The array gathering force and power to itself on the quasi-distant horizon resembled a slow, sunrise bleached pure white. Rising up from the white sunrise loomed five pillars of darkness, who's shadows stretched across the battlefeild coloring the washed out starkness of the battle raging around us with its own sinister darkness. These Shadowbeasts were not half-formed amalgamations, lacking refinement and definition due to lack of power, these Shadows were superior specimens of their type. Looming like mountains, thier bodies were tall and lithe, suggesting both speed and manuverablity. They had claws and scythes and bonespines and black chiton armor and certainly more teeth than any self-respecting creature outa have. I had faced down some large Hollows in my time, thoughtless beasts of many cutting-bone limbs, these Shadowbeasts were ten times the size of the largest I had ever faced and packed all the metaphysical oomph of the smallest (which in Hollow terms, were the most powerful). In short, they looked tough. In short... they looked fun.
"What the-!" Ichigo said, pausing for a moment to take it all in.
"That's what I said the first time I saw one too," I told him.
And mine had been maybe half that size and strength. These laddies here were at full size and presumably strength and looked like they could crush mountains.
"What the hell are those?"
"Shadows kid, ancient gods who have gone the Nature Spirit version of Hollow and are lookin' fer more spiritual power to take in and make them stronger," I explained quickly. "There's an array on the other side of them, powered by a bunch of helpless Quincy kids, including the missy's son, that's gonna act like the spiritual equvalent of a black hole, takin' in all the spiritual pressure in its range."
"How?" he asked next.
He actually flashed over, grabbed my arm and made me look at him. I spent a few precious seconds answering him because it was better to do it now and get his help than to have to worry about fighting off enemies and squabbling with him at the same time.
"Take out the Shadows, seal the device," I said succinctly. "Now either lead, follow, or get the hell out of my way."
I flashed off to keep up with Isana on Tanners back, luckily there was a lull in the Hollows so my absence went unnoticed. Ichigo was a half a flash-step behind me.
"Can you believe that Aizen?" I said over my shoulder to him. "He used the Espada just to butter us all up!"
Ichigo just looked at me for a moment, letting my comment sink in, and he said the only thing going through both our minds right then.
"Aw, crap."
"Yeah," I agreed shortly.
"What the hell are we supposed to do about them? I'd fight them with full power, but I haven't even landed a scratch on one of them, they keep turning into smoke and disappearing them they wallop me from behind." Ichigo said, obvious frustration in his voice.
Call me petty if you must, but I couldn't help feeling a little smug bit of elation at the fact that there was a fight I could win that the Brat couldn't.
"You're not gonna do anything but keep an eye on the missy here and keep her safe. She's our key to winning this thing," I replied absently as i reaped Hollows. "There's a big, bad mojo array on the other side of those Shadows and we don't have time to waste, so I'm gonna clear the way."
I turned my attention to the missy and said
"Missy!"
She turned her head my way to look at me. Poor thing looked terrified.
"I need you to have your binding-spell running hot."
"What are-?" she started.
I brought Zabimaru out before me.
"I'm gonna make a path," I told her. "You do your part and I'll do mine."
"You're not seriously going to-" she protested.
I wasn't listening as I unbound my third chakra and prepared to raise hell.
"Ban... Kai!"
With a roar Snaketail released into his final form. For some reason it was called Baboon King Zabimaru even though Babs had his own form. Maybe both of his Bankai's borrowed the others name, and the final form of Bab's shikai-bankai was called Snaketail.
:Hey, snakey,:: I said as I got a better look at him. ::Yer lookin' a little different.:
Oh it was a huge bone snake as usual, with jagged bone blades spiking off the vertebra and eyes that shone with a fierce, flaming inner light, but the mane that surrounded the back of his head made of red fur like the tuft before the head of a spear, it was now a smoke-like misty fire of light and energy, flickering and swaying with his movements. It flamed around him in a halo of crimson fire. The bones that composed the bulk of his blade were no longer the yellowish color of ancient bones, but a milky pure silver-white color, seemingly lit from within by a moonlight luminance. The serrated spikes that sprung from off the sides of his spine positively glowed with their own light, humming with pent up energy waiting to be released. The webbing of my power between the vertebra was far more powerful than anything I had managed before, it was practically bursting out at the seams.
