Episode 78: Immovable Objects
Di Roy leaned over the edge of the tower’s roof, peering down at the pale form of Gaw resting on the ground below. Beside him several of the Arrancar orphan children giggled as they watched him start to hock back a prodigious loogie.
“The real trick, kids, is to make sure you really pull back and put your whole body into the launch,” he said around a massive wad of spit. Proceeding with his demonstration, he leaned back while still keeping his hands on the edge of the tower rampart, then threw himself forward with a loud “Patooie!”
The blob of phlegm went sailing like a slimy meteor through the air, trailing downward until it plopped into the distant sands below, only a few feet from Gaw’s muzzle. The sleeping Adjuchas let out a large, slumbering snort, unaware of the near miss. The Arrancar children who’d watched the descent let out a series of ‘Oooos’, and one of them, a rambunctious looking lad with brown hair, a scar across his nose, and a half portion of skull mask riding high on his scalp, raised a hand.
“Boss Roy! How many points for hitting Auntie Gaw?”
Di Roy stroked his chin, “Hmm, ten points for the body, twenty if you get her in the head! I’ll snag some loot from the human world for whoever gets the most points!”
Enthusiastically the children started to hock back loogies of their own, challenging each other for who would get the most points. Di Roy grinned at the display, hands on his hips as he watched the growing delinquents with pride.
“I like your attitudes, kiddos. Now, ready... aim...”
Before he could say ‘fire’ and let the children cut loose there was a loud and coldly polite clearing of a feminine throat behind him. The kids all froze, several swallowing unshot loogies, and Di Roy broke out in a sweat as he turned to see Roka standing behind him, near one of the withered apple trees spotting the tower rooftop.
Roka was smiling politely, but it held that distinct note of ‘potential imminent stabbing’ to it as she said, “Di Roy, are you teaching the children inappropriate behavior?”
In complete unaware mimicry of a certain actor’s famous bad line, Di Roy said, “Whaaat? Nooo.” He glanced back at the half dozen children who all looked like deer caught in the proverbial headlights, “I was just... uh, about to tell them not to hock loogies at poor Gaw. You know, because that would be rude while she’s sleeping...” And totally hilarious, he thought as an aside, but kept that to himself.
“Ummhmm,” Roka glanced at the kids, her smile softening, “Now children, you know you’re not supposed to play around the roof. You don’t want to worry Father, do you?”
There was a collective chorus of “No, sister Roka.”
Her smile now truly warm, Roka said, “Good. Now run along downstairs and play with your brothers and sisters. Fenice is getting lunch ready. You can play more with Mister Di Roy later.”
Obediently the children ran off downstairs, many of them just as enthusiastic about lunch as they were about spitting loogies off the tower roof. Di Roy watched them go with an amused grin, one that only faltered a bit as Roka gave him the stink eye.
“Hey, they’re not bad, for a bunch of half-pints. Can’t blame me for wanting to have a bit of fun with them.”
Roka nodded, slowly walking up to stand beside him at the tower edge, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t instill in them any bad manners. Do remember you and Miss Gaw are guests here, and that my Father would not appreciate any poor habits his children picked up due to any untoward influences.”
Di Roy rubbed at his neck, “Yeah, fair point. I do like having my head attached to the rest of my body. Still, how are they going to learn to be proper Arrancar if they can’t stretch their legs and be a little bad? Let those little monstrous tendencies run wild.”
“I do believe it is my Father’s intent that they do not grow up to be like ‘proper’ Arrancar,” Roka said, placing her hands on the ramparts and staring out across Las Noches’ vast interior, “He wishes for us to have a better existence than what our nature and circumstances dictate.”
Di Roy shrugged, “He can intend away. We are what we are, you know? We eat souls and kick ass. That’s just the Hollow way.”
“And yet it is not all we need be,” Roka replied, turning a curious stare towards him, “After all, do you not care for your large, silent companion?”
Blinking, Di Roy glanced over the edge, “Gaw? Well, yeah, sure, I dig the dino-gal’s style. We’ve looked out for each other. We give each other crap all the time, but I’d still be bummed out if she bit the big one. What of it?”
Roka raised a hand and touched his chest, right above his Hollow hole. Di Roy flinched at the touch, but there was no hostility in Roka’s stance or eyes, just a sort of soft, sad look of thoughtfulness. “We are souls with holes torn out of us. ‘Hollow’, as they say. But even that void within struggles to remember the things that made us human while we were alive. They’re not gone, only... damaged.”
“Okay, getting a bit existential here for my taste,” Di Roy said, stepping back, frowning behind his shark mask, “I ain’t trying to make some philosophical hullabaloo about Hollows, Roka. Just saying that being soul devouring, violent monsters is kinda our ballpark. Playing Brady Bunch in this tower won’t change that. Those kids are gonna grow up, eventually, and have to deal with the asshole Espadas and their cronies, and the fact that they won’t have anyone to rely on but themselves and maybe each other. So if I want to encourage a bit of independent thinking by having them spit off a freakin’ tower, I think I’m doing them a favor.”
There was the smallest of laughs from Roka as she raised a hand to her mouth, smiling, and Di Roy tilted his head at her.
“What’s so funny?”
“Oh, nothing. You’re an unusual individual, Mister Di Roy. I appreciate that you are looking out for the children. You do seem to be quite good with them. A fortunate, and altogether uncommon quality.”
“Uhhhh...okay?” Di Roy said, not quite understanding, but glad at least she’d gone from ‘stab face’ to quiet laughter. Honestly he found Roka weirdly unnerving, and wasn’t sure she didn’t have some of Lament’s loopiness about her. He understood Gaw way better, and she didn’t even speak.
Roka’s expression turned more serious a moment later, her eyes glancing towards the south, where even here it was possible to feel the faint blanket of spiritual pressures from the battle taking place outside. “We should go back inside.”
Di Roy shared her trepidation. He was almost glad he’d gotten a horrific stomach wound. It gave him the perfect excuse to not be involved in any of that craziness. He was relieved Gaw wasn’t out there either. Adagio... well, Adagio he wasn’t too worried about. The boss lady wasn’t the kind of person to be taken out that easily, and Di Roy knew a survivor when he saw one. He had a sneaking suspicion that Adagio would outlive all of them.
