Chapter 37, Storm
Uryū Ishida was on edge, mainly because, as far as he saw it, the cure to the problem resided in his left breast pocket. A simple smacking of that little sucker against a wall and the hollows would come out in mass.
"Once we round the corner, the hunting could begin," he thought. With Ichigo himself and his cousin, they could easily hunt down the hollows in the city. There couldn't be any more than 100, and it would be 33 kills each. Something they easily could do, as they were low-level hollows, after all.
But his solution had been rebuffed, and now he was not sure what to do. Without the teamwork of the Shinigami, it was likely a bad option to even think about trying to activate it. But, well, he was still thinking about it. Yes, he didn't have the Shinigami's permission, but the fact of the matter was, if he cracked it, then Ichigo would be forced to hunt hollows, not only because he was a Shinigami, but because the hollows would be attracted to people who had high spiritual awareness. And, well, he wasn't sure if they noticed it yet, but most of those people were his friends and family.
The temptation was valid, as a cure for the hollow infection would definitely be better in the long run. However, the fact of the matter was, if he did use it and put Ichigo's family and friends in danger, he could imagine that would probably piss them off quite a bit and would probably not lead to a conducive working relationship with the reapers.
No doubt, he would probably end up in a fight, and he really didn't want to get into a fight, especially with the reapers, let alone someone who actually probably didn't want anything to do with them to begin with.
Sure, he carried around some misgivings about the reapers, even though they had eventually come and saved his grandfather. That was one reaper who had done that, quite a bit of them hadn't come for all the other family members who died over the years, before and somewhat after that, so less after.
So, he wasn't exactly trusting of reaper judgment, but there was a point to be made about not using the hollow bait.
That was the thoughts he had last night and now he was letting out an annoyed sigh as he looked up at the clock. School was almost over. Another minute, and he could head home and stash the bait in the back of his closet and not think about it. The temptation was going to be on his mind for the next few days, but if he didn't have it on him, at least he had a chance to think it over some more.
Maybe he should call and text his cousin. Maybe she'd have a better idea of what to do. This whole situation, though, would probably be an unsettled affair. The town would be left to linger with hollows continuing to infiltrate and eat the souls of the living and the dead.
He let out another sigh, got up at the bell ringing over the door, and started moving towards it. He needed to relax a bit. He was letting this whole situation get to him in a way that really he shouldn't let it do. Yes, there was a bit of a threat on his life and his friends and family as long as these hollows were left unchecked within the town. But it was a threat that he could handle, that the family could handle.
He started to go through the door, preparing to go about his everyday business, when he was suddenly met with a speedy object in the shape of a person. He had no time to wonder who it was as they crashed directly into him, knocking him to the floor. After landing he could feel a weight on top of him and after readjusting his glasses he could feel himself blush as lying on top of him with her face only a few inches away was the fake Tanya. Her eyes were shut as she was rubbing her forehead, but a few seconds later she opened her own eyes to see Uryū there as well. He noticed her blushing as well while he was suddenly very aware of how she was pressing into him as he laid on the floor.
'Is she actually a G cup?'
Before he could let his mind wander anymore on that subject, the fake Tanya quickly placed her hands on either side of him and vaulted herself to her feet. The people who were watching were a mix of confused and blushing as the act had blown her skirt up before she landed. After realizing what exactly had happened, she began to start laughing like an airhead before backing out of the classroom and nearly sprinting away after she made it out.
Unsure of what he just saw, Uryū started to get up and brush himself off when he felt that something was wrong. The air around town had immediately changed, and it was filling up with negative energy. 'What could cause that?' He wondered before his hand brushed his left pocket, and he didn't feel the familiar circle of the hollow bait there. Reaching in, he found nothing but scraps and sand, telling him the worst possible thing had just occurred.
Pushing himself back up, the ground immediately rushed into the hallway. He looked off in the direction that the fake Tanya had gone, just to be sure she wasn't going to try and pummel him as he left as she seemed to have mood swings at times and he had pretty much embarrassed her. Thankfully, she apparently was on her way, which meant he could focus on the real problem. He started sensing in the general direction of where Ichigo should be, and thankfully, apparently, he had not left school yet.
Just as he ran around the corner to Ichigo's classroom, he saw Ichigo and Rukia stepping out in a bit of a rush. Immediately Ichigo saw him and pointed, "You! What did you do? There are hollows popping up all over Rukia's map right now, and that just does not happen."
"It's a very complicated story. Short version is, though, the hollow bait's broken. No, I didn't break it. We need to work together to try and stop this from getting any worse than it currently is."
"And how am I supposed to believe that you didn't do this when you said last night that this was the cure for the problem?" Ichigo said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"A very good point. Unfortunately, no, I did not do this. We can talk to your friend, the fake Tanya, about her… bustyness, for lack of a better term, and the accident later. Or you can beat me up later. Either way, the town is now under attack from hollows. So we have two options: beat me up now and not save the town, or go out there and save the town."
Ichigo blinked, giving him the fiercest look of 'Oh, I'm totally going to beat you up later' before he reached into his backpack on his back, pulled out the stuffed doll, grabbed it, shoved his hand down its throat, pulled out a soul candy, and popped it in his mouth. A moment later, there were now two Ichigos in front of Uryū, both looking rather annoyed at him.
"All right then, what's the plan? After all, you had to have had a plan in case it was broken, right? So what's your plan to deal with all those?"
"Go out there and kill as many as we can. Should only be around 100 at most."
