Episode 79: Attrition
The writhing screams from the foolish Sternritter elicited little response from Smooze as he turned from Lightning Dust and started to stride away in search of other targets to vent its pain upon. Smooze halted in his steps as a surge of reiatsu from behind him was followed by a towering pillar of brilliant blue light, topped with the symbol of the Quincy cross, thrust upwards into the sky. Smooze took note that other such pillars were appearing as well, but that did not concern him, only the one directly in front of him. He heard Lightning Dust before he saw her amid that shining pillar of light.
“Where do you think you’re going? Show’s just getting started, you fugly bastard.”
Smooze tilted his unusually shaped head to the side, his voice a burbling squelch that barely sounded like anything remotely human. His speech pattern was rough and simple, as if he had trouble stringing a full sentences together, “Alive? In pain. Disease spreads, eats at insides. Must be so much pain.”
Lighting Dust laughed, and it was mixed in with a pained, rasping cough, “Heheh, yeah, this hurts like a bitch, whatever crap you got on me. Real life threatening stuff. Funny thing about me is-”
She emerged from the fading pillar of light, surrounded by a nimbus of crackling blue and light orange light.
“-I get off on danger!”
Lightning Dust’s Vollstandig gave wings not to her back, but to her arms and legs. They were shaped like sharp Vs extending from her elbows and knees, more akin to blades than actual wings. Her uniform had transformed into a tight fitting jumpsuit, from which lines of blue and lighter orange reishi traveled across her body in rivers that had a faint, electrical flicker to them. Her halo was a triangular shape, much like her wing-blades, and shuddered with small bursts of orange and blue arcs of lightning. She carried her massive boomerang, which had only grown in size and gained a more distinctly blue metallic sheen, along with half a dozen vent ports along the back of the weapon’s mass.
The only remaining signs of Smooze’s black blood on her was a faint dark mark on her neck, form which veins pulsed visibly with the rot of the diseases carried by Smooze’s fluids. This should have been causing Lightning Dust unimaginable pain, and perhaps it was, but as far as Smooze could tell the Quincy was not just enduring the pain, but growing excited from it. He could sense her spiritual energy continuing to rise, even after the transformation was done.
Considering her words, Smooze raised his bone whip Zanpaktou and said, “Irrational. Pain is misery. Nothing sane seeks pain. You’re not sane.”
A derisive snort exploded from Lightning Dust as she casually raised her boomerang with one arm, “Sane? Who the hell cares about that!? You either enjoy the shit you do in life, or you sit on your butt wishing you were someone else! I know which I’m going for! Now let’s do this thing!”
The woman’s words bounced around in Smooze’s mind, quite incomprehensible to him. Clearly this was an utterly irrational human who was mentally ill. Not caring about pain? Not valuing preserving her own life? To Smooze that was as antithetical to sanity as one could be. He’d do anything to avoid pain if he could. Somewhat problematic because his existence was nothing but pain, save for when he received relief from Lord Tirek’s ability to consume Hollow energies.
Smooze would have gone mad centuries ago if not for Lord Tirek. As much as avoiding risk and pain was natural, he was willing to engage in battle if it meant he could continue to serve Tirek. Such was only natural. Not at all like this madwoman and her ramblings.
“Madness. Killing you is mercy. Insanity cannot be left to breed.”
All Lightning Dust did was grin as currents of reishi exploded out of the vents in her boomerang, “Let’s see who drops first!”
She swung the boomerang forward with titanic force, and it flew towards Smooze in such a spinning fury that it spread out a cloud of sand for dozens of meters around it, creating a small sand storm in its wake. It was far faster than even Smooze expected and his Sonido wasn’t fast enough to avoid the blow, so instead he drove his Zanpaktou in front of him to intercept the attack.
The impact was well and above what he had expected, the spinning blade driving into his Zanpaktou and shoving him back across the desert for nearly a hundred yards. Yet he didn’t have a second to recover, because Lightning Dust had flown with potent speed, zipping in a blue and orange bur beyond Smooze where she bounded off the metal husk of a destroyed Quincy tank as if it were a spring board. She flew at Smooze’s back, rolling into a spin kick.
He took the kick to the head, but held firm and shoved back against the boomerang with his blade deflecting it up into the sky. Lightning Dust flipped up to grab it, but Smooze cocked back his arm and launched it forward. His Zanpaktou extended, each individual bone segment now igniting into a sickly purple and black haze as acidic, diseased liquid splattered out from the bone whip in a rotting spray.
