above the securely bolted wing doors.
"Tch!?" Hoji grunted.
"Knew it" Vicente said, pointing Suichi away from their current battle. Jin landed and stood tall, as tall as Garuda, and turned slowly around to take in the scenery with a loud intake of air.
"Ahhhhhhh~~~!" he sighed. "I remember this place!"
"Not another one!" Moon hissed. It fashed forward and delivered a powerful right hook to Jin's gut. He barely moved. All that force was diluted and spread to the ground where a blast of cool mist was kicked up and swirled around Jin while Margarita Moon just stood dumbstruck by its own failure.
"I'm home now...." Jin said in a dreamy daze. He smiled widely and sank to his knees, palming the splintered wood, breaking the sharp shards with the sweeps of his powerful hands. "I'm home......"
"Welcome home" Suichi said.
"Yeah yeah" Hoji growled. "Hurry up and help us kill these things! Take the big one!"
"Okay!" Jin said, enthusiastically swaying to the suggestion of murder. He reached inside his chest and drew out one of his blades. A mad fury overcame him and he held himself up against Garuda.
"Yet more of you to slaughter" the Hollow said, turning full away from the door with Netami's body hung over his left wing, bloody and beaten. "It matters not to me. It is just more of you for us to eat..."
"Say that again" Jin growled. "I ain't the one with uncooked wings, you oversized pheasent!!! HYRAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!" His roar started the battle anew. He charged in, forgetting himself and his body, and started up a relentless offense of body-reeling slashes and hacks that Garuda guarded with both of his feathered wings. Moon was taken aback to reality when Hoji grabbed it by the head and tripped its feet from the floor.
"TCH!" he shouted, slamming the Hollow's face to the hard floor, splintering and smashing even more of the wood.
"Care to make one last prediction?" Suichi asked his formidable opponent.
"Sure" Vicente said. He straightened up, loosened up and aimed a single finger Suichi's way. Then he flicked his wrist so the finger aimed up, and opened his skeleton mouth. "We will survive to fight again, despite what death you may try and bring to us..." The prediction made Suichi grin.
I'm sure he'll be here shortly, he thought.
Shin and Rei dashed through the halls, carrying their weight by the balls of their feet and pushing forth with a shared intensity of drive. Rei had her hand on the handle of her sword. Shin swung his scythe around his body in slow, circular swings as he ran, ever prepared for any attack to come at him. Rei could sense his excitement, even through the apathetic appearance he took to seem more calm and collected like her. He was itching to fight. Even his fingers twitched when the scythe left their grip and settled back only when that cold steel made contact again.
"Don't be too reckless" Rei said, catching Shin's attention. "I shouldn't have to tell you anything, but these aren't ordinary Hollows we may be dealing with."
"Right" Shin said. "They're those things that I can't quite remember the name of....Adrians?"
"Adjuchas" Rei corrected. Shin sighed and faced forward again.
"I shouldn't talk if I can't" he said.
"Shin" Rei began once more, "if these things have broken through the barrier and the door...if the worst case scenario is upon us I want you to be careful. They may have already killed many guards and may have gotten to the children in the refugee wing."
"Got it" Shin said. "I'll make sure not to kill the broken or dying kids I find, if they're to be found." Rei deplored his manner of speaking but knew he accepted her terms. He was a good enough man not to kill defenseless children, even if it meant he got to fight the monsters head on. The halls finally ended and the flash-step marathon stopped as Shin and Rei arrived at the front-line scene where Hoji, Suichi and Jin were already fighting valiantly. Suichi was stabbing and shooting his chain at Vicente, who dodged expertly and made shorts attacks that were inevitably blocked. Hoji was boxing with Margarita Moon and winning, staying near to the hole in the wall for his own purposes. Jin was keeping Garuda at bay, swinging his one butchering blade with all the might of his whipping body, reeling to and fro with berserk fury and strength.
"They're having fun" Shin said. "And look, the kiddies are safe too." Rei didn't stay with him long. She flash-stepped across the room, past Vicente who caught her motions, right to Garuda.
"Garuda! Duck!" Vicente called. Garuda bent his long legs and avoided a sudden, shining decapitation sweep from Rei's sword. He shot straight back up and kicked Rei away with the bladed underside of his feet. She blocked and was sent into the chest of Jin, who absorbed her as a projectile attack and growled madly as she slid off. He was off again on a raging tangent of swings and punches, none of them connecting beyond Garuda's mighty shield of feathers.
"You took your time!" Hoji shouted, grabbing Moon and pushing it away with a solid punch to the throat. Hoji looked across the room at Shin with a grin. Shin spun his scythe to rest across his shoulders and gave him a quick nod of greeting.
"You just about ready?" Shin asked.
"Tch!" Hoji scoffed in excitement. "Hell yeah, I am!" Moon rolled over and began to get up, but Hoji had a better use than pointless fighting. He picked Moon up by its central horn and threw it over to Garuda who covered himself in his wings to block and ducked down. Jin's attack showed no relent. He reached inward for his other blade but a blast of commanding pressure from Shin stopped him and forced him to retreat, as was planned. "Suichi! Get a move on!"