Blowing off Roka’s worries with a wave of his hand, he said, “Aw, don’t sweat it. That fight’ll be over before you know it, and the Quincy will be heading back to the human world with their sorry asses sore from all the boots being shoved up-”
The doors on the tower’s ground floor exploded, the massive iron slabs blasted right off their hinges in a burst of blue reishi. The entire tower was rocked by the explosion, and Di Roy was nearly shaken off his feet, but caught himself on the rampart and looked over the edge just in time to see someone rushing inside the tower. He couldn’t see who they were, only that they were wearing white. Which meant nothing, given Arrancar and Quincy alike wore white, but since Di Roy didn’t sense any Hollow reiatsu, that left only one other option.
“Quincy,” he swore under his breath, “How the hell did they get inside!?”
Roka’s eyes were wide, “The children!”
She turned and rushed for the hatchway that’d lead down into the tower, and after taking a second to spit out another curse, Di Roy drew his sword and followed her.
----------
Twilight Velvet wasn’t interested in wasting time. Every second spent here was a second that Cadence and Sassy would be left one member short, and with two Espada to potentially deal with they couldn’t afford to have their team split up for long. Fortunately she didn’t sense any especially potent reiatsus within the tower. The Adjuchas that was sleeping outside wasn’t even worth the trouble to kill, so Velvet had just blown off the doors and rushed inside.
The plan was to find the human souls, wiping out any Hollow that got in her way, and lead them to safety. If all went smoothly, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.
Entering the tower’s ground floor, Velvet took in her surroundings in a moment. A circular entry hall lined by stone columns, stairs carved into the wall leading up to a doorway, and a few shadowed side doors. Everything was as plain and bleak as she might have expected from a Hollow’s abode. She didn’t take more than a second to look around before leaping up to the door at the top of the stairs. She sensed the human souls further above, and wasn’t about to slow down to search every room of this tower.
She kicked open the doors easily enough, finding a winding stairwell circling upward. She saw more doors dotting the stairwell’s expanse, and took a moment to focus her senses to divine the locations of the reiatsu she was sensing. There was a large cluster of Hollow spiritual pressures about a third of the way up, with a pair of stronger pressures near the top of the tower. The human spirit energies were in-between, around halfway up the tower. Twilight rushed upward at full speed, propelling herself up the tower in an eye-blink.
She reached the doorway situated halfway up the tower just as it opened, a figure appearing at the landing of the stairs with a truly massive sword in hand.
Twilight Velvet had her arbalest aimed and ready, but froze as she recognized the face of the person in front of her.
“You!?”
Her exclamation came right on the heels of Sunset Shimmer, wielding a broad bladed sword as tall as her own body, attacked with a powerful overhand swing and a look of bright fury in her eyes. Even shocked as she was to see the girl who’d become her daughter's friend here, Twilight Velvet’s combat instincts and reflexes were more than swift enough for her to turn her arbalest around to block the blow. Her weapon, forged from powerful reishi and reinforced with her own spirit energy was more than up to the task of absorbing the blow, but because she wasn’t fully braced for it the strength and momentum of the strike still drove her down the open shaft in the middle of the tower.
She caught herself about twenty feet from the bottom, halting in mid air as she looked back up at Sunset Shimmer, still trying to shake off her surprise. What was Sunset Shimmer doing here!? Had the foolish girl’s own battles with the Hollows led to her capture? It wouldn’t be that shocking to Velvet if that had been the case. The last time she’d seen Sunset, the girl and her friends had been intending to come to Hueco Mundo on some ill advised rescue mission. That must have gone wrong, and led to her capture.
Yet, if that was the case how was it that Sunset Shimmer was clearly free of any bonds, and armed? In fact why was she attacking Twilight Velvet at all? To further compound the mystery, the sword Sunset was holding was not a Zanpaktou. Velvet knew what the spirit energy of a Zanpaktou felt like, and that sword wasn’t one. In fact, the reiatsu of Sunset Shimmer felt quite different than the last time Velvet had seen her. Still human, but with a faintly Hollow tinge.
Has she somehow been turned to the Hollows’ side?
Whatever the truth was, Velvet didn’t have much time to consider it as Sunset Shimmer strode to the edge of the stair landing and leaped straight off, dive bombing towards Velvet with her giant blade swinging up with both hands then crashing downward. As this happened the sword spewed forth steam and heat, glowing orange veins of magma spreading over its surface. Not inclined to just sit on the defensive this time, Velvet set her face in a cold frown and aimed her arbalest up.
Very well, if you want to attack me blindly, Sunset Shimmer, you won’t find me an easy target.
She could save her questions until after she defeated the girl. At this point she had every intention of capturing Sunset Shimmer and dragging her back to the Silburn for interrogation. if Sunset had switched sides, she might have valuable intel. Besides, she could hardly let a human traitor walk free, especially one that had nearly dragged Velvet’s own daughter into a suicide mission.
A sphere of reishi fired out of her arbalest cannon muzzle and rocketed up towards Sunset. The girl barely had time to adjust the angle of her blade in order to block it, but even then the sphere halted Sunset’s descent and then it exploded in a shower of reishi arrows. Sunset’s body took several wounds from the shrapnel arrows, which flew all over the tower shaft. The explosion also slammed Sunset into the wall, where she almost fell but instead managed to right herself and land on the stairwell, where she pulled an arrow free from her leg and stood with an angered glare.
“I don’t know who you are, but I’m booting your ass straight back out the door!” Sunset shouted, extending her sword out. Magma grew from the blade’s edge and pooled at its tip.
Velvet paused, frowning in confusion. Did Sunset not recognize her? They hadn’t exactly exchanged much in the way of words, but she doubted Sunset could have so quickly forgotten what Velvet looked like. If that wasn’t confusing enough, she soon heard something she never expected to hear in Hueco Mundo, let alone within the walls of Las Noches; the voices of children.
“Hey! Big Sis Fenice is fighting somebody!”
“Whoa! Awesome! Go Big Sis, kick her butt!”
“Wow, is that a Quincy? I’ve never seen one before. She’s got a scary face.”
Back on the landing for the door that was halfway up the tower a number of young faces peered over the side, a gaggle of children who looked like they could be anywhere from six to twelve watching the battle unfold with wide eyes. What was even more unexpected was the fact that many of these children had partial skull pieces or other bone fragments on their faces that were the tell tale traits of Arrancar.
Arrancar... children?
She nearly froze at the sight. Of course the Quincy had, over the centuries, made a study of their most hated foes. Hollows of all stages of evolution had been captured and dissected in Quincy labs for the sake of garnering greater knowledge of how to better combat them. So it was not unknown to the Quincy that the Arrancar, who possessed the most human-like traits among Hollows, were theoretically capable of producing offspring in the same manner more normal souls could. However while they knew it was possible, there’d never been an actual encounter with an Arrancar child. It was generally assumed what few, unfortunate progeny were produced in Las Noches rarely lived long in the cut throat society of the Hollows, and certainly never left the fortress unless they grew to adulthood.