"That's a very strong hope, Uryū," said Rukia, seeming unsure if it was a good idea. "I want to be fair, none of this was a good idea. After all, there was some hope that maybe we could have taken this outside of town, or at least as far outside of town as possible, to try and draw them towards one particular forest edge where there wouldn't be many people exposed. Now, there was none of that. It was happening everywhere."
Ichigo sighed before shaking his head. "All right, hunting it is. That's what we're going to have to do." He grabbed his sword from his back and rushed past Uryū, not a care in the world as he did.
Shaking his own head, Uryū started to move out as well before Rukia grabbed his shoulder and said, "Now hold on a moment. Before you run out there and start fighting, do you have a number for your cousin I can call?" She pulled out her phone.
"Ah, no. She doesn't have a phone, though I'm sure she'll be involved in the fighting. There's no way she doesn't sense these hollows and is out there killing them right now."
"Okay, Uryū. Do you have any other way to add more fighters to this fight? Because as much as you want to think you three can handle 100 hollows, I don't think you can."
Uryū shook his head before saying, "Maybe not, but I am of the opinion that if we work together, we can handle this. If you have any idea where we can get more fighters, that's fine. The more, the better. But unless you are going to join us on the front line here, maybe you should let me go and deal with it."
Rukia sighed deeply before taking out the phone from her pocket and saying, "Here, this will help Ichigo find hollows. Give this to him the next time you see him. It's a lot faster than letting him use his abilities to try and locate every hollow in the area."
Nodding, Uryū pocketed the phone and said, "All right then, good luck, Rukia."
"Same. Don't get killed, please."
"Well, thank you."
"Humans aren't supposed to be involved in this sort of situation. Also, if Ichigo dies, I'm coming for you. Because, again, humans aren't supposed to be involved in this situation, and you made Ichigo be forced to be involved."
Something in Rukia's eye put the fear of God in Uryū, and he stepped back. The way she said it made it clear that she wasn't joking. "All right, I'll make sure he comes back alive too," he said before turning and running away as fast as he could, trying to catch up to Ichigo.
Quickly, he left the building, passing some of the girls who were going to after-school activities. Trying to figure out which way he should go, he looked left and right, but he didn't see any trail to follow. So, he pulled out the phone and looked at it, noting that there was a large group to the west. Figuring that Ichigo was probably just going to use his powers to find the largest group, that's the direction he started to run, heading towards whatever was drawing the hollows to the west.
As he did, he drew his bow, stopping him every once in a while to fire at a hollow crawling out of whatever hole it was coming from, usually right out of Hueco Mundo, though there were one or two that came directly out of sewer grates and storm drains.
As he ran, he noticed that the hollows seemed to be having an effect on people without actually attacking them. As more time passed, more people seemed to just have an urge to get off the street, and the sky seemed to be somewhat darker, which was weird considering it was a bright and sunny day. Yet, it felt like it was darker.
Most of the people around him probably didn't even sense what was really going on, but they could tell something was wrong, and they were getting inside. Perhaps they thought a storm was coming or maybe an earthquake. Either way, they were seeking shelter, which made his job easier as fewer people were noticing him running around and shooting a bow made from the positive energy of his Quincy nature.
Fewer people spotting him meant fewer people would ask questions later, which was very good. Hopefully, he would have some luck and avoid any more trouble, unlike that damn fake Tanya who caused this whole chaos to begin with.
Yes, yes, she didn't know that he was carrying around an object that could start a hollow invasion, but that doesn't mean that she shouldn't have been watching where she was going!
…Wait, was she not wearing a bra?
The World of the Living hasn't changed much in the month Tanya had been gone. She guessed that must be expected. It wasn't like she traveled through the fabric of time. She'd only really been gone a month. But that being said, she did wonder how well the soul candy she left behind in charge of her fake body had done.
She doubted she made much money, but you never know. One lucky investment can change everything. And besides attending school in such a way to keep a cover functioning, the only thing she should be doing is looking through investments and trying to, well, invest. Tanya hoped her payment on the internet and computer she'd purchased was going to good use. If it wasn't, she'd be rather annoyed and probably be looking to ask Kisuke Urahara about getting a replacement, as obviously the one he sold her was a failure. But that was for the future. For now, she'd be going to a locker she had left before returning to the Soul Society.
Train stations were a marvelous thing. You can rent a locker, and as long as you left enough money, no one gave a damn what was in it. She had paid for a locker for a year and hid the key atop a building where only she could get to, and with a little bit of effort after retrieving said key, Tanya was quite easily able to open it and retrieve the items inside.
Granted, she was sure people who might have been on the lookout may have noticed the locker opening to a non-corporeal being and then closing again, but she doubted they cared that much.
As for what Tanya was retrieving, a cell phone. The portal she was using to enter Naruki City was near the train station, so this made some sense, although she had to admit cell phones of the early 2000s were just a little bit better than the bricks of the '90s. She couldn't probably cover a person with it and definitely could not hide it if she had brought it back to the Soul Society, which is why she had left it here.
Keying the number of the other phone she had purchased, she waited for a moment for the call to go through before Yuki picked up.
"Tanya Jacobs' phone. What's up? Who's this?"
She blinked at the casual manner in which the soul can even talk to her before saying, "The person whose likeness you're currently using."
"Oh, Tanya! Glad to hear from you. Are you back in the World of the Living? What's up?"
"Yes, I'm back in the World of the Living. I assume you're at school?"
"As always, that's what I do. School and day trading. You know, the list of things you told me to do."
"Good, good. I'll be there in a little bit," Tanya said as she looked out into the day.