"Sorry" Suichi said to Vicente. "You guys have to leave now! The party's almost over!" Suddenly the ground surrounding Vicente erupted with a blast of cold and in an instant he was frozen in a prison of solid ice. Suichi grinned and gave him a quick salute before Jin charged over and threw the ice-encased Hollow into the other two monsters. Rei took away Katana, the girl who followed him and many others she knew were still breathing to the furthest corner of the room, far away from the hole in the wall where Hoji was spinning his arms. His bladed hands made motions as they glided and carved through the air. His arms made snake-like motions as he twisted them around, moving his legs from one position to another, and a calm yet constant swirling wind began to pick up. Then Hoji stopped. His feet were planted and his fists were drawn, one full forward and the other drawn back. He grinned.
"I'm ready" Hoji said.
"Good" Shin said. "Get them out of here."
"You don't want to kill them now?" Suichi asked. "That's a bit strange of you, Shin."
"Don't be so surprised" Shin said. "I want to fight them, sure, but not here. There's got to be a better place for me to take these guys on and I'm willing to wait for it..." Shin looked over and saw the seething, hateful red glow of eyes shining beyond the ruffled steel feathers of Garuda's shielding wings. "Can you?" Shin asked. Garuda shot up to his full height and roared. The terrifying tenor boom shook the floor, the house, the estate and the air, creating a wicked turbulence in through all the night. Trees shook and the ground quaked for but a moment under the Hollows debilitating pressure, but Shin stood uncaring and grinned.
"Yeah" he lowed, "me neither...." Hoji stomped forward and gripped the air with his claws. The wind began to move as he roared and picked all three Hollows up by moving the air around them. He effectively pulled the carpet from under them and was manipulating the very air they stood in, such was his power, and connected it all with a long jet-stream of air he had produced from outside. He set the Hollows up for a cannon-velocity air-powered launch across the hills and into the side of a mountain, hoping that at least one would shatter and the others would sustain impressive injuries.
"Koukuou....." Hoji began. He stepped backwards and began a hard walk towards the hole in the wall, his claws digging into the air and held above his head, dragging the wind from behind in a mighty display of raw power. "Toraaaaa....." His feet planted through the wood. The tension he dragged was at a full capacity. Garuda and his Hollows began to float in the air. Garuda gave Shin one final glare, seeing Shin glaring with an excited grin right back. "SE!!!!!!" Hoji threw the air. The Hollows were thrown out along a winding stream of air, followed by a humungous blast of sound that further shook the crippled building and nearly collapsed the rafters that barely supported the damaged ceiling form caving in. After all the sound and fury, a silence took hold. The orphans and staff and all the unwakeable guards were all stirred up in a shock over the thunderous roar. In the room where the blast originated stood the arrogant Hoji, looking out over the brightening night sky, with the pain-reeling Suichi holding his head behind and stoic Shin with his eyes shut and grin faded from the sudden rush of pain. Rei had covered her ears before hand, predicting the enormous blast of wind creating an equally loud blast of sound.
Finally the dust and gusting settled and calmed, and the first audible sound to come since the bang was the expectant voice of one searching for an after-effect to the brilliant attack.
"Is that all?" Shin asked.
"Ahhh!" Suichi shouted. He stood up, his hands trembling away from his head, and breathed as he staggered backwards into a wall to rest. "Oh, good, I can still hear."
"That was fun" Jin said with a giggle. He rocked back and forth with his hands cupping his knees, looking at the walls and the ceiling until he finally fell over from apparent exhaustion. "I'm home..."
"We know, Jin" Suichi said. "Congratulations."
"Rei" Shin said, sheathing his sword at long last. Rei turned up to him with a smile on her face and a wounded soldier at her side. "Our mission is over and I'm going to bed. I can't say the same for these two. This kid's name is Jin, I guess, that's what he responds to, and it'd be against my personal interest if you 'mothered' the fighter out of him. I'll talk to you tomorrow. God night." And with but a wave and a nod he left, off in a flash step.
"I am going to bed" Suichi said. "Sorry, but I hope we aren't imposing ourselves on you too hard."
"Not at all" Rei said pleasantly.
"Well!" Hoji shouted, deaf from the loud noise, "Looks like those whiny little bitches won't be interfereing with us anymore!"
"Hoji?" Suichi called.
"Tch. Weaklings" he continued, unaware of his volume. "Just goes to show the weak crap that you guys can't handle! Man, we're really useful around here, aren't we!? Without us this whole place'd be gone in a week! What'dya say, Rei!? How about a celebratoy feast with lots of sake and women, huh!?" Hoji turned around, but in his shouting and deafness he hadn't noticed everyone leave. Rei even managed to carry out all the wounded on her own and the room was silent. It wasn't entirely silent, but since Hoji was deaf he couldn't hear any of the wood creaking or smoke crackling under piles of rubble.
"Tch" Hoji scoffed. "I guess they all went to bed already...weaklings."
And so the trio turned troop had returned safely to the Unohana manor, prevented a grim incident and saved countless lives, all at the cost of a giant, icy hole in the wall and a sleepless night from the louder-than-thunder explosive bang that Hoji had created. Dusk was soon coming, a rise of the sun over a dark and dismal land, in the darkest age of shinigami unity, politics, the feudal age of shinigami war and the Golden Era of all shinigami Power...
Koukuou Tora Se: King Tiger Current (as in a river. Also means Torrent, which works just as well)