As such it was shocking enough to see just one Arrancar child, let alone a whole pack of them, seemingly in good care, and excitedly spectating the battle. If Twilight Velvet wasn’t as experienced and well trained as she was her moment of distraction would have left her vulnerable as Fenice unleashed a blast of spreading magma towards her. Fortunately Velvet shook off her surprise in a mere moment and dodged aside, hitting the wall and running up it in long strides as the magma splashed down behind her.
Now that she was getting over her initial shock of both seeing Sunset Shimmer and the Arrancar children here, Velvet was tapping into more of her power and used a much faster Hirenkyaku than before to rocket up the tower shaft and appear behind Sunset. She grabbed Sunset by the back of the head before the girl could react, and proceeded to spin Sunset around and slammed her face-first into the tower wall. Sunset managed to keep hold of her magma coated blade, and despite being shoved headlong into a stone wall, she swung back with the giant sword and forced Velvet to evade. She flipped over the swing easily and used her arbalest like a makeshift club, smashing Sunset into the wall once more.
Before Sunset could recover, Velvet shoved the muzzle of her cannon-like weapon into the girl’s chest and fixed her with a hard stare.
“What are you doing here, Sunset Shimmer? Have you joined the Hollows?”
Eyes like bright pools of spring water glared back heatedly, but Velvet saw the confusion, recognition, and fear in Sunset’s eyes as she said, “My name is Fenice! I don’t know who you think you’re talking about, but I’m not her. Now leave, before I burn you to ash!”
Velvet felt a spike of reiatsu from the girl, and saw that her sword’s tip was touching the floor next to her. She sensed the heat a second before a jet stream of lava shot up from the ground, but that second was enough for her to leap out of the way. Sunset, or Fenice, or whatever she wanted to call herself, charged forward with her sword swinging in a wide arc. Velvet once again had little trouble avoiding the attack, already having garnered a sense of Fenice’s skills and fighting style. She was able to wield that huge sword far easier and swifter than Velvet would have thought possible, but was still much slower than Velvet. The only real danger was from the unpredictable splashes of magma coming off the blade, but even that was something Velvet could readily avoid
She’s stronger than a first class soldat, certainly, but she’s not an equal to a Sternritter like myself. She wields that sword with ferocity but not much finesse.
It was strange. This power and fighting style didn’t at all match with what little Velvet had seen of Sunset Shimmer before. There wasn’t even a trace of Soul Reaper powers left. Was it possible this really wasn’t Sunset Shimmer, but just a girl who bore a striking resemblance? No, she’d recognized her name, even if she was denying it was hers. This so called ‘Fenice’ had to be lying. Yet there were still things about this that didn’t make any sense.
Doesn’t matter. I’ll just capture her and get the truth later. I’ve wasted enough time here.
Despite having that thought it hadn’t even been half a minute since she’d entered the tower, so she wasn’t that strapped for time. Still ‘Fenice’ was a distraction Velvet could ill afford, so she quickly enhanced her left first with the glowing red veins of Blut Arterie and proceeded to duck under another of Fenice’s swings, delivering a hammer blow to the girl’s sternum. Fenice’s eyes went wide for a second, spittle flying from her lips as she hung motionless, stunned from the hit.
Since carrying the girl normally would be a pain, Velvet used the opportunity to utilize a variation on the Quincy ability to create reishi strands. What was usually a technique for helping a Quincy move in spite of injuries was easily adapted to a binding technique not unlike some Soul Reaper Kido spells. Small, but strong strands of blue reishi particles extended from Velvet’s hand and in a flash bound up Fenice and her sword like a cocoon. Velvet wanted to bring the girl’s sword so it could be studied. She suspected it was a Fullbring. It had a similar feel to the ones her friends from long ago used.
Which was another oddity. The Fullbrings her friend’s daughters used had a distinctly different sensation to them, probably due to the magic from that other world. This Fullbring, however, felt more like the ones used by Xcution, without any trace of the magic affecting it.
Shaking off the nagging questions in her mind, Velvet started floating upward with the stunned Fenice in tow, much to the cries of dismay from the Arrancar children. However a bare instant later Velvet sensed the two Hollow reiatsu from before descending towards her at a rapid pace, and frowned as two forms appeared on either side of her, blades drawn for battle.
“I will give you only one chance to let go of my sister and leave this tower of your own accord, Quincy,” said a young Arrancar woman. She wore a similar voluminous dark robe to what Fenice wore, and held a dagger in an inverted grip.
“Yeah, Roka, I don’t think this chick is gonna listen to reason,” said an odd looking Hollow that seemed like a strange hybrid between an Arrancar and a lower evolution species. Humanoid form aside, his most prominent feature was the ludicrous looking shark-mask that was covering his head, with his human features and eyes just barely visible within the shadows of the shark’s mouth. He carried a blade that looked like a curved, serrated shark’s tooth.
Velvet’s frown deepened, sparing a glance between these two. Neither one felt particularly powerful, and she wasn’t interested in engaging in a conversation with Hollows. She spun, firing two shots, one at both Hollows. The blasts were the same concentrated spheres of reishi her arbalest normally fired, with one major modification. When they burst, the spray of arrows was focused in a shotgun style spread towards their target rather than a more random all around spread.
Hollows or not, Velvet didn’t want to risk hitting any of the children.
The female Arrancar was surprisingly fast enough to zip out of the way of most of the blast sent her way, although she had to ditch her cloak, which got pierced by multiple arrows. However she was still struck by glancing arrows that cut her flesh as if her Heirro was practically not there, and tore into the clothes beneath her robe, which consisted of a slimming dark green dress.
The shark faced male fared worse, using his sword to shield the main part of his body and head from the spread of arrows but getting several embedded in his limbs while the impacts knocked him into the wall.
“Gah!” the male spat out in pain, clutching at the reishi arrows piercing his arms, “I immediately regret this decision.”
“Di Roy, be careful,” said the female, who rushed Velvet from the side with a fairly quick Sonida, twirling with minimalist grace as she slashed with her dagger. Velvet used her free hand to turn the attack aside, gripping the Arrancar woman’s wrist and flipping her around to slam her down into one of the lower portions of stairwell.
The Arrancar managed to turn the throw into a somewhat controlled landing, the stairwell cracking in half under the impact of how hard Velvet had thrown her, but the woman stood and reached out with a hand. Velvet saw the glint of light off of what looked like over a dozen needles fly out from the sleeves of the Arrancar, trailing with them glittering threads that Velvet imagined were likely razor sharp. Not content to let her opponent do as she pleased, Velvet fired another shotgun style blast from her arbalest, the spread of arrows shredding through the strands and forcing the Arrancar woman to dodge aside to avoid the deadly barrage.