"Why…" came the drawn out voice of the not-Tanya who was posing as her.
Raising an eyebrow, Tanya said, "Because I need the body for my operations."
"Oh… damn it, fineeeeeee! Can we actually meet at the apartment? School's a little bit busy right now."
Her eyebrow firmly raised, Tanya said, "Fine. We'll meet at the apartment. So, I'm going to have a few questions."
"Sure, sure. I'll answer any you have."
Hanging up the phone, Tanya shook her head as she heard the voice of Tasha over her shoulder. "She's doing something she shouldn't be, isn't she?"
"Why else would she not want us to go to the school? I fear to find out what exactly that soul candy may have gotten up to."
"Oh, I'm sure it's nothing too bad. Just a young teenage girl full of hormones. You know what? I think we're going to be in for a laugh."
"I seriously doubt it will be that funny," Tanya said as she pocketed the phone and walked out of the rail station.
Another reason she had chosen the rail station was the easy access to the bus network, which would allow her to quickly grab a ride to Karakura Town.
It was only a 30 minute trip by bus, so all she needed to do was go to the back of the bus, relax, watch the houses go by, and gather her thoughts for what she would have to do on this trip. Mainly, she needed to warn Rukia that Ichigo's little stunts had been picked up on television in the Soul Society, which could be disastrous in the long term. Her overarching goal was to keep all of this a secret. She also needed to check up on his training and make sure that he was doing well.
From there, maybe she could dig up a little bit more information on Kisuke Urahara to see if he could be of any help in this coming problem. Right now, she knew that he had a bit more of a hand to play in this situation. She was sure he wasn't behind some massive conspiracy, but he definitely knew more than he was letting on, and she was now very suspicious of where he was getting his information. If he was related to the man of the same name who was banished from the Soul Society, he was definitely not getting it from there.
Having an emergency backup plan that could involve him was something she needed to look into. Of course, she didn't want to blame him for everything that had gone wrong so far, but who knows. For now, she would simply focus on getting everything done.
Everything felt so dark all of a sudden. In a flash, the bright and cheery day had gone straight to the feeling of the shadow of evil crossing across someone's grave. Feeling this overarching anger and evil spreading throughout the town, Tanya got up from her seat and looked left and right, confused, wondering what the hell was going on.
"It's like the very air itself has been turned negative," Tasha said from over her shoulder. A sense of worry came from her own blade. No, not worry, but there was also hunger, as if it knew that there was about to be a battle to slake its thirst in a way that had not been sated in a while.
"Down, girl. We don't want to actually fight and do that," Tanya mused, only to hear a chuckle indicating that the blade disagreed with her quite a lot on that matter.
Before she could get a handle on the situation, the bus she was in crashed, sending her flying forward a few feet before she grabbed onto one of the central poles, wondering what had caused the crash. She looked forward and saw that the bus had crashed into a hollow. It was currently holding it and looking inside, so it probably wondered what the machine was. Most likely, the hollow predated the technology of the automobile, or at least this particular variant of it. Either way, Tanya pressed the emergency open and slipped outside, drawing her blade as she did and coming up to the side of it, slashing its left hand completely off, causing it to withdraw away and freeing the bus.
The bus driver, seeming to sense something was wrong, immediately sped off as soon as he was free, nearly hitting the hollow again and running a red light as he drove between Tanya and the hollow.
As soon as the bus cleared, Tanya charged the hollow. In return, it tried to punch her through a nearby building.
Unfortunately, Tanya was much too dexterous, and she quite easily avoided the incoming punch and returned it with a slash, removing its last hand. Now having nothing to block her next move, Tanya jumped up into the air and brought her sword down in a slash that ended about midway, not all the way through but deep enough that the mask was broken in, and the creature was clawing at itself with its stumps, unable to breathe for a few seconds before finally dissolving away.
Taking a moment to catch her breath, she looked around, confused as she realized there were a lot of hollows starting to gather around her in this small park she now found herself in, quite a bit more than she was used to seeing in one place. The most she had ever seen at once was probably ten, and she was already at that. She could definitely feel more coming.
"Ooh ooh, does this mean we get to go all out?" came the voice of Tasha at her ear, begging for it like it was a treat.
"No, we are not going all out over ten minor hollows plus maybe another twenty," Tanya said, though even at that point, she could tell that was probably a lie, feeling another twenty beyond that twenty and some major hollows amongst the grouping there.
"Oh, come on! This is a perfect situation to go all out, to let off all the tricks and steam you've been holding yourself up to for a long time! There are possibly hundreds of these creatures crawling all over the city," came the siren call of Tasha, wanting to be used to murder as many of these things as possible.
Tanya, on the other hand, was trying to calculate the best option for the situation. Yes, she had a weapon that could probably kill a lot of these creatures, but there were too many for that to be a successful outcome. She was more likely to end up too drained and overwhelmed without allies.
What she needed was backup. Unfortunately, she couldn't call for her backup being she was in the World of the Living and not the Soul Society. Sure, she could try and summon a Hell Butterfly to send information to the Soul Society, but that would most likely take a couple of hours, and that would also most likely bring a lot more attention to Karakura Town. That meant, more likely than not, the gig would be up, and the trial would begin.
Taking a deep breath, she said, "All right, well before me is a horde of monsters, behind me is a horde of monsters, and my only option is to fight… I guess then this will be one of the few times where I go all out," she finished reluctantly.
"Thatta girl, yeah," Tasha declared from behind. She was annoying, but there wasn't much she could do. Taking another deep breath, she grabbed her sword in both hands and pointed it at the nearest hollow, then unleashed its shikai.