Lightning Dust used her boomerang as a shield, the tip of Smooze’s weapon deflecting off it and the dark splatter of ooze marking the boomerang’s blue metal in a hiss. She whipped the boomerang around and proceeded to drop upon Smooze like an avalanche. He got his Zanpaktou up to block, but the overwhelming force of Lightning Dust’s strike drove him down to one knee.
He hadn’t expected this transformation of hers to make such a difference in their strength, but that was okay, Smooze’s power wasn’t in his physical abilities. He was neither the fastest or strongest of the Espada, and his position as the Tenth did mean that even his spiritual powers were only strong when compared to normal Arrancar. Yet the reason for Smooze holding a position of favor with Tirek, and why Smooze feared no interference from his fellow Espada, had nothing to do with raw power.
Smooze was unusual, perhaps even unique among Hollows. He was a mutation. An aberration. In some ways he might have been considered a failure of a Hollow. Sometimes failures could breed unusual powers. Smooze had come into being when the usual process of evolution had gone terribly wrong. Normally when a Gillian is formed, it is formed from the amalgamation of hundreds of lesser Hollows, then that Gillian proceeds to eat other Hollows until it becomes an Adjuchas. Smooze was formed when the Gillian he once was had evolved in an aberrant fashion, merging with hundreds of other Gillians in a horrific mass of flesh and fluids.
He hadn’t even had a consciousness. All Smooze had been was a vast, shifting mass of liquefied Hollow parts, writhing in constant agony, consuming whatever was foolish enough to get close to it, until Lord Tirek had found them. The Hollow King could have destroyed Smooze with ease, but had seen potential in the mutated mass. Calling upon the services of Grogar’s scientific genius, a chemical had been devised that, when consumed by Smooze, had controlled the shifting mass of merged Hollows into a single conscious mind and body. His endless agony had ended, for the most part. Pain remained a constant of Smooze’s existence, but it was tolerable, and his mind was now a unified whole, all thanks to Grogar’s cure and Lord Tirek’s patronage.
As a result Smooze was endlessly loyal to Tirek, although one might also call it dependence, for without continued service Smooze would lose access to the supply of the chemical that allowed him to maintain his present form. If he didn’t receive it regularly he’d devolve back into an agonized mass of partially merged Hollows. So there was no question of whether he’d fight to the last to serve Lord Tirek’s schemes.
It also was why he couldn’t fathom the mindset of this crazy Quincy woman. Did she not understand how lucky she was to be born with such a pristine, attractive form? She didn’t live every day in constant pain, so how insane was she to constantly and willingly seek it out?
Madness, utter madness. Smooze couldn’t stand it. Voices from a thousand enraged Hollows gibbered in his mind, demanding he destroy this crazed creature. As Lightning Dust’s boomerang ignited with more bursts of energy thrusting it harder onto Smooze’s Zanpaktou, crushing him down to the ground, his body became encased in a pulsing dark light. His spiritual energy erratically rose, and amid the miasma of dark aura surrounding him emerged numerous howling, distorted images of Hollow faces.
“You’re one ugly bastard!” Lighting Dust shouted with a sharp smirk, “But at least you ain’t weak!”
She pulled back, flipping backwards and swinging her boomerang down and around into a powerful uppercutting blow that struck Smooze back to slam into the flaming wreckage of a downed VTOL. The flames licked at Smooze’s white clothing, burning charred holes from which black and purple liquid oozed out. Ignoring the fire, Smooze pushed himself out of the wreckage and reached one hand up to the smooth, tall mask of white metal covering his head.
“No point talking. Only death cures crazy.”
A flare of purple light moved in a line across the center of the mask, circling it vertically, and air hissed as the front portion was removed and cast aside. Even Lightning Dust flinched a bit at the sight.
“Yeah, I know what i just said, but damn, that’s even worse than I was expecting.”
Smooze didn’t comment. He knew what he looked like. It was as if someone had taken a malformed skull and dipped it in a bubbling mass of sludge black and purple gunk that throbbed and pulsed like a heartbeat. Eyes dotted the pulsing ooze-flesh, a dozen rheumy pupils that squinted with lidless focus in all directions. One eye, larger than the rest, protruded slightly from the left eye socket, its pupil a stark green against the darker colors around it.
Taking off his mask wasn’t something Smooze did casually. Or at all, really. He wouldn’t have, but he needed to for what he was about to do. His Zanpaktou was a bit different than others. Like himself, it was a bit flawed, and didn’t activate purely form a release phrase. He needed to consume it, to bring out its power.