“Be careful, she says,” muttered the odd male, tearing arrows out of his arm one at a time, “Like I wasn’t already trying to do that, Roka!”
“I don’t have time for this,” Velvet muttered, not interested in either Di Roy or Roka’s interference. The only reason she wasn’t using more of her power to just eliminate either one was because she didn’t want to bring down the whole tower. Much as she hated Hollows, she was hesitant to risk side casualties among those children, and on top of that she was here to rescue the human souls she still sensed somewhere above her. If she did too much damage to the tower she’d be putting those souls in danger. It meant she had to scale back her attacks, to a degree.
But only to a degree.
As Di Roy removed the last arrow from his limbs, both arms shaking as blood dripped from them, he gripped his sword and used his legs to propel himself off the wall towards Velvet. She side stepped his thrusting blade, and then proceeded to turn her arbalest around and smashed him across the head with the butt of the weapon. The blow drove him like a nail towards the bottom of the stairs, his spinning body caught by Roka who skidded nearly to the floor to absorb all that momentum.
Velvet used the moment to make sure the reishi threads she had binding up Fenice were tight and secure, then flew upwards with the girl towed behind her. The Arrancar children backed away from the stairs as Velvet sailed past them, at least one or two of the children shouting obscenities at her that certainly would’ve warranted a spanking if they’d been her kids.
She reached the higher stair landing that led to a smaller door beyond which she sensed the human souls. Velvet wasted not a second in kicking the door open and stepping through.
Meanwhile Roka was setting Di Roy down, face drawn up with waves of anxious worry, “Stay here, Di Roy, she’s too strong for you to fight.”
Groaning in a daze, Di Roy gripped her arm and hauled himself up onto his unsteady feet, “Bitch is too strong for you to fight, too. Don’t try to pull any heroic crap, here.”
Roka shook her head, her one visible eye not covered by her skull mask hardening with resolve, “Its nothing like that. I’m just protecting what’s important to me. Now stay put, otherwise I’ll sew your legs together.”
Di Roy gulped at that, entirely certain Roka wasn’t joking. He gave her a dull nod, and Roka offered him a small smile before turning her attention upward and leaped upward, bounding from one wall to the next as she chased after Velvet.
Velvet herself had entered into what looked to be an almost normal living chamber, shaped like a curved rectangle that followed the curvature of the tower. It was filled with several basic beds and drawers, a couple of wood tables and dressers, all very simple like some spartan barracks. She saw what looked to be half a dozen confused and scared looking humans, deceased individuals whose soul chains were clearly visible hanging from their chests.
One of them, a haggard looking middle aged man, stood up from one of the beds as Velvet entered, his voice stammering, “W-who are you?”
Velvet didn’t immediately answer, turning back to the doorway she’d come through and pulled out a pair silver ginto tube. She popped the top and upended the alchemic water upon the ground while infusing it with additional reishi. The water flowed unnaturally, not splashing in a puddle but instead expanding into a circle that then blazed with blue fire as it carved that circle into the floor.
“Spiegelwand,” (Mirror Wall) Velvet intoned, finishing the ward. It wouldn’t hold off Roka for very long, but it’d do the trick for the couple of minutes Velvet needed. Turning to the human souls, she tried to put on as reassuring an expression as she could.
“I’m a friend, and I’m here to rescue you from these soul devouring monsters,” she said, not waiting for a response before raising her arbalest and aiming it at the wall opposite from the door. With a focused blast she was able to hit the wall with a sphere of reishi that exploded a large chunk outwards, forming a hole large enough for several people to go through.
“Wait, what are you doing!? Seriously, who are you?” asked the man with a sound of rising panic in his tone, while a woman just a few years younger came up next to him, staring at Velvet.
“Miss, I don’t know who you are but I think you might be mistaken-”
“There’s no time for chit-chat,” Velvet snapped, extending her reishi outward and utilizing some of the spirit particles within the rubble of the wall to form a large platform of blue energy. It was essentially the same kind of technique the Quincy used to walk on air, only extended to a larger scale. She made sure to make the blue shining disc large enough to fit all of the human souls and turned to them, “Anyone who doesn’t want to stay here should get on, now!”
There was a buzz of noise behind her and she turned to see Roka had reached the door, but had been knocked back by a shimmering wall of translucent blue force stemming from the circle Velvet had created. The Arrancar was now staring hard at the barrier, then beyond it to where Feniece was hanging in the air, floating next to Velvet while still wrapped up in reishi strands. Fenice was moaning slightly, her stunned, unconscious state starting to wear off.
One of the human souls, a younger boy in his early teens, pointed at Fenice, “What are you doing with her? She’s one of the people who’s been looking after us.”
“Looking after you?” Velvet blinked, then took another look at the room. Normally she would have expected prisoners to be in cages, or chained up. If these humans were intended as food, why weren’t they restrained in some way? This room didn’t look like a prison, but just a sleeping quarters. She even noticed there was some food and drinks on one of the tables.
These human souls didn’t look like prisoners at all, but rather cared for guests. But that didn’t make any sense! Hollows only had one use for human souls, and that was as food. What in the world was going on here? With a soft growl under her breath she said, “Whatever’s happening here, you’re all in danger from these Hollows and you’ll be safer getting out of this place and letting my people take you in.”
Her sentence was punctuated by a crack of noise as Roka extended a hand out towards the ward and multiple threads started testing it, bouncing off the barrier of energy with flares of light.
The human souls were all giving each other unsure looks, and Velvet was quickly losing her patience. If need be she’d wrap all of them up in reishi threads and drag them out of here herself! Before she could either start doing that or make another plea to convince the souls to come with her, Fenice awoke with a few bleary eye blinks. Taking in the scene around her, Fenice’s expression flared with rage and she let out a ferocious shout.
Her sword, which Velvet had been towing along with the girl, all but exploded with a wave of magma. The burning liquid rock flowed seemingly like a living thing and slammed towards Velvet, filling the room with a wash of potent heat. With little room to evade, Velvet was forced to leap out of the hole in the wall she’d created, jumping over the stream of magma that splashed out after her. With a grimace of focus Velvet yanked Fenice after her, pulling on the reishi strings constricting the girl. However the magma had burned away enough of the threads that Fenice got an arm free to grab her sword, so that as she was being pulled outside she was also able to swing the large weapon around and unleash another spraying wave of magma at Velvet.