"Entfessel die Gewalt des Krieges, Shirubātitania," she said as the silver cloak came into place around her shoulders. She carefully maneuvered the halberd with both hands, pointing it at the creatures in front of her.
She could break her sword sheath for a bit of power boost, but right now, she didn't want to use her magic in such a way. Weakening herself by using it in a spell-casting feature would simply leave her exposed and weakened to the oncoming horde.
No, what she needed to do was use the weapons she had in the forms they came: halberd, cloak, and, if need be, the blunt side of her sword sheath as a weapon. Charging forward, she slashed her blade along the head of one hollow before shoving it through the head of another. As another hollow, this one more bug-like, tried to come up behind her, she spun around, causing her cloak to catch the hit and giving her the ability to bring the pointed side of her halberd into the creature's side.
Jumping back out of the trees, she quickly snapped her fingers and caused all three wounds to explode. Using the enemy's own reishi against them was the best way in this situation to assure survivability, and this is exactly what her plan would call for. She would strike each creature, weaken it, and explode the wound, damaging it further while maintaining her distance.
The minimal magic used, mostly using the enemies' own abilities against them, with any luck, she would last the oncoming horde. Though even she had to admit, it would be a close thing.
"Why are there so many hollows?" was the only thought running through Akita Ishida's head as she kept unleashing arrow after arrow into the oncoming horde. Her fingers were already starting to bleed from the continued use of her weapon, and that was not a good sign.
For some reason, there were just an unlimited amount of hollows today, coming out of every corner and cramped location, as if someone had summoned them to this world. But who would be stupid enough to summon a whole bunch of hollows? That was a thought for another time when she was not fighting for her life. Arrow after arrow left her bow as she stood on top of a nearby building, trying to get a good shot so they would do the most damage and bring the beasts down in one salvo. Simply because the more arrows she had to put into each piece, the more tired she'd be, and she was getting a bit tired already.
This fight had been going on for nearly an hour, and it looked like it had no end in sight. Thankfully, she had been close enough to a building with a ladder going up to the roof that she had been able to make her way there. This gave her not only a good view of a large portion of the town around her, but it also made it a bit harder for the creatures that weren't flying to get to her. Most of them had to crawl up the sides, and when they did, they tended to make noise, breaking part of the building, crashing through the windows, and things like that. Things that she could hear, move to the inside of the building, shoot down, and kill.
So far, it had been a successful counter-attack, but also, so far, they just kept coming.
Thankfully, they weren't going after any other people in the area, from what she could see. Oh sure, there were tons of hollows about, and there were plenty of people they could go after, which was a bit of a worry. Civilian casualties were not something she could worry about much in her last life, but in this one, she did. And she'd prefer to keep casualties to a minimum. Heroes are meant to take the burden, not the people around them.
Also, thankfully, the civilians seemed to have noticed that things were not good and were moving away from the building that the hollows were trying to stay around. Most likely feeling the negative energy coming off them and running away or, she guessed, just simply seeing the building being destroyed piece by piece as the hollows attempted to ascend. Either would send people running the other way, she guessed.
Any way she looked at it, though, she was in a bit of a pickle, running low on energy, and completely surrounded by an unholy amount of hollows that wanted to rip her apart. That just brought back old and bad memories, ones she'd rather forget.
A gorilla hollow brought its hand up onto one of the edges of the building she was watching from. She fired a shot at it, its fingers blasting off and causing it to tumble away from the building.
Hopefully, it would fall on something below and kill it or die falling. Either way, one less enemy she had to deal with. If only she could fly, she could get out of the situation. Instead, she had to watch the skies as another pterodactyl-type hollow attempted to dive at her like it was a hawk. It did not end well for it as she simply waited until the last moment before blasting it in the face with a heilig pfeil.
She may not have engaged in much ground to air combat, but she had to deal with one or two evil mages descending on her from a higher position, usually trying to use the sun as cover for their attack. Unfortunately for this hollow, it had not even bothered to do that, instead just diving from any angle that it felt like. She thought so. She had a pair of sunglasses just for good measure, an old habit from her last life after fighting in the snows of Russia. It served her well in this exact situation, though it wouldn't get her out of the current trap she was in. Sooner or later, these hollows would overwhelm her position, and she would be eaten. Which would be the end of her from her own understanding. Because she had the ability to fight hollows, you don't go to the Spirit World when you're eaten by them. You simply are destroyed, and your soul just ceases to exist. Probably the only option to make it into the Soul Society at that point would be to hope that a Soul Reaper was nearby when that happened and gave her last rites before this hollow bit down on her neck and killed her for good.
Well, at the moment, that seems unlikely. More likely, she was on her last life, and if it was going to be her last life, she'd make it an end to go down as a hero. This would be a better death than her last one, that was for sure. At least this one was to protect other people and not, well, what the last one had been about. Revenge sure had been a double-edged sword in the end, something she'd try and remember in the future.
And at that thought, a flying hollow launched itself into the air from where it had been hiding behind a building. It attempted to take her by surprise. In fact, it had taken her by surprise. Too many hollows all around made it harder for her to figure out where they were going to come from next. Thankfully, she was not alone that day. A massive sword met the hollow at the last possible moment and cleaved it in two. Looking at the large blade, she followed the handle to where Ichigo was standing, apparently having just arrived, looking to be in a not particularly happy mood.
"Ichigo, thank goodness you're here," she said, moving closer to him as he killed another hollow that tried to crawl its way up the side of the building.