So with a rictus rattle of his bony skull, the ooze bubbling across his face bursting in small sprays, he opened his mouth wide and raised his sword above his head, inverting it so he could down the bone blade like a professional sword swallower.
“Oh? You about to do your Resurreccion thing?’ Lightning Dust said, shouldering her boomerang and making no move to stop Smooze, “You know what? Go for it. I want to see how well I stack up, and honestly I’m kinda curious just how much more screwed up your appearance is gonna get.”
Well, let it never be said Smooze wouldn’t give a lady what she asked for. He plunged his Zanpaktou down his bony, goo dripping gullet, which given he didn’t vocalize normally anyway hardly impeded his intoning of the blade’s release phrase.
“Spread unstoppably; Pestilencia.” (Pestilence)
His body began to distort and bulge like a tumors balloon. From the seams of his gloves and shoes that thick sludge of mixed black and purple fluid burst forth, and a geyser of it erupted upwards from his neck until his head was lost in the deluge. More and more foul smelling, writhing crud exploded forth from Smooze’s body, until the bulbous form popped like an overloaded boil, unleashing a flood of filth far beyond what should have been possible.
Lightning Dust immediately flew upwards to avoid the tidal wave of bubbling ooze, rising over a hundred feet before stopping and looking down with a disgusted grimace.
“Okay, gotta admit, this is gross, but I was expecting a little-”
The spread of nearly a hundred meters of shuddering goop proceeded to start rising upward as it disgorged dozens of twisted skeletal limbs that clawed at the air and rose with shocking speed to slice at Lightning Dust. She evaded like a hummingbird, and had to spin away from globs of filth sizzling through the air with each claw’s strike. She then saw the central part of the pool of ooze bulge upwards, forming into the shape of a filthy, yawning head covered in alternating boils of eyes and gnashing mouths of cracked teeth.
From those mouths spat forth glowing purple orbs of slime, forcing Lightning Dust to zip to the side to avoid being coated in their acidic touch. Yet in doing so she was left vulnerable to the grasping claws tracking her through the air, their bony forms slashing at her from all angles as she tried to avoid the acid globs. Pain ripped through her as one or two claws tore bleeding lines across her legs and side. The pain went beyond the wounds and she could feel the sickness infecting her from mere contact with this monstrosity.
Yet despite the pain and the mortal danger she was in, or perhaps because of it, Lightning Dust just grinned and the aura of her wings glowed all the brighter. The Daredevil thrived on exactly this kind of incredible risk. The closer Smooze came to killing her, the more powerful Lightning Dust was going to become.
It was a just a question of whether it’d be enough to destroy him before she ended up getting killed herself.
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Winds flowed like crushing avalanches, each one an arrow of earth shattering force fired from Fleur's hands as she unleashed a relentless cascade of air blasts at Guto’s streaking golden form. Each arrow’s impact resulted in a out of control tornado, ripping across the desert and hammering everything in their path. Guto was thrown around even by near misses, yet he was equally unrelenting in his assault.
He flew through the tornadoes, the turbine-like protrusions on his back blasting out jets of red energy that catapulting him around at high speed while a continuous rain of golden Bala bullets formed around him and fired toward Fleur in a furious flurry. She formed a shell of hardened air in front of her, and knowing it couldn’t hold up to the barrage of Balas forever she instead dove through them while charging to meet Guto, sending streaking lines of cutting air at him as they flew to meet each other.
Guto’s forearm blades cut through the wind blades sent his way and he spun into a twirling attack that was aimed to slash right through Fleur's shell of air, which was so thick it obscured her from his vision. His blades cut through the barrier, burst it like a bubble, only to find that Fleur had kicked off the shell of air a split second earlier to launch herself above him. She flapped her wings towards him, the motion generating a concussive burst of wind of such strength it was akin to a bunker buster bomb exploding on Guto. He was slammed downward, but his clawed avian feet grinded against the air and slowly halted his descent.
Grinning, Guto shouted, “Struggling only makes you a finer jewel worth adding to my collection. Now keep struggling, until you must accept your fate!”
He extended his arms upward, and the turbines on his back gained several glowing lines of gold light from which shot forth numerous shining chains of golden metal, each one tipped with clamping manacles. The chains snapped towards Fleur, who waved her hands and generated massive blasts of air to deflect them. Yet the chains didn’t cease, coming at her from all sides. Forming a cone of wind around herself, she launched herself towards Guto, relying on the currents of air to keep the chains off her while she focused on delivering her next attack.