Thoroughly out of patience at this point, Velvet ducked under the molten stream and proceeded to grip the reishi threads she had wrapped around Fenice. She then used them to spin the girl like a yo-yo and launched her into the exterior wall. Velvet flew downward, dragging Fenice along the wall all the way to the bottom, smashing her into the sandy ground. Fenice coughed and sputtered, utterly knocked senseless as her sword fell in a spinning mass, stabbing into the ground a few meters away.
Velvet huffed out a heated breath, her ire rising. Hopefully she hadn’t injured Fenice too badly, but the girl was becoming a real nuisance. She didn’t want Fenice dead, just... tenderized enough to be a nice, compliant level of unconscious. She glanced up the tower, a bit of dust smoke still pouring from the hole she’d blown out of it.
Damn it all, what’s going on here? Those souls weren’t prisoners at all. They clearly didn’t want to leave. But that’s madness.
She’d already wasted too much time, more than she’d wanted to. Yet she couldn’t just leave things as they were, either. She needed to get to the bottom of what was happening in this tower. Perhaps the Hollows were planning something for those souls that was worse than just eating them? Whatever the case, Velvet couldn’t leave without finding out the truth.
Fortunately, now that she was outside the tower again, she could afford to cut loose. Once she’d put down the Hollows guarding the tower then she could drag this irritating Sunset Shimmer copy and every human soul in the tower back outside of Las Noches, and sort out the details later. To that end she started striding towards Fenice, who was twitching on the ground, but not quite unconscious yet.
Huh, would’ve thought being used as a paint roller on that wall would’ve knocked her out. Tough girl. Oh well, just going to have to do this old fashioned way, Velvet thought with a annoyed sigh. However before she got to Fenice, a wavering beam of red energy blasted in at her from the right side, engulfing her in a small explosion.
As the dust from the explosion cleared, Velvet stood there, her skin covered in the gleaming red lines of Blut Vene, which had resisted the relatively weak Cero without much trouble, but her uniform was signed. She shot a sharp eyed glare towards the direction the beam had come from, “Okay, now what!?”
Near the main doors to the tower, which still sat in a mangled heap on either side of the building, a bleeding and sweating Di Roy stood, his hand still raised from his Cero beam. He let out a shaking laugh, “Hah... was kinda hoping a sneak attack would’ve done more. Starting to seriously regret getting out of bed today.”
“You and me both,” Velvet said flatly, “But if you want to go back to sleep, I’m not stopping you. In fact here’s a sleep aid, to help you rest. Eternally.”
She swung her arbalest around and fired a swift series of spherical blasts at him. She was sure he couldn’t dodge them, and admittedly he didn’t. Instead a massive pair of jaws snapped down like a mamma bear snatching up her cub and yanked Di Roy out of the way. The reishi spheres did still impact and explode in showers of arrows, but most of them missed Di Roy and instead impacted into the tower. A few of the arrows struck the hide of the huge Adjuchas Hollow that Velvet had seen earlier, making it stagger away from the tower it’d been using as cover. Apparently the dinosaur shaped Hollow had woken up, peered around the corner of the tower, and yanked Di Roy out of the way in time to save him from getting turned into a pincushion.
“Whoa, Gaw!” Di Roy said, hanging from the dinosaur Hollow’s mouth, “Nice save!”
“Yes,” Velvet said with a hard edged smile, “Nice save.”
Di Roy’s eyes widened, “Gaw, running right now might be a good idea-”
Velvet, quite done with this whole affair, flew straight into the side of Gaw with a Blut Arterie enhanced kick that sent the hundred foot tall, two hundred ton Hollow flying like a pinball. Both Gaw and Di Roy hit the ground in a cratering impact while Velvet dusted her hands off.
“Ah... that felt quite palette cleansing. Do me a favor and neither of you get up,” she said, aiming her arbalest at the fallen pair. Then she paused, glancing behind her. “Oh, great, you got through the ward.”
Roka, who was standing a few dozen feet behind Velvet, brushed some hair from her face and fixed Velvet with a flint-like gaze, her voice devoid of humor. “It's more accurate to say I went through the wall next to the ward.”
Velvet sighed, “Yes, that’d do it. Look I’m on a tight schedule and I’ve already spent more time on you and your little circus act than I’d intended. Just stand aside and I’ll leave you Hollows be, because I literally have bigger fish to fry today. But the girl and the other humans are coming with me.”
“No, they’re not,” Roka stated plainly, raising her dagger. Velvet rolled her eyes.
“Oh please, the only reason none of you are dead yet is because I didn’t want to risk injuring those children or the humans I’m trying to rescue. Now that we’re outside, I have zero incentive to hold back, which means you low-class Arrancar have lost what little advantage you had. Even if you did manage to injure me...” she smiled thinly, “Trust me, it’ll end up hurting you more than it’ll hurt me.”
Roka closed her eyes solemnly and nodded, “It’s true I can sense your power far exceeds ours. I’ll have to educate Di Roy on the meaning of ‘staying put’, if we survive this. Yet that doesn’t matter. This is my family. You’re not taking any of them while I can still stand...”
A soft, smokey aura of white energy flowed along her danger and gradually engulfed Roka’s body as her reiatsu increased. Velvet knew what this meant, and considered just annihilating Roka before she could enact her transformation, yet the woman’s words had struck a chord with her. She remembered a time from many years ago when another young woman faced a similar fight...
”Not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re a bunch of children, both figuratively and literally, compared to me,” said Platinum, a slim cold smile of distilled, confident smugness on her face as she strode forward. Her Zanpakuto was already in its released state, frost spreading across the forest, turning the nearby trees of the Everfree into towering icicles. “Now we can do this one of two ways, either you can be good girls and surrender willingly, or I can drag all of you back in icy chains. Well, minus the Quincy, who I’ll just be killing.”
Already sporting wounds from the battle, Sweet Cider drew up her Fullbring, a slab of rock in the vague shape of a sword with a skull shaped hilt and said, “Ya ain’t takin’ none o’ us ya gosh dang stuck up witch!”
With a contemptuous sneer Platinum swung her Zanpaktou and sent a cascade of ice shards flying straight for Sweet Cider, but a rain of reishi arrows intercepted the shards, clearing enough of them that the farm girl was able to avoid damage.
“Whew, nice save, Velvet.”
“I’d prefer it if you had done what I suggested to Firefly earlier and fled while the option existed,” Twilight Velvet said, breathing hard from having already expended much of her energy in the fight, her uniform torn and blood stained. “I could convince my fellow Quincy to take you in.”