"Yeah, it looks like you could use a little help," he muttered, kicking another hollow that attempted to get on top of the building. "Seems to be after you with some abandon here."
"Yeah, I don't think they like me," she muttered, firing a shot down into another hollow as it tried to crawl up the side.
"Yeah, I kind of get that feeling too," Ichigo said, looking around before saying, "Well, at the current rate they're going, they're going to tear this entire building down. Do we have any better plans than sticking on top of here? 'Cause I might have something."
Akita shook her head before saying, "My plans have already gone completely down the drain. If I could fly, I'd get out of here, but I can't really do that."
"Ha, not within a Quincy power set? Good to know. Your cousin literally screwed this up, and if I have to beat his ass for this, at least I know you won't be able to fly away, and I can track them down."
"Uryū did this?" she asked, shocked, before saying, "He would never do something so rash."
"He claims it was an accident, but let's be serious here. Walking around with something called 'Hollow Bait' in your pocket sounds like you're asking for trouble."
"A good point," she said with a nod of her head before adding, "Well, my plans are dead. What are yours?"
"Well, my plan was to find my sisters to make sure they're safe at home away from all this madness. I still plan to do that, but it's getting a lot harder to break through the amount of hollows that are just coming at me. I'm hoping that's a sign that most of them are going to come at me and not go towards home."
"And that means if you go home, they're just going to come at you at home, putting your sisters in danger," she said, nodding her head, causing him to stop for a moment.
"I hadn't thought that through, but yes, that's true," he admitted, rubbing his head. "So what I've started to think is we fight our way towards the center of town, the Central Park flat territory. These creatures will be forced to come towards us, and the more powerful people there are in that one location, hopefully the more they'll come at us."
"Makes sense," she said with a shrug, "but how are we going to break through this horde of monsters?There's kind of a lot of them around us, and I don't know how to get through all that," she said, indicating the growing horde of hollows.
"Well, I have an idea. You might not like it, though," Ichigo said, moving from a two-handed stance to a one-handed one.
"Anything's better than what we have right now," she said, putting a hand on her hip.
"Alright then, sorry about this." In a smooth motion, Ichigo knelt down and wrapped his arm around her waist before pulling her up into an over-the-shoulder carry, leaving her hanging off his shoulder in stunned silence.
"How exactly does this help?" she asked, one hand holding onto his black clothing, the other holding onto her bow, hoping that her skirt was long enough that this was not giving anyone in front of Ichigo a show.
"Well, because I can do this," he said, running and jumping off the edge of the building before landing on a power pole. It was a bit wobbly on the first one, but then he jumped to the second and started to find his stride as he kept jumping pole to pole.
"Okay, now I get the plan, and this is good," she said, still holding onto his clothing as they moved.
"Yeah, so I need confirmation. Are they following us?" Ichigo asked, causing her to look back at where they had just departed. Behind them was the still steadily growing horde, and they were giving chase, running after them as they moved from pole to pole trying to catch up.
"Yeah, quite a lot of them are chasing after us. I'd say all of them, actually."
"Good, then the plan's working. All we need to do is continue to use these poles, and we should make it to the park with no issue." Ichigo said as one of the flying hollows attempted to dive bomb him, only to be cut in half by his free sword hand.
"Oh, that being said, feel free to lower the number of following hollows if you can."
"On it," she said, raising her bow and firing off the shots, missing her initial target but hitting another very unlucky hollow behind the first one.
Okay, well maybe she wouldn't die today after all. Sure, there was a horde of hollows hunting her, but at least there was a plan now, and hopefully, others would come to the same conclusion as Ichigo that the park was probably the most open place to fight these things without drawing much notice.
Hopefully…
"Well, the chaos in the streets is continuing," Kisuke Urahara thought as he looked outside the shop. Thankfully, most of the area around his shop was secure, with old wards and the kids and the old spellcaster doing their job of keeping the place safe. But it was a present danger that the hollows were out in numbers that had not been seen in the World of the Living in some time, and that gave him the most concern.
The last time he'd seen numbers this bad was probably near the midpoint of World War I. Quite a lot of bodies never found their proper burial, and quite a lot of souls never found their way to the lands of the Soul Society. They were still feeling some of the after-effects of that whole event. No one really liked to think about what exactly the souls created by such conflicts were going to turn into once they became hollows or even more powerful hollows than the lesser variants. They were used to killing in mass numbers, unlike many serial killers or people who simply died in a place where their soul was not found, so they would probably be a problem.
But hopefully, most of the souls from that conflict have been dealt with by the reapers of the time, and any that were missed were devoured by older hollows before they could start progressing. Well, that was the hope, anyways. It could always turn out much worse than what was expected, especially considering who was hiding amongst the current captains. Who knew exactly what their plans would be for the future? Not even he was on the forefront of fighting them.
No, but that was a discussion for another time. Right now, he was focusing on the hollows that had been dropping over the city like literal rain. Thankfully, as soon as they fell, they locked onto the powerful souls throughout the city and began hunting them. Well, maybe not thankfully for the people who'd been mauled that were just a little bit on the heavier side of spiritual power, but that was a small number. For the most part, he'd been working to get those who were too powerful and didn't know how to use it into the safety of his shack.
So far, he'd grabbed Chad, who apparently awakened his Fullbring and murdered a hollow that had been trying to kill him, and Ichigo's sister. Quite a successful little attack she pulled off too, smashing the hollow's head in real good. Of course, she'd been left drained and unable to fight, which was why she was now lying down in a room behind him, recovering.
