We activated the nearby gate and instead of staying on the starpath to the next terminus, we broke through the swirling-light walls of the pathway and into the thick, inky blackness of the Dangai, the Dark Between that separated all of the Realms, Mortal and Divine, from each other. I formed my own little road of light from my spirit energy, all of my strength completely restored from a full day of rest.
I was ready for a good fight.
The dark stretched out before and behind us and on all sides of us, except where my spirit-path carried us forward. I could hear the heavy, steady gait of Tanner thumping along the path behind me. I might be bound into mortal bones, but the Soul Reaper in me knew instinctively where Hueco Mundo, the realm of our adversaries, lay. I oriented on that feeling of wrongness and sped toward it, heart pumping in anticipation.
When I felt the energy that formed the outer edge of the Realm vibrate before me, I sent a bursting shot ahead, punching through the barrier and forcing a hole to let me through. We paused for a moment on the threshold, a birds-eye-view from above, to take in the sight.
"You can't be serious!" Isana said in near-panic. "There's no way we can get through all of that!"
The scene that lay before us was like something out of a nightmare. Seething and churning like a sea stirred up by a storm, were the moving forms of bodies. White Hollows jabbed and swung at the slighter forms of the black-clad Soul Reapers who were flickering this way and that to avoid attacks and make counter-attacks of their own. Many Reapers used ordinary blades to fight but those that could do so had shikaied their Zanpaktou, so the strange, sharp, sometimes colorful forms of the famous reaping scythes of the Soul Reapers blades flashed and blurred, burst and shimmered in the sourceless twilight of the Hollows world.
The battle stretched as far as we could see, on all horizons there was the sight of beings trying to kill one another with blade and claw, tooth and spell. From our height in the air above it sort of resembled ants scurrying over a piece of dropped food, all was a senseless flurry of motion, the individual particles nearly indiscernible from the whole, but the noise... the sea-like roar of voices raised in a song of feirce killing-intent carried to our minds the reality of the situation. I forced myself to turn away from the voice inside of me that told me that I should be down there fighting alongside my comrades and started to scan the horizons, looking for-
"There!" Yoruichi pointed suddenly.
I looked where she gestured and sure enough there was a bright glowing spot in the middle of the battlefield, surrounded by tall, massive forms of Shadowbeasts ringed around the circle to protect it.
I angled the spirit-path downward and signaled the troop to move out. Yoruichi blurred out, already headed to fulfill her own mission.
"Renji, I don't think I can do this," Isana said nervously as we approached the seething sea of chaos on the ground.
"Just picture your son's face in your mind," I replied. "You're doing this for him."
I saw her squinch her eyes shut tight from the corner of my eyes and whisper to herself under her breath, I wasn't sure if she was telling herself to be strong or if she was praying. Either way, we were in it now. As we approached the roiling mass of hollows below us, many of them looked up, almost expectantly and I was reminded of those depictions of tanks full of swarming piranhas being presented with a bloody chop to feast on. Those Hollows that were light enough actually leaped up into the air to meet our advance, intent on sinking their claws into my determined female charge. I reacted with the reflexes ingrained into me during the course of many, many red-zone missions I had taken during my term of service in Eleventh Squad, with aim made perfect by a lot of practice I swung, unshikaied, and slashed them down the middle. They vanished into mist and powder and I quickly and easily moved onto the next. Isana screamed, even as she saw me defeating them, because there were always two more once I had destroyed one of them, and the closer we got to the ground, the more of them there were.
"Renji, do something!" she commanded as it began to rain Hollows.
I looked over at her in mild offense; couldn't she see that I was? Even without calling out Zabimaru to play or using flash-step I was keeping the rather limited number of Hollows off her back easily enough. The real challenge would come when we got down on the ground.
"It's gonna get worse," I told her. "I hope yer hangin' on, 'cuz we're gonna move through these guys as fast as you can make that beast of yours move."
She looked over at me, face under the helmet white as a Hollows mask and expression clearly aghast.
"No more time fer thinkin'," I told her firmly as we touched down and the Hollows on the ground prepared to surge in, like zombies from a movie.
I pulled Zabimaru in front of me, grinning my fiercest battle grin. Oh, I was gonna enjoy this!
"Roar! Zabimaru!" I shouted.