Most of the team was already down. Cloudy Quartz was still conscious, but her Fullbring was little more than a tar-like shadow around her, unable to take proper form anymore. Firefly was lying up against a tree, half of her Fullbring shattered by Platinum’s sword, but Ace of Sky’s cannon was still intact and Firefly was trying to raise it. Soft Spoken and Cookie Crumbles were behind Velvet and Sweet Cider, unconscious. For the moment it looked like Velvet and Sweet Cider were the only ones still standing, and Platinum had barely broken a sweat.
“Oh yes,” Platinum said, “Go to the Quincy. They’d just love you Fullbringers, what with your Hollow powers. I’m sure they wouldn’t abuse you or experiment upon you.”
“Like what Soul Society did!?” Velvet growled, raising her arbalest, “You’ve done nothing but use them from the beginning!”
“Yes, but the difference is that we created them in the first place and have an invested interest in keeping them alive. Going with you Quincy would be taking a shockingly large gamble. But that’s neither here nor there, considering I’m going to be taking them back to Soul Society, and there is literally nothing a Quincy of your level can do to stop me. Really, I’d tell you to get out of my way, but I’d hate to leave any of you filthy Quincy alive if I can help it.”
Velvet spat to the side, “That’s fine by me. I wasn't going to run anyway. These are my friends you’re threatening. You’re not taking them while I’m still standing...”
She pushed the memory away. Too much had changed over the years. She wasn’t that same idealistic, brash young woman who fought alongside her friends in Xcution against Captain Platinum. Now she was a Sternritter, a mother, and a Quincy with a duty to perform. Yet she couldn't deny seeing an element of herself in the determined eyes of Roka as the Arrancar faced her down. Velvet could have likely destroyed Roka easily, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so quite yet. She could at least let Roka fight with all of her strength, even if it was ultimately going to be pointless.
Just like with Platinum, who I couldn’t beat back then. Tch... now there’s a distasteful comparison...
Roka’s energy reached its peak, the white glow around her solidifying as she invoked her Zanpaktou’s release phrase.
”Dance in ecstasy; Telarana!” (Cobweb)
A swirl of light flowed from Roka’s body, and surrounded her like a cocoon forming from thousands of small strands of light. Once the cocoon formed it pulsated with several heartbeat flares of light. Then it exploded, rippling sand out in a ring around it. As the light faded Roka was revealed in her newly transformed state. The physical changes were fairly minimal, compared to some Arrancar.
She wore now close fitting white cloth around her body, wrapping her waist and chest but leaving her arms, legs, and stomach bare. The skull mask that had covered the right half of her face was replaced by a cloth wrapping. Four long legs like those of a giant spider’s sprouted arching from her back, the limb joints also covered in wrappings of stark white cloth.
Roka took a deep breath and focused her one eye upon Velvet, and without another word aimed her four spider-like legs towards the Quincy, and a literal storm of razor sharp strings attached to hundreds of needles exploded out towards Velvet, recommencing the battle.
----------
The door to Adagio’s room opened and Twilight Sparkle walked inside, glancing around at the room curiously. “You took all of this from Canterlot City?”
Adagio chuckled with a dry amusement, “Not me, but servants of mine. Still, tickles me to think of Sunset Shimmer wondering who’s been raiding the local department stores.”
Twilight gave Adagio a raised eyebrow, “You have a very unusual relationship with Sunset.”
“And you have a unusual face!” Adagio snapped, then coughed and glanced away, “Well whatever, just stay here and don’t touch anything. Once the battle blows over I’ll come back and open a Garganta to Canterlot City for you.”
“And if another Arrancar comes looking in here?” Twilight asked, taking a seat at the dining table taking up one of the room’s walls.
“That won’t happen. Everyone is busy either killing Quincy or getting killed by Quincy. On top of that, the only other people who come to this part of the fortress are my aforementioned servants and they won’t come into my room. Look if you’re that worried about it, you can always hide. There’s lots of space around here for that. Any other questions?”
Twilight shook her head, her expression so tired that Adagio wouldn’t have been surprised if the girl fell asleep sitting in that chair, “No, I was just going to say... be careful.”
A faintly coy smirk touched Adagio’s face, “That’ll be next to impossible, given the task ahead of me, but consider your concern noted.”
With that Adagio left Twilight in her room and joined Ember down the hallway. Ember fell into step beside Adagio as they started heading back towards the stairs that’d lead down to ground level. There, within what had recently been an empty chamber they would find a pool of water that Adagio had opened up with a combination of her water control and a focused Cero.
“Not worried Dumbbell and those other idiots might stumble across her?” Ember asked as they walked.
“Unlikely. Assuming those three are doing what they’re supposed to be doing, they won’t be back until well after everything is going to be settled,” Adagio said, frowning slightly, “Right now this is the safest place to stash her. If anything goes wrong I’ll deal with that if and when it happens. We’ve got bigger problems to worry about.”
“Right, Squirk,” Ember said as they reached the room they were heading for, which was little more than a circular chamber not much bigger than the average bedroom, with a rough hole torn in the center of it that was filled with water. The shaft would lead down several scores of meters into the underground water tunnels beneath Las Noches.
“Yes, Squirk,” Adagio agreed, placing a hand on her hip as she drew up water to form a bubble of air for her and Ember to enter. “He ought to still be near the base of the central tower.”
“With Grogar,” Ember pointed out.
“Yes, with Grogar.”
The pair of them entered the bubble, and it descended into the water shaft. Adagio drummed her fingers on her hip as she thought, eyes narrowing, “If things go like Chrysalis thinks they will, this shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“He might only be the Ninth, but he’s still an Espada, Adagio. Squirk won’t go down easily,” Ember said.
“Oh, I know that, but I also know that there’s other people gunning for him, and all we have to do is... wait for our moment of opportunity.”
----------
Squirk sneezed, and rubbed his nose. Nearby Grogar was continuing to monitor his device that showed a holographic image of the battle taking place. Upon the wafting, shimmering image were multiple hazy screens showing different parts of the chaotic war taking place outside the fortress. Using this Squirk was able to maintain as many Gargantas as needed to move Arrancar around the battlefield. Not that any of the Espada was taking much advantage of that besides Guto, who near as Squirk could tell was the only Espada who understood what tactics were. Everyone else, even the great Lord Tirek, seemed to envision battle as “Everybody split up for one on one battles, continue until all enemies dead!”
“Because it’d be too much of a smart thing to do for us to gang up on these Sternritter before they did the same thing to us,” Squirk muttered.