But he had to admit, the kid had some power and could probably be useful. Well, he shouldn't be thinking about things like that. Hopefully, what was probably going to come to pass would not come to pass, and this would all go under the bridge. But that seemed very unlikely. More likely was that this incident would accelerate any investigations into Rukia's disappearance tenfold. There was probably already a drone of some type moving about, trying to figure out what was causing all the commotion, or there would be soon enough. Heavy negative energy like this tended to draw the notice of the Soul Society's 12th division, and there was no way they weren't investigating this situation now.
If things went badly, there would probably be someone sent to take Rukia back, and taking back Rukia meant a certain little object would be in the Soul Society within reach of the captain of the 5th division. If that happened, he would have to engage in some backup plans, trying to find some way to remove the Hōgyoku before that happened, or rescue Rukia before Aizen got his hands on it. It was a hard business when you're banished from the Soul Society, but not an impossible one. He had been working on gateways back to the Soul Society for decades. He didn't think he would ever use them, but he had them.
His thoughts of possible futures were interrupted as he felt a little rumble in the ground. It was imperceptible to those who weren't of a high spiritual pressure, but those who were could tell that there was something big coming. What this big thing could be was still up in the air. No doubt it was probably going to draw the notice of the Soul Reapers no matter what it was.
Letting out a sigh, he got up and stretched his back. What was the best way to handle this situation was hard to come to a conclusion about. If he stepped in and fought the creatures openly, he would probably just expose himself to whatever drones were running around. Information would be acquired, and no doubt he would have Soul Society on his ass, forcing him to move from the city. Of course, if he left it to the youngsters, as he had been, there was a chance they'd all die, but well, so far they were doing fine.
Better than fine in that one mysterious case. He didn't know how the orange-haired girl had acquired whatever Fullbringer power she had, but she not only managed to defeat the hollow that tried to eat her at school, but also saved her friend from the life-threatening injuries she had taken fighting the creature herself, bare-handed.
And hats off to her. Sure, she was just human. She didn't have an ounce of spiritual pressure above what a human should have, as far as he could see, but she'd managed to not only defeat the human subjects under the hollow's control, but also managed to give the hollow itself a good beating before it attempted to murder her when it could not get her under control. She had some serious willpower and ability to fight. Too bad she didn't have any powers.
That being said, it was tempting to look into the possibility of finding some way to give her powers. It wasn't like there were any rules preventing him from doing what he wanted, as Soul Society already banished him. If he wanted to investigate things that they wouldn't let him investigate, so be it. Though he would get her consent before doing that. He wasn't like the current captain of the 12th, at least. He was willing to give a person a choice on the matter, but that was for another day.
Thinking of Orihime Inoue, he thought the name was, she was inside the shack as well, healing up. Tatsuki was not as powerful as Orihime, so she didn't need to bring her to his hideout, but he figured that being a friend of Orihime it would be a lot easier to talk to the orange haired girl if they were together and not wondering where Tatsuki had gone, especially considering they'd both been left in a rather unstable condition with plenty of wounds.
Well, no matter the situation, he was probably going to have to explain some things – well, as much as he could have theoretically explained to them. Oh sure, he could erase their memories of all this, but looking over his shoulder, he had to admit those two had managed to defeat hollows. With some training, they could probably do a little bit more, and who knows what the future may bring? If each got more allies, it probably would be a lot easier to pull off an operation to retrieve the Hōgyoku.
Hmm, oh well. He'd have to worry about that in a bit. Right now, they needed to figure out where everything was going to go down. Fact of the matter was this was not going to end with a slow steady decline of the hollow population. Oh sure, he'd love for that to be the outcome, but the matter was pretty much settled that something big was coming through. He could feel it in the air itself. Not to mention what that hollow wolf said, giving Ichigo a bit of a heads up on whatever was coming, had basically made it clear something big was on the other side. What that big thing would be was, well, obvious. How it was there, though, was the intriguing question.
Theoretically, something like that should not be anywhere near the World of the Living, but yet here it was. The question was, who would put it there? Had Aizen developed some new ability that he was unaware of? Some new power that allowed him to control the hollows? Or was this an unrelated incident? There were many questions that needed answering and not many answers that were coming to talk to him.
Shaking his head, he was brought out from his thoughts by a cat that jumped down from the roof above them onto his shoulder.
"Oh, well, what are you doing here?" he said, raising an eyebrow at the cat as it sat there licking its paw.
"Just checking up on how things are going over here. Chaos has quite firmly taken over the streets. Wanted to make sure that they hadn't taken over the old household."
Smiling, he said, "Thankfully they haven't, but not everything is under control, though. I'm wondering where the final combat will happen for this whole battle. Usually, when something like this happens, somewhere becomes the pillar of a battlefield."
"Hmm, I think that's going to be the park," the cat said.
"Oh," he asked, turning to the cat. "How do you know that?"
"Well, it's quite simple. Ichigo and Akita are already there fighting. Uryū boy is going to be there in a few minutes by my calculations. He's fighting his way through."
"Three against a hundred are not great odds. Perhaps we should make our way over there."
"Perhaps so. It's not three, it's four, though," the cat said, arching its back, causing him to look at it more closely.
"Oh, who's the fourth to our little party?" he asked out of curiosity.
"Oh, you know who it is, or you should. What other reaper has been around recently?"
He nodded his head. "Tanya's back. Ah well, perfect time for her to show back up. All hell's broken loose, and we could use a little help. Where's she going?"