Snakey coiled around me as if to say 'I have missed fighting with you, together let's take this asshole!' I was both surprised and not when I looked down to see that my pink fur mantle with the strand of fangs holding it closed had changed as well; instead of pink fur, the mantle had deepened in color to a crimson that matched my hair, signifying that I had unsealed my chakra and my reiatsu was at its fullest potential. I found one of my fiercest battle-grins growing on my face as I released the end of his tail. I knew instinctively that I didn't need to hold him by the tail to move him, after all, he was my Bankai. I launched myself up into the air as he moved underneath me and landed lightly on top of his immense bone skull.
"Let's go!" I told him and we shot out across the ground with snake-speed, making for the first of our enemies.
The massive Shadowbeast swung at us but we neatly dodged out of the way, refusing to be distracted by the promise of a good fight, and we went after the real target. In a pool of shimmering inky blackness flowing out from behind it lay the true form of the Shadow, an amorphous blot of darkness that was both here and not, a creature that existed inside of its own dimension and was the substance of its own dimension. Zabimaru and I made straight for it, utterly ignoring the calls and imprecations of the crowd of allies behind us, we could do this, I just knew we could.
"Alright, let's make this quick and clean," I muttered to him and myself.
The less time we spent in the Shadow's strange little half-world inside of itself the less amount of energy it could siphon off from me. If I was fast enough, I could beat all five of them. We plunged in.
Even though I was prepared for it, the sheer soul-numbing cold of the place still managed to catch me a little off guard. There was nothing there, no sight or sound, no color or motion, just cold and darkness everywhere. It was made worse by the steady drain on my energy as soon as I entered its world, we didn't have much time. I felt Snake tail moving underneath me somehow, a weaving side to side motion, like a water-snake swimming through a river, that carried us forward. Slowly there came the tiniest shimmer, a pinprick of light in front of me that I at first thought that I was imagining, but we drew nearer and I came to see that it was the sheilded form of the creatures heartstone. It glowed with greater luminance, throbbing like a slow heartbeat the closer we got to it.
I pulled in my power and sent it down into Zabimaru who straightened out into a bone cannon and opened his mouth to roar a blast of power that knocked the heartstone out of its place and shattered the void around us. In an eyeblink I was surrounded once again by sound and light, the chaotic world of the senses seemed that much more chaotic for the contrast of absolute stillness that had enfolded me before.
"By the Four Palaces of the Heavens, by the Four Pillars of the World..." I heard Isana's voice begin chanting around me even as the shards of darkness melted in to misty black and tried to reform themselves, gravitating piece by piece to the larger shadow as the Shadowbeast above it began to morph whole once more and become substantial. We didn't have much time. I launched myself at the Shadowbeast, to buy the little missy time to finish her spell.
Zabimaru bit off its right fore-appendage while I took out its left with a spell. It howled with thwarted rage even as I heard the despairing scream of both Shadow and Shadowbeast as the final words of Isana's spell wrapped itself around its heartstone, encasing it in a glowing orb. A river of inky blackness flowed towards the stone, like a genie going back into his lamp, the stone then was sealed, enveloped by a sphere of perfect clear crystal.
"Bind!" she shouted, completing the spell.
An instant later the crystal sphere with its sealed Shadow inside dropped harmlessly to the ground. I turned halfway and gave her an approving nod. She still looked terrified, but it also seemed she'd gained a little confidence. She sat taller and straighter on the back of her beast and her posture was one of readiness.
"Good work!" I called to her. "Keep it up!"
"Don't you 'good work' me, mister!" she snapped back at me, sounding angry. "You scared ten years off the end of my already shortened lifespan! When I get you down on the ground I'm going to rip off your head, tear open your skull and scoop out what few brains you have to use as cat-food, you red haired ape!"
"Hear that Zabimaru? She called us a red haired ape!" I said in amusement even as the two of us sprang at the next target, side-swiping the Shadowbeast along the way and landing a final lash with the flick of his tail which had turned into a tip of barbs made of energy.
We dove into the next Shadow, swimming quickly through the smooth cold blackness toward the throbbing warmth of its heartstone that I could scent before me we quickly executed another bone cannon as soon as we were within range, the darkness shattered all around us and turned to misty rivulets trying to reform itself around its heartstone again but before it could, Isana started chanting her binding spell. A few short moments later the Shadow was contained within its own heartstone, trapped and sealed away inside a sphere of crystal.