Guto raised his blades to meet her, slashing in a blurring gleam of metal. Fluer just barely ducked the twin blows, pieces of her hair severed by the near miss. She pulled back on a bow of air, creating an extremely condensed bolt of wind to fire at Guto’s chest. He moved to dodge, only to find that Fleur had shifted the cone of air around herself to become a larger half sphere that surrounding him, blocking his movements.
He tore at the barrier or air, forearm blades cutting the swirl of wind like a knife through silk, but not before Fleur's arrow hit him. He twisted to avoid a hit on his chest, instead taking the arrow on the shoulder. The exposition of incredible wind force tore off parts of his armored cloak and twisted his flesh, yet despite the wound Guto neither flinched nor retreated. Instead the turbine-like protrusions on his back flared with deep red light and he rocketed into Fleur, body-slamming her with bone shattering force.
Spitting and blood flew out of Fleur's mouth from the blow that sent her reeling. Disoriented she shook her head and spun around, quickly recovering, but not before her momentary distraction resulted in one of the gold manacles clamping around her right wrist.
“Got you,” Guto said with a satisfied smile, the chain yanking backwards and dragging Fleur along with it.
Growling in feral abandon, Fleur pulled back her free hand and shaped it into a three pronged talons with her fingers. “Sturmkralle Drei!”
Slamming her hand forward she unleashed a glowing eagle's talon of wind, but Guto countered it by raising one of his forearm blades. A swirl of yellow light flared into being at the blade’s edge, and he then swing it with hypersonic force.
“Cero Cotar!” (Cero Severing)
A crescent shaped blast of Hollow energy shot out of is blade, cutting through Fleur's wind talon and then slamming into her with cutting force. She activated her Blut Vene at full power, absorbing the blow, but it still cut a ragged line cross-wise down her chest and stomach. Bits of ragged, bloody cloth fell away, revealing pale marble flesh, some marred by the fresh wound, but other parts marked by a much older scar.
Guto raised a curious eyebrow at the sight. “Oh, what’s this? Looks like someone tried to gut you like a fish at one point. I admire you survived such a wound.”
Fleur, for her part, was still. Her eyes were twitching slightly, pupils widening with cold fury. She could feel the scar on her stomach like a burning brand, along with the feeling of her own blood cooling on her skin. All restraint drained from her, burned away in an instant. Her world narrowed to the red tunnel containing only Guto, and she gripped the gold chain holding her right arm, veins pulsing on her forehead.
“Admire this you insufferable prick!” she shouted as she transferred full power from Blut Vene to Blut Arterie, giving her arm all the strength she could as she yanked back on it and pulled Guto towards her.
Caught off balance by the move, Guto was pulled across the distance between them almost as fast as if he’d used Sonido. His chin was met by a snapping knee strike from Fluer that rattled the Espada’s senses, just long enough for Fleur to follow up her attack by starting to spin around. Wind came at her call, aiding her speed as she spun faster and faster, dragging Guto with her with building force. She then burst towards the ground, pulling Guto like a living flail as she slammed him into the desert hard enough to utterly destroy several nearby sand dunes in a wave of rippling sand and wind.
She didn’t wait to see if he’d been taken down or not. Fleur simply bent the fingers of both her hands into claw shapes and proceeded to thrust them rapidly to fire a barrage of hundreds of wind blades into the spot Guto had impacted, kicking up and even larger storm of wind around her. After several seconds of that punishing barrage, however, she noticed Guto’s reiatsu flaring upwards and saw a golden glint of light amid her windstorm.
Slowly, with wounded steps, Guto stood and moved towards her. Balas by the hundreds were appearing around him and firing at the direction of his outstretched arm, countering her rain of wind blades. Fleur grit her teeth and redoubled her efforts, and a brief tug of war ensued between the pair. Wind blades and Balas slammed into each other with equal speed and ferocity, some exploding on impact, others deflecting off to explode among the nearby dunes. Each combatant made slight changes to the aim of their attacks, trying to break through the other’s barrage, but for a moment they seemed stalemated. In the meantime the shear overwhelming volume of slashing wind blades and potent Balas colliding with each other or ricocheting off each other were ripping apart the landscape as if it was being hit by continuous artillery.