Snaketail sprang to the fore with a shout of joy and bloodlust. His fang would bite well today. The serrated blade materialized before me and I whacked the rump of Isana's mount with the flat it to get it moving. The beast sprang forward at my unspoken command and Isana clutched the low handles on the saddle before her, ducking down to keep her head low. The cool wind of the desert night here tore at her cloak as the trhomphing, springing gait of Tanner carried her at ever greater speeds into the melee of monsters.
::Now?:: Snaketail demanded, eager to merge his snake-strike-speed with my own power and show everyone what we were really made of.
By way of answer I unlocked and threw open wide the first of my chakra, flooding my being with reiatsu strength and channeling it into my sword which drank it in and fed it back to me. The world abruptly froze. At least that was my first perception of it, that everything around me had been frozen in place, enemies hanging in midair as though suspended from strings, Hollows froze mid-slash, Soul Reapers looking like manikins in a store window... if manikins ever fiercely slew monsters that was. On second glance, I noticed that the figures were actually still moving, but they were moving so slowly that I hadn't been able to tell it at first. Also in that second glance I noticed somethin' else, for every figure that was moving on the battlefield there was a strange sort of blue ghost-shadow of it, moving in the air in front of it at regular speed, or what seemed to be regular speed to me. As I watched those misty-blue figures I saw that they were slowly followed by the time-stop-motion of the actual physical being itself. I realized a moment later, with a jolt of elation, that I was actually able to see the next move that the people were aiming to make! Just to see if i was right about that, I pushed my blade into the path of one of the misty-blue Hollow figures and held it there waiting.I say pushed because, even though the rest of the world looked like it was movin' at a crawl, I myself wasn't quite able to move at anything but a regular speed... the air felt strangely thick and resistant. I knew instinctively that there would be no flash-step while I used Snakey's enhanced speed perceptions. A moment later the substantial form of the Hollow followed its insubstantial blue-mist ghost and met with the edge of Zabimaru, already waiting there for it, and burst into a floating spray of powder which dissipated with fascinating slowness.
:I really can see what move they are going to make before they make it!: I realized with a dawning sense of wonder.
My movements were slower than I was accustomed to, and I couldn't flash step here in this half-world of delayed momentum, but my regular movements seemed sufficient. I moved over to the side of Isana's mount where a surge of Hollows were trying to press forward to take her down and Dusted them with a single swing of Zabimaru coiled in at rest-position. I saw a misty-blue form head straight for her neck and promptly pushed the serrated blade out to intercept. The edge of Zabimaru waiting there for it to slice it in half.
Tanner and Isana lunged forward and their speed became perceptible to me as actual movement. True, their movements were still a crawl compared to mine, but the mass of Hollows that surrounded us still gave me a challenge even with the added advantages of speed and foresight. It felt like I was pushing against air that felt semi-solid, as I protected Isana from all angles, first destroying all the Hollows on one side of Tanner within a radius of twenty feet, which was the extent to which I could extend the shikaied Zabimaru, then dodging round the back to kill all of the Hollows encroaching from that direction before taking to the other side. Tanner itself took care of the ones in front of it, and it was interesting to watch a fire burst being born from the front of its mouth and slowly crawl out from inside of it, roast the Hollows for ten feet in front of it and trample over the burned bone corpses like they were so much litter.
I pushed myself, feeling the energy literally drain from me as if were blood pouring from a wound. If I hadn't had Zabimaru to grant me his enhanced speed and extra perceptions then there would have been no way I could have been able to protect Isana from all directions at once, but I was managing to keep her enemies at bay. I paced along beside her, Zabimaru a blur and flicker in the air, myself a shadow behind him, dodging from first one side then the next, flitting through Tanners legs, kipping up over its back, the extended chain blade wove a circle of protection around the mortal woman on the back of the magical-construct beast. At what seemed like a snails pace to me, the glowing horizon drew nearer.