I looked back behind me to check and see if my charge was alright and it seemed that I had nothing to worry about. The Ichigang, and others, had caught on quickly to what was going on, or at least it seemed that they knew a sudden turn to their advantage when they saw one, for they had all surrounded Isana in a circle of protection with their blades (or whatever they used) out. There was Orihime on one side of Isana with Ichigo next to her guarding her right flank while Chad and a couple of Vizards, the green-haired one, Hisagi's former hero, and the one that looked a little like Lt. Ise. guarded the rear. On the other side were Ishida, the remainder of those Vizards on the feild and... Rukia blurred into view.
I gave her a quick wave to say hello, but decided that business before personal interests was the order of the day so I called over
"Hey! Quincy! Get over here, this is your fight!"
The boy looked over at me through his lenses uncomprehendingly.
"Your arrows dumbass!" I said impatiently. "They can kill them... well, that's the theory anyway. Get up here!"
Fortunately he didn't need to be told any more than twice. He blurred into whatever the hell it was that Quincies called flash-step and reappeared a moment later beside me on the tip of Zabimaru's skull.
"Miss Rukia is ready to tear bloody strips off you," Ishida informed me quietly even as I mentally gave the command for Snaketail to move forward and head for the next Shadow.
"She'll have to get in line," I said flippantly, already moving us forward to jump into the next Shadow.
Ishida laid in cover fire as we passed the Shadows guardian Shadowbeast and I explained just before we went in.
"The void siphons off your life energy so you want to make this quick. Aim for the Heartstone, you'll know it when you see it."
And the next instant, we were in. As usual it was cold, with not sight or sound or sensation, just cold blackness. The time was a little different in that I could feel the reiatsu of the person next to me even if I couldn't see or hear him. I could smell him though. I mentally dismissed his scent and concentrated on the smell of the Shadow's heartstone up ahead and to the left, I gave Zabimaru the mental command to move forward and we glided through the darkness like fish in the ocean. Or I assume we did anyway, I couldn't actually see it; I could tell however that the Heartstone was getting closer because the scent was getting stronger and so was the siphon. I felt a sudden spike in Ishida's energy and knew he had fired off an arrow. Just then, there was a sudden flare of white in the darkness, streaking toward the heartstone like a comet blazing across the night sky. The explosion when it hit directly on target shattered the shadow-world into thousands of pieces all around us, which fell down like rain in black shimmer as the real world reasserted itself.
I looked around me, no heartstone, nothing of the Shadow left. It appeared that I had been right, a Quincy's spirit arrows had the power to truly destroy a Shadow.
"Looks like I was right," I said, looking over at the boy who looked just a tad bewildered and out of sorts. "It's your arrows that can bring true death even to ancient Elemental Spirits. Looks like you're about to become Shadow Enemy Number One, if you're not already."
Ishida blinked at me for a long myopic minute, as if trying to figure out what I was saying.
"Go back and protect yer friends," I told him. "Right now, binding them is better than completely destroying them, so Miss Isana and I will take it from here."
Ishida blurred back out and went to go tell the others what had happened. While I dove right for the next target. The Shadowbeast on this one was waiting for me and going to make me fight for every single inch I gained. Zabimaru's spines bristled out and his bone vertebrates glowed with a moonlit brilliance, echoing my anticipation of a good battle. As he dove head first at the beasts left side I surfed down his back on my feet, firing off spells to herd our enemy farther to the right while the massive snake-form of my snaketail's Bankai began coiling around the Shadowbeast like a predatory vine come to life. The beast struggled and became even more enmeshed, and somehow, with that hive-mind state that came with the Bankai, I knew that this was what we'd been waiting for. I wasn't sure if it was Zabimaru who gave the command or my own mental self, but I unleashed a sudden, massive flood of spiritual pressure straight into my bankai. The spines which had acted as lesser versions of the serrated blades of Zabimaru's shikai form suddenly bristled out, bursting in length to three times their usual size. The Shadowbeast, which had been wrapped in Zabimaru's coils like an animal inside a thorny bush found itself suddenly impaled by a thousand gleaming lances of energy. Shadowbeasts, to my (admittedly very limited) knowledge, couldn't bleed, but if they could, this one would have looked like a seive. The Shadowbeast flickered out for a minute and that when Zabimaru and I sprang for the Shadow itself. We disappeared into its black void again and went after the heartstone.
After three Shadows in rapid succession plus the unleashing of my Bankai, I was starting to feel just a tiny bit peaked. The spirit-energy-siphoning power of the void inside the Shadows didn't help either, but I was far from tired, in fact, I was expecting my second wind any moment now. I unleashed a blast from the Bone Cannon on the heartstone and the world came bursting into being around it, but after having made the transition between the two a few times before this, the transition was no longer quite so shocking.