“Oh stop such whinging, Squirk,” said Grogar, gesturing at the images of battle on the holographic screen, “In case you weren’t paying attention we presently hold the advantage.”
Squirk narrowed his eyes as he glanced sidelong at Grogar, pretending for the moment to focus on his Gargantas. Guto’s troops, well trained, were using the portals to fall back with any that were badly injured, while allowing Arrancar who were freshly rested to take their place, creating something of a milling group of Guto’s warriors who remained on ground level next to the long interior wall that Squirk and Grogar stood on. From what Squirk could see on Grogar’s screens, while the Espada were largely engaged in personal battles, the rest of the Arrancar warriors were fighting at a disadvantage due to the fact that there were still several Sternritter out there that didn’t have any Espada to worry about. There was one blue skinned bastard who was using some kind of gravity ability to crush weaker Arrancar with ease, while another Sternritter who’d formed all those fortifications out of seemingly nowhere was essentially holding the entire center of the battle and making it impossible for either Guto, Hydia, or Torch’s hordes to break the Quincy’s center line.
Pound for pound we Espada have the Sternritter on the ropes in one on one combat, but these damned Quincy peasants are outfighting our own common warriors. And the human animals can breed faster than we can, so we can’t replace these losses as fast as they can theirs. Am I the only one smart enough to realize we might be winning in the short term, but losing the larger war of attrition?
Ultimately this was why he’d made the decision he had. The choice to back Catrina and her plan to eventually remove Chrysalis from power. Because Squirk knew Tirek was smarter than this. Smarter than to let the whole of Las Noche’s hordes get drawn into a fight that could inflict crippling casualties on them that they couldn’t recuperate from nearly as fast as the Quincy could. But Chrysalis? That hedonistic psychopath? This was the kind of carnage filled bloodbath that was right up her perverted alley. This whole battle had her fingerprints all over it, to the point where Squirk wouldn’t have been surprised to find out if she’d suggested the idea to the Quincy in the first place.
Squirk had never liked Chrysalis, purely because he could smell crazy, and crazy wasn’t good for long term survival. He sorely missed the Queen of Thorns, who’d been far more reserved and intelligent as a right hand for Tirek. Lord Tirek, Squirk respected him and his immense power, but he knew the Primera Espada needed a cooler head advising him, rather than a blood crazed nut-job who didn’t seem to care what happened to the rest of Las Noches as long a she got her jollies on.
So when Catrina had approached Squirk about forming a group among the lesser ranked Espada to overthrow Chrysalis, well... he hadn’t immediately agreed. He didn’t like Catrina either. Vain, self-absorbed drama queen that she was. But she wasn’t nearly as dangerous to the Hollow’s continued survival as Chrysalis, and Catrina did have the power to make a proper go of a coup d'etat, so when given a choice between either serving the status quo until Chrysalis got them all killed or agreeing to back Catrina, Squirk made the choice easily enough.
Survival was what mattered, and right now he was seriously doubting Las Noche’s continued ability to survive as long as Chrysalis was whispering words of bloodlust into Tirek’s ears. Even if the Arrancar won this battle, they were going to be in a vulnerable position afterward in case the Soul Reapers came calling, or the Privaron Espada decided to band together and come knocking.
Of course he didn’t know which other Espada Catrina might have recruited. She was playing her cards close to her chest on this, and Squirk couldn’t blame her. After what Chrysalis had done to the Queen of Thorns, he’d be cautious about going against her too. If only it wasn’t necessary. Now, if Squirk was a betting man, he’d guess that Catrina would have approached either Hydia or Smooze. Both of them had powers that would counter Chrysalis’s insane regenerative ability. Catrina also probably approached one of the bigger numbers, like Torch or maybe that creepy Lament guy. Just for the extra firepower for when they moved on Chrysalis.
He looked suspiciously at Grogar, not sure about that one. Grogar and Torch hated each other, and he wasn’t exactly on good terms with Hydia either. Also Grogar was so tight with Tirek that it seemed unlikely Chrysalis hadn’t already dug her claws into him. Yeah, if Squirk was the one in charge he wouldn’t trust Grogar either...
...Which made him suddenly rather nervous he was here alone with the guy. It made sense, tactically speaking, for Squirk with his Garganta powers to remain close to Grogar who could control the device that gave them a decently complete view of the battlefield, but Squirk suddenly realized he was in a remarkably vulnerable position if he happened to be alone with one of the Espada he couldn’t at all be sure wasn’t working with Chrysalis.
“Squirk,” Grogar said, making the large, red skinned Espada nearly jump.
“W-what!? I’m concentrating here!” Squirk growled, gripping his harpoon shaped Zanpaktou tightly as he glanced between Grogar and his Garganta portals. A troop of Guto’s warriors were marching back through one of the Garganta’s, rejoining the battle after having rested, and a few wounded were coming back through another portal, dropping from exhaustion and injuries.
“You might want to form a Garganta to your left,” Grogar said, almost too casually, “If you don’t want to be struck by the attack coming from that direction, at any rate.”
Attack? What was he-? Squirk’s eyes shot wide as he realized Grogar, out of all the Espada, had the most potent Pesquisa, and could sense spiritual energies far better than he could. Without questioning it further, Squirk formed a Garganta portal about his own size immediately to his left. He did it just in time, too.
A thin, needle-like beam of reishi flew from what had to be nearly a kilometer away and would have hit Squirk straight in the side of his head if he hadn’t formed his Garganta when he had. Squirk had no idea what kind of attack that was, but it felt like a Quincy arrow if one had been focused to a ridiculous degree into a small beam, and despite its size Squirk sensed the power of the attack and knew if it’d hit him the beam would’ve gone straight through his Heirro as if it wasn’t there.
“HOLY BALLS!” Squirk shouted, nearly falling onto his ass in surprise.
“It seems we have rats inside the walls,” Grogar said, turning from his monitor and gesturing to several of his misshapen servitor Arrancar, “Go! Find the sniper.”
The deformed looking Arrancar servants, their minds programmed to follow Grogar’s commands without question, immediately turned and leaped off the small interior wall and started rushing across the desert in the direction the beam had come from. Inside of seconds multiple other beams appeared, piercing each servitor’s head with ease, and all four of them dropped like puppets with cut strings. Grogar frowned.
“Well, I suppose we can rule out any common Quincy.”
A kilometer away, kneeling down on one knee atop one of the smaller dunes of Las Noche’s interior desert, Sassy Saddles huffed out a sharp breath and drew back another thin arrow on her pink hued recurve bow. As she did so she spoke into a small communication device on the lapel of her uniform, “Cadence, first shot is a negative kill. My position is compromised. Let me secure their attention, then you move in.”