At a momentary lull in the fighting, when I had beat back the ever-surging tide of enemy advance enough to grab a quick second for myself, I kicked up into an axle-spin in the air, Zabimaru coiling around me, and looked out to survey the battlefield. I searched for my friends and compatriots, my reiatsu swelled and flitted over the churning crowd, searching out the energy signatures of people who were familiar to me. Behind me (and slightly to the right) I could sense the reiatsu of Reapers that I recognized from Tenth Squad, mostly lower level fighters, being led by Rangiku Matsumoto. Other lesser fighters scattered across the field and I ignored them for the most part, concentrating on the more powerful signatures. To the left, some distance away, I could sense the by-now-familiar reiatsu of Ichigo Kurosaki. There was no mistaking that aura, it was like trying to ignore headlights (on bright!) of on-coming traffic in the dark. Impossible to ignore. Surrounding him, a little bit dimmer but no less impressive, were the spiritual pressures of different members of the Brat Pack, the flickering fairy-lights of Orihime Inoue, the basso-strength of Sado (I forget his last name) the cool, clean blaze of the Quincy, Uryuu Ishida. So he was there, that was good, now I wouldn't have to go looking for him.
:Where's Rukia?: I wondered to myself.
She should be right there with them. She might be a full-fledged Soul Reaper, and my same age (and therefore old enough to be their mothers several times over) but she might as well be a member of the Brat Pack, she got on so well with them and all. Why the hell wasn't she there with them?
I stretched out my seeking-energy around me even more, searching out the two Spiritual Pressures that mattered to me, Rukia Kuchiki and my Captain. In a battle this size, they would have had to have called him in, especially since Captain was the only "expert" they had on these new Shadows on the battlefield, besides maybe myself and the missy. Oh, and perhaps that crazy Urahara bastard, but I had the feeling that the Head Captain would let Hell freeze over before he'd call on the assistance of a man he himself had exiled (however mistakenly).
:And speaking of Shadows...:
I sensed those too, farther away, near the light along the horizon that Isana and I were racing toward. They were powerful! More powerful that any I had faced so far. They had the kind of spiritual pressure that weighed on a person with palpable force, crushing the lungs and bowing the back, like some kind of Human-world gravity machine. All the Shadows I had faced so far in my journey had been... lesser, it seemed. They had all still given me a run for my money, but compared to what was waiting on the other side of the battlefield, the ones I'd fought had all been small fry.
:So those harvesting-Shadows I've fought are more like regular Hollows, and these guys guarding the array are the equivalent of Menos Grande's or even Arrancars,: I thought to myself, confirming a theory. Something to add to my next report to my Captain... but he'd probably already figured it out for himself.
And speaking of my Captain, I wasn't expecting the rush of relief I felt when I sensed his energy signature resonate with mine for a brief instant. He was there! Present with a very sizable portion of Sixth Squad. I could sense them all, officers I had trained and placed, elements sorting themselves out for the battle. It was strange how relieved and suddenly (almost) safe I felt just knowing that my Captain was there. "If the Captain was on the field, then all would be right with the world;" I was a lieutenant in the Squads and so I should be above such silly preconceived notions, but it seems to be an ingrained instinct for any lesser ranked Soul Reaper of the Court Guard Squads, despite the fact that Captains had been known to die in the line of duty. There persisted instinctive conviction that while the Captain was on the field, victory was assured. It went beyond mere hero-worship, or even loyalty to ones unit, it was something akin to awe, and I was, sadly, just as guilty of it as the next low-ranked Reaper despite the fact that I knew that no-one was perfect and that even experienced, high-ranked members of the Squads were still prone to mistakes and misjudgments.
A flicker of an instant later in real-time I sensed Rukia's reiatsu right beside her brother. An unusual place for her to be on a battlefield considering that she was officially assigned to Thirteenth Squadron, and unofficially a part of the Ichigang. Maybe she was running messenger duty. I felt Yoruichi Shihouin flicker in beside them both a moment later and knew that the cat-lady had made it there and was giving her report. All of this was taken in in the pause of a few brief seconds, then I pulled my thoughts back in on my own task and focused my concentration on protecting the mortal woman on the back of the beast. It wouldn't do to have Isana make it all this way without a single scratch on her only to have her become injured practically right under my Captain's nose because I'm not paying attention... paperwork would be the least of the punishments he'd have lined up for me in that case!