"Last I saw her, well, she was acting like a mini-monster, slaughtering hollows as she went towards the park, as well. Probably thinking along the same lines as the others; that place would be the optimal location to kill all those hollows without getting people in danger."
"Hmm, well then I think we know where we're heading once I get these two up to speed and tell them to start watching the fight," he said, turning to look over his shoulder at the still-unconscious Fullbringer and whatever Orihime was.
He could tell that their powers weren't exactly the same. Fullbringers were always more of a negative energy well, whereas Orihime was closer to a positive energy, not Quincy positive, but closer to a soul reaper if anything, strangely enough. That was a mystery to solve another day, though, one where there were no monsters rampaging through the streets.
"By the way, Rukia is on her way here, probably trying to get your help in the fighting."
"Hmm, makes sense. She always uses little ol' hat-and-clogs in the middle of an emergency. Guess I'll have to wait until she gets here to go give them aid."
"Really now, going to wait that long? What do you have planned 'little ol' hat-in-clogs'?" the cat said, furrowing its brow, indicating that it was suspicious of his motives.
Smiling, he said, "Oh, nothing too major. I'm simply investing in the future, preparing for other plans that I didn't think I would have to implement but may now need to implement because of, well, this storm of hollows."
"You're going to let them fight whatever's going to come through, aren't you?"
"That's it exactly. I'm going to let Ichigo fight whatever comes through, and I think it'll make him stronger and more capable to deal with what he will need to stand up to in the future."
The cat coughed and shook its head, laughing. "Well, as long as you don't let them die, I'm sure you won't be murdered by Ichigo's dad. Though that's the point, you better not let that kid die."
"I won't, I won't," he said before hearing a groan from behind him, indicating that the kids were starting to wake up. "And now it's showtime," he said, turning towards them, getting ready to give a speech that should draw them into the plan necessary to deal with this situation.
Well, it's good to see when your plan works. All around Ichigo, he was surrounded by hollows coming after him as if they had nothing better in the world to do. To be fair, considering that they were apparently after his spiritual energy, they probably didn't have anything better to do. So he just kept slashing and cutting them as they got closer, dicing them to pieces as they charged out of the woods around him.
He tried to get to the central area of the park, but Central Avenue Park still had people in it. This off-section, where there were woods, did not, so this was a safer place to make the last stand. And so far, they were winning, killing quite a lot of hollows in exchange for getting very tired.
Akita was off his shoulder now and kneeling towards the center of the road, taking shots at anything trying to come down the central pathway. Meanwhile, he cut down anything that got past that or through the woods. The teamwork was working, and so far, it looked like they were going to pull this off. There may actually be a little bit of a lesser amount of hollows coming through, but it's hard to tell. Either way, survivability was on the plate, and they just needed to keep fighting.
Hopefully, Rukia would find Hat-and-Clogs, and they'd bring some cavalry. He knew they had something to fight hollows. Otherwise, they would have gotten involved when Kon went rogue with his body. So, with any luck, they would join them here.
Either that or the idiot responsible for all this would show up, whenever Uryū figured out which way he had gone. He assumed Uryū was also fighting hollows, but where he was fighting was up in the air. He could be on his way here, or he could still be at the school. Hopefully, he'd be making his way towards the largest concentration of hollows. And since two high spiritual people were here in the park, this would be the location to head towards.
"Ichigo, look out!" yelled Akita, pointing in the right direction just in time for Ichigo to block a shot from an arrow. The blue glowstick of energy pinged off his sword and hit a tree before evaporating, making him wonder what the hell was wrong with Uryū. Slashing at a hollow in between him and the most likely direction he just had deflected the shot from he saw exactly what was wrong with Uryū. He was breathing heavily and looked nearly out of stamina, still manifesting a bow, but it looked weakened. Most likely, he didn't have as much training as Akita. Though, on second thought, looking back, she was in a similar state. They both were on their last few legs and running out of energy to defend themselves. So instead of berating him for nearly killing him, he said, "I'll assume that was an accident. Get over here. If it wasn't, stay where you are. I'll beat your ass in a moment."
Uryū blinked for a moment before nodding, running over to join his cousin, taking a knee, and catching his breath.
He himself also took a breath, noting that he wasn't in much better shape than those two. He had been fighting non-stop for three hours now, maybe more, and the hollows just kept coming.
He turned towards Uryū while they still had some time as the hollows seemed to have pulled back. Now that there were three of them, they were probably just reevaluating their attacks. That was more likely than the hollows actually giving up.
"Well, this has gone splendidly. What was it you said earlier, that there would be only about a hundred of them?"
"I admit I seem to have miscalculated how many hollows could be waiting on the other side of the divide," Uryū said, while taking a moment to rub his glasses clean, though it seemed to have not worked well as his fingers were currently bleeding. He made a noise of annoyance before trying again and putting the glasses back on. "That being said, we are doing good work here. I mean, I'm sure I've killed about 40 at this point. How about you guys?"
There was silence as neither one of them knew how to respond to that before Akita finally said, "I haven't been keeping count, there's too many."
"Same," Ichigo said with a shrug, adding, "I didn't see a reason to keep count after the tenth one."
"Oh, well, that's unfortunate. Anyway, we have to be getting closer. There has to be an end to all this. There cannot be unlimited numbers of hollows waiting on the other side of this divide. Sooner or later, this will end. We've just got to keep fighting through it."
"And how are we going to do that? You two look like you can barely hold yourselves together," Ichigo pointed out.
"We just need a moment to breathe. We'll absorb plenty of spiritual energy from the air around us and we'll be fine for an attack. Just buy us some time," Akita settled with a shake of her head, getting back up.