“Copy that. Be careful,” Cadence replied, and Sassy let out a light laugh.
“But of course.”
The hope had been that Sassy’s Schrift, the Needle, could dispatch Squirk with one shot and allow the team to extract themselves from Las Noches without getting drawn into a battle. Somehow the tall, lobster red bastard had either sensed her attack incoming or had been warned of it, because he’d formed a Garganta portal that absorbed her arrow. The other Espada up there had directed some servants to rush Sassy’s position, but they were easily taken down by the Needle. Now Sassy directed her attention to that other Espada, since Squirk was still hidden behind his portal.
This Espada was an old, withered looking man of darkly tanned skin, wispy white hair, and ram horns curving from his brow. If their intel on the Espada was accurate then his name was Grogar, and he was the Number Eight. Sassy suppressed a frown. Frowns caused wrinkles, after all. Two Espada, even low ranked ones, would be a problem in an open fight. Fortunately both her and Cadence’s abilities were suited to breaking past an opponent's defenses and ending fight’s quickly. It was a shame Velvet was busy with that tower, but Sassy couldn’t imagine Velvet would take much longer over there, so one way or another all she had to do was keep these Espada busy for a few moments.
“Very well, if it’s to be a dance, let’s make it a stylish one,” Sassy Saddles said, standing up and focusing upon Grogar, unleashing half a dozen thin, penetrating beams towards not the Espada himself, but at the large device that was displaying some kind of holographic image, being held up by several more of those horribly deformed looking Arrancar servants.
She couldn’t see what the images being displayed by that device were, but she could easily take a guess, and destroying it seemed like a good way to deny a tactical advantage to the Hollows.
Grogar, not having any of that, proceeded to kick the device out of the way of Sassy’s arrow beams. This did nothing to spare his servants, who were perforated by the powerful beams and reduced to twitching masses, but Grogar didn’t even spare them a single glance as he fixed Sassy’s distant position with a mildly annoyed glare and with his arms clasped behind his back like an irate school teacher he jumped into the air and proceeded to start flying in her direction.
Sassy responded with another barrage of beams, which sliced up the air like shards of glass, but Grogar was shockingly spry for such an old looking fellow and flew around, weaving between the shots as he closed in on her. At the tips of his two ram horns a crackling circle of dark green energy formed, and he unleashed a swift barrage of Bala’s shots at Sassy, the condensed bullets of reishi impacting towards her like the strafing shots from a gatling gun.
She dodged easily enough, but heard the distinct buzz of Sonido behind her as Grogar finished closing the distance and appeared at her back, bringing one hand around to instantly draw his sword and slash at Sassy’s spine. She swung her bow around, using it deflect the oddly stone-like blade of Grogar’s, but the blow alone still sent her skidding back across the dune.
Grogar observed her for a second, then gained a knowing smirk,”Rather old for an assassin, aren’t you, my dear?”
Sassy Saddles’ eyebrow twitched slightly. She was in her early forties, thank-you-very-much, but she knew he was just trying to rattle her. So instead she put on a sympathetic look and said, “You would know all about being too old for one’s position, wouldn’t you?”
Grogar’s laugh had a rasping, chilling quality to it, “You know, I haven’t had the pleasure of having a Sternritter to experiment on. Lesser, Quincy, yes, but never one of you vaunted ‘Star Knights’ with your fascinating Schrifts. Since one of my experiments is nearing the culmination of fruition, I should be looking into acquiring another specimen. Care to volunteer? Oh, wait, your consent isn’t required.”
He vanished with a blindingly swift Sonido, and Sassy drew back an arrow to fire, hoping that Cadence would be able to take advantage of the distraction she was providing, because she wasn’t sure just how long she could hold out against this disturbing fellow.
Meanwhile, Squirk was peeking from behind his Garganta to see if it was safe. It looked like Grogar was handling the sniper, and he nearly breathed a sigh of relief, but then saw a shadow pass over him. He turned just in time to see some ludicrously pink Quincy flying over him in a graceful flip, aiming a wrist mounted crossbow at him.
“Crap!” Squirk raised a hand, forming a tiny Garganta in an instant. A small, pinkish reishi arrow went through the portal, just narrowly missing him. But the Quincy wasn’t done. With incredible speed she appeared around him in multiple places, firing more of those small pink arrows at him.
“Crapcrapcrapcrap!” Squirk spun around, forming Gargantas as fast as he could, until he was essentially surrounded by an entire field of small portals. No other Arrancar, not even Tirek, could have that kind of fine control over Garganta portals as to be able to form so many of varying sizes so fast. Now standing within a sphere of protective portals, Squirk chuckled and shouted, “Yeah! Try getting past these, you sneaky tart! Stupid Quincy sow! I can just stand in here all day until Grogar finishes your sniper friend.”
There wasn’t a response from outside, which bothered him because the Quincy were usually the sort to love to shoot banter back. What was that tricky Quincy doing out there? Well he wasn’t about to remove any of his protective portals to look. The moment he did she’d probably be waiting out there to blast him.
Tapping his foot in impatience, he almost didn’t notice the build up of reiatsu from outside. Was she charging up some kind of larger attack? So what? It still couldn’t get past his Garganta portals. They’d just absorb all that energy into the Precipice Realm.
...Unless she wasn’t aiming at him.
“Uh-oh-” Squirk said just as Cadence unleashed a powerful, charged up reishi arrow at the wall beneath his feet.
The arrow struck the wall hard, blasting a long, cylindrical hole through it, and also dropping Squirk down through the shattering wall.
“Ugh, sonuvabitch,” Squirk grumbled, shoving huge multi-ton chunks of rock off himself, “What did I ever do to deserve this!?”
He felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck, and turned to see Cadence standing upon a chunk of destroyed wall right behind him, her wrist mounted crossbow nearly touching his skin.
“It might have something to do with the fact that you helped murder our children,” Cadence said, “Just a thought to take with you before you die.”
Just before she fired, however, shadows sprang up from the ground, engulfing both Cadence and Squirk. The shadows parted to reveal three individuals, all Soul Reapers gauging by their black robes, and the tall blue-skinned woman in the center wore a Captains white coat.
Squirk felt his blood run cold as the Soul Reaper Captain raised a pair of large, dark scythes and smiled politely at the Quincy.
“Hello Cadence,” said Luna, “I don’t suppose you’d mind if we took this Espada off your hands?”
Well, Squirk thought with a cynical sigh, It’s official. This day can’t possibly get any worse.