I swept all the Hollows from the sky and landed for a brief instant on the be-tailed rump of Tanner, slid down the tail on the soles of my boots, reaping Hollows the whole way down and then flicked myself airborne again to Reap the incoming Hollows on the right side of Isana. Their numbers were getting greater and it was becoming more difficult for me to keep ahead of them, even with my advantages. Yes, they certainly were moving slower, and I could see where they were going but I myself was not able to move at top speed. I opened my second Chackra a crack and started siphoning off power to start fueling my kido attacks. I stayed on one side with Zabimaru, clearing a swath to the left while I used kido keep the Hollows on the right side and in the air from getting to close to the woman I was protecting. Between the two, and the fire-breathing of her construct-beast, I managed to clear a path for the woman in the melee-chaos of that battlefield, and she remained unharmed.
:But these are only ordinary Hollows,: I told myself before I could begin to get cocky about the ease with which I toasted them all.
The real challenge was going to come when I faced something that was more powerful than an ordinary Hollow, seeing as I was still a bit pressed to stave off the tide of average monsters. If an arrancar or a Shadow appeared on the battlefield before me, things could get dicey. It was easy enough to kill the average Hollow, I had a lot of practice at it and I was good at it, but higher level fighters were a complication I wasn't looking for right then. Seeing as I was surrounded by a seething anthill of ordinary enemies, if I missed my stride and stumbled I, too, could be overtaken. I just didn't let myself consider the option of failure; we were going to make it to that array, I was going to stop those enemies, she was going to seal away the device and we were all going to go home in one piece. And that was that.
"Claim victory in your heart, and the universe will follow," I told myself.
Right, easier said than done. Still, I hadn't come all this way just to fail at it now. I looked over at the young woman in armor perched on the back of the magical construct beast. She was crouched down and what I could see of her face in the shadows of the helmet I'd made her wear was a mask of terror and yet she clung on and urged her mount to take her forward faster. She was counting on me to keep her safe, my own boss had told me to uphold the honor of Sixth Squad, so I wasn't here to fail either of them. We kept moving as the light grew towards the horizon, despite the fact that she knew that terrible enemies awaited her there. Our destination lay just a little further ahead of us.
Something else lay ahead of us too. I smirked to myself as I noted the very obvious energy signature of the Brat Pack and their Vizard friends just up ahead of me. They were right, smack in the middle of our way to the array. Isana, Tanner and myself were headed right, straight at 'em. The blank, slightly stupefied on Ichigo's face as he looked over and saw what looked like an armored knight on the back of fire-breathing dragon bearing down towards him was one I would probably treasure for a good long while to come. I was less amused a moment later when it looked like he might have decided that it was likely a threat of some kind. He fired off a Getsuga Tenshou in our direction and I irritatedly blocked it, cutting off my snaketail-enhanced speed for a moment to do so and flipping the hood of my cloak off so he could get a good look at me as we advanced toward his position. Luckily, the Hollows had thinned out as we got closer to the Brat Pack, so I could bring Zabimaru into blade-rest position as Isana and Tanner barreled her way right past them... knocking aside Ichigo, Chad and one of the Vizards like so many bowling pins.
"Gangway!" I yelled politely as we ran right past them.
"Hey!" Ichigo yelled in irritation, picking himself up off his ass and flashing in beside me, keeping up easily with a mere sprint.
"What the hell?" the kid demanded, running along beside me as I efficiently, and with now-practiced ease, kept the Hollows off the little Missy.
So far she didn't have a single scratch on her. Heh!
"Kinda busy here kid!" I told him, pushing Zabimaru to full extension and sweeping the field.
The boy at least had the good sense to make himself useful and get her other side to start reaping Hollows.
"Watcha want?" I asked him.
"Rukia's been worried sick about you," he scolded.
I tried not to feel nettled about being scolded by a brat who wasn't a quarter of my years.
"I wrote letters, what the hell else was I s'posed ta do?" I snapped.
"You could've come to us, we'd have helped you out, you ass!" he replied irritatedly.
"It's a good thing I didn't," I said, sighting the first of my true enemies up ahead.
I'd known they'd have to show up for this; Aizen and the rest of the Shadows had too great a vested interest in this moment to let it happen without an honor guard there to make sure everything went like it was supposed to. I intended to throw a wrench in his plans.
"Otherwise we wouldn't have a way to beat... them!" I pointed up ahead at the mountainous dark forms blotting out the building light on the horizon.
And just think, there's more goodness still to come. Reviews are love... love me?