"I'll try, but I'm not much better, Ichigo," he admitted, getting up and cracking his neck, taking a defensive stance, and waiting for the next attack.
Said attack looked like it was about to be four hollows running directly down the road, with many animal parts mixed together to form creatures that barely looked theoretically possible.
They didn't get very far, though, as a silver-cloaked figure dropped down between them and the hollows, carrying what looked like a giant spear-axe-sword thing.
He blinked, and the figure was already moving, chopping through the first layer of creatures, wildly cutting with the extended weapon, slashing and chopping through the ranks. He blinked again, and the figure was nearly caught off guard by another larger creature bursting through the wood line, only for the cape to wrap around the creature's arm and bring it in close so that the cloaked figure could put what looked like a sword sheath to its head and, well, explode it, sending hollow gunk all over the place.
All of this was quite dramatic and quick, and dare he say a sign of hope as they apparently found another ally who was a bit up there, though guessing about the size, it kind of looked like Tanya.
Except, they weren't really acting like the Tanya he remembered. Before, they'd always had a cool head in combat and didn't seem to have a need for showing off. This one was frankly giggling with madness as she chopped her way through the hollow ranks, one hand wielding a giant polearm, as he remembered the name for her weapon. Her cape seemed to provide some sort of stability when it came into range and acted as another arm, while the other hand used the sword sheath like some sort of direct fire spellcaster, sending explosions of energy into anything that got too close to her.
She was unleashing a massacre on the hollows in front of her, killing them as quickly as they appeared and forcing them to reevaluate their life choices at a steady pace. It was impressive.
Of course, there were more hollows than the ones in front of her, as plenty were coming from the sides and back. Now that there were four of them, it was a little easier. The two Quincys handled the ones coming from the sides, trying to attack her or come at them from the woods, while Ichigo turned his attention to the ones coming too close from the woods and the rear. The butchery continued; stab, slash, shoot, hollow upon hollow charged from the woods and died for their effort.
After a while, they finally stopped coming, and they were standing in a basic bunker of hollow corpses that was dissolving. Everyone appeared to be out of breath. Looking over at where Tanya was standing, Ichigo asked, hoping he was right, "Tanya, is that you?"
The girl turned, revealing that, yes, it was her. Her eyes visibly glowing through the use of her spellcraft, and her cloak appearing to have shrunk about a foot or two. Not only was it coming down to her elbows when she first arrived, but it had definitely been to her waist or further.
"Yeah, it's me. Now, explain to me why this entire town is infested with hollows. I thought I was keeping this place under control. The last time I was here, I thought you would do a good job keeping it under control. What the hell happened?"
Ichigo looked at Uryū with a bit of thought before saying, "No idea. Something must have triggered them or something."
"That's just dandy," Tanya said, shaking her head as she moved closer. "Something triggered or summoned a horde of hollows. That sounds like some sort of crazy evil organization plotting to take over the world kind of stuff. Please tell me that's not true." Oddly enough, she wasn't looking at Ichigo when she said that. Instead, she was looking over her shoulder and seemed to get a response, which caused her to shake her head even more. Which was frankly a bit concerning.
"Tanya, you okay?" Akita said, getting up from where she had been kneeling down and stumbling a bit as she moved closer. "You look a bit out of it."
"Oh, I'm fine, I'm fine. Just a bit tired. Used a lot of spiritual energy to get over here to kill these things, and I think we've managed to kill all of them. But who is to say?"
"I think we did get all of them. After all, if there were more, I'm pretty sure they'd be coming for us. The most powerful souls in the entire town are right here in this park. So, if there were more monsters, they'd be tearing their way through the town and the forest to get to us," Uryū said, trying to be reassuring.
"Of course, if they've been summoned to the edge of the town and are doing that right now, it's just going to take them a bit to get here," Akita said, pointing out the flaw in that thought.
"Either way, that means we have maybe 10 to 20 minutes of rest. So, if you have water or food, it's better to get it down now because we're probably going to have another wave of these things sooner or later," Tanya said, reaching into a side satchel and pulling out a bottle of water. She quickly drank some of it down.
The rest of the people there looked at each other a bit surprised and then shrugged as they didn't have anything to drink or eat.
Tanya noticed that and shook her head, saying, "Ichigo, get to the end of the book. Within the book, I stated in there that you should have supplies for replenishing your spiritual energy on you at all times."
"Wait, you gave him a book?" Uryū asked.
"No, I didn't. And you did not hear that. Pretend you didn't hear anything else we talked about today," Tanya said, giving him the death stare that probably sent many soldiers scurrying during her time in World War 1.
"Well, either way, we got this under control…" Ichigo trailed off as he felt a flood of negative energy and turned to look back towards the central area of the park, the open area where he had planned to make his final stand. The sky was cracking, and a white-gloved hand seemed to be poking through the darkness on the other side of that crack in the sky.
"What the hell is that?!" Akita said, which was basically what everyone was thinking at that exact moment.
Writers note: oh boy looks like a hollow storm is kicking off, he really should have kept that hollow bait in a better protected container damn thing was bound to break. Also you may notices chapter title well curalleyl updating old doc and it lot easier to updates old doc on fanfiction if chapter has title so…
Please comment, review, and generally enjoy yourselves…
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Community edited by:L, Coltsguy
Community editable doc (Chapter) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread
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AnimeFan13579: yes
evilstatistic19: here you go
ksfb17: that is an idea
Silverwingzz: get better
Guest: hmm true but if we knew what he thinking how could i tell story haha