"...The Four Pillars of the World," I heard Isana start chanting.
"One more to go," I muttered looking straight in front of me at the looming form of the next shadowbeast.
I felt the presence of the other Shadow behind me fade as miss Isana bound it up and I was just about to give the command for Zabimaru to move forward when a spiritual presence as familiar to me as my own, and just as vital, flickered into being beside me. I can't say I was entirely unsurprised when I felt a hand reach out and smack me upside the back of my head.
"Hello Rukia, so nice ta see ya again too," I muttered dryly. " I missed these affectionate greetings after so long a time being apart."
"Where the hell have you been?" she snapped demandingly at me.
I peered over at her.
"You know where I've been," I said plainly, a little taken aback that I would have to point out
"I sent you letters."
"Why didn't you come find me?" she demanded next, sounding hurt and worried. "You go out on some day-trip to Rukongai and the next thing I know Kuukaku Shiba is knocking on our door saying 'sorry I lost your Soul Reaper, I think he's dead in the attack.' And then I get a note from Uruhara saying he's pretty sure you're alive but you're going off on some vacation with some Mortal woman I don't even know-"
It still amazed me how she could manage to combine that wounded bunny look with a look that seemed to be one of her deciding where the best place to start tearing strips off me was.
"And instead of coming to find me so we can figure things out together you go off on your own to someplace no-one has even heard of before, just running around doing whatever the hell you please. I get back a couple of letters from you that read like something from out of someone's vacation diaries!"
"Hey, at least you got letters," I muttered, irritated. "And just remember, every time you point your finger there's three more pointing right back at you."
After all, would it have killed her to try and find a way to send me one tiny little note when she disappeared in the Mortal Realm for months on end? I went to Captain Ukitake's Squad hall every day for nearly a month to choke down some vile-tasting hell-brew, talk about the weather and try to find a clever way to steer the conversation toward Rukia to see if there's been any word from her.
"This is not about me," she replied.
Did they take women aside at birth and teach them how to do that?
Before the two of us could get started on a good bicker to settle the matter we were rudely interrupted by a shrieking roar from the Shadow in front of us that seemed to make the air shiver. It grated up and down my spine like nails on slate. As one we turned to face the enemy before us, a blot of blackness against the lighter red-twilight sky of Hueco Mundo, and the array that it was standing guard in front of suddenly flared a little brighter. The spell was starting to activate.
The cries of and sobs of frightened children carried faintly through the air over the sounds of the pitched battle going on behind us. I'd probably never admit it to anyone but I had a soft spot for women and kids, and the idea of any dark, evil thing wantin' ta put the hurt on either of them fer no good reason but its own gain really pushed on some good versus evil hot button in the back of my brain.
"This one's goin' down," I growled, now intently focused on the enemy before me.
I could sort it all out with Rukia later, you would have thought by now that she'd have learned what the priorities on a battlefield were.
"I'd love to be able to stick around and chat with you Rukia, but could we shelve this for later?" I pointed up ahead of us at the Shadow with its guardian Shadowbeast blocking the path to the array.
She honestly looked like she wanted to say 'no, we're going to talk about this now!' but she subsided, though not without a glare in my direction. Rukia did not like being denied, and she had clearly lined up her argument inside her own head and didn't want to be sidetracked from what she had to say to me.
"Off you go," I said pointedly, shooing her off my Zabimaru's head.
"I'm not going any where," she snapped back, drawing her sword.
I thought about trying to argue with her about it but abruptly we were out of time. The array, which had been little more than a dim glow behind the Shadow, sort of like the lights of a city-scape brightening the night sky above it, suddenly flared into the brilliance of the sun at midday. The kids started crying in fear, I could hear them, and the Shadowbeast seemed to grow in size and ferocity, like a cat fluffing out its fur to appear more threatening. I was dismayed a little but ultimately unsurprised to sense the presence of Miss Isana draw closer to Zabimaru's side.
"Renji!" she called up to me. "I'm going to shut down the array!"
I nodded, partly in acknowledgment and partly to myself. I wouldn't expect anything less from the woman. Diving inside the Shadow and blasting out its heartstone wouldn't do any good right then since the missy would be concentrating her power on sealing away the keystone of the array just like she was supposed to, and to my knowledge she couldn't fire off two of those spells in rapid succession like Rukia could. So I said
"I'll keep the Shadowbeast busy."
Of course he will...
Thank you so much for all the wonderful reveiws. I'm glad everyone likes the story so far, there's still more action yet to come I promise you.