Then Fleur took advantage of the Quincy’s ability to use reishi from around them and started breaking down spirit particles from the nearby desert sands to form even more wind blades in a broader arc around Guto. Doing this tipped the balance, forcing back his wall of Balas, and Fleur was sure she’d have him overwhelmed in just a few more seconds...
At that moment she noticed something. The golden lines of energy around Guto’s back turbines were extending chains, but not towards her, but into the ground. Into the soft, malleable sand beneath their feet.
Fleur realized the danger a moment too late, reacting a fraction of a second too slow before Guto’s chains burst out of the sandy floor beneath her. One clamped down upon either of her legs, her remaining free arm, and a final one around her neck. Then all of the chains around her pulled taut, wrenching her arms and legs and causing her stream of wind blades to falter, then halt. At that point nothing stopped Guto’s storm of Balas from slamming into her. Fluer was knocked around like a crash test dummy, battered by each bullet of Hollow energy that struck her.
By the time the barrage wore off Fleur was a bruised, bleeding mess, sucking in pained breaths as she fell to her hands and knees, just barely staying conscious.
Guto observed her for a second, the nodded in satisfaction, though not without a grimace of pain himself. His own body was bleeding from numerous wounds now, his regal appearance marred by broken pieces of his feathered armor and a profuse amount of blood covering half of his face from a nasty head wound where one of the wind blades had gotten through. Still, he was standing, and Fleur was not.
With an impressed look at his own injuries, Guto grinned at Fluer, “You nearly had me, my dear.”
He started to drag his chains towards him, dragging Fleur along the sands. She tried to pull back, but much of her strength was spent and Guto’s Bala’s had broken bones and torn muscles, making meaningful resistance difficult.
“But this is not where, or how, you die. As I said, I intend to make a prize of you. My finest battle trophy.”
“Like...hell...” Fleur spat, blood coating her teeth. She twisted around and dug her heels into the sand, dredging up her remaining power and drawing in yet more reishi from around her. She managed to halt herself, if only briefly, and fired a focused wind arrow that sent out a shockwave as it flew towards Guto. He swung one of his forearm blades to deflect it, but even he underestimated the desperate last shred of power in that arrow. Upon impact the blast of concentrated wind force was enough to shatter the forearm blade in half and twist Guto’s left arm around with bone breaking speed.
He growled in pain, and savagely kicked the now utterly spent Fleur across the face, slamming her to the ground.
Looking at his busted left arm, the Espada huffed out a light laugh, “Had you fought a little smarter you might have beaten me. You certainly had the power for it. But that will be the last bit of defiance I’ll tolerate from you.”
He pulled back for another brutal kick, this one aimed at Fleur's ribs, but then a streak of blue soared in and instead kicked Guto square in the jaw, the blow sending him sprawling out to the full length of his chains, which still bound Fleur.
“Yeah? How about some defiance from us, asshole?” said Fleetfoot, the one who’d planted the kick on Guto, as she landed beside Fleur's battered form.
On the other side of Fleur another form appeared, Soarin, who had his bow out and aimed cleanly at Guto. “Take those chains off of her, and if you’re lucky we’ll finish you off quickly.”
Both Sternritter had their Vollstandigs active, illuminating the area with a combined coating of pale blue light. Fleetfoot’s looked like she had active swirling vortexes of reishi circling her arms and legs, the energy running up to her back where it sprung into two vibrating crescent shaped wings. Her halo looked like a pair of sunglasses made out of burning energy perched on her forehead. As for Soarin, the wings of his Vollstandig looked like a pair of constantly shifting cloud streaks forked through by lines of light. His halo a similarly cloud-like circle above his head, trailing with wisps of smoky blue mist. Both of them radiated aura of potent reiatsu that, while not quite as strong as Fleur's had been at the peak of her fight with Guto, were still more than strong enough now for Guto to realize that in his wounded state he wouldn’t be able to continue the fight against two fresh opponents.
Guto glanced beyond the two newly arrived Sternritter to see that the Arrancar that’d joined his attack on the cadets had either fled or been killed. That wasn’t too concerning, as that had only been a small number of his total forces, most of which were still engaged back towards the Quincy fortifications, but he was annoyed his troops hadn’t kept this two busy longer. And where was that fool Gilda?
He briefly sensed around with his Pesquisa until he found Gilda’s reiatsu, quite some distance away now, slinking back towards Las Noches. Guto’s blood boiled. How had that girl failed so utterly to accomplish anything today?
To make matters worse, he could see a pair of Quincy VTOLs lifting off and flying east across the lake, and sensed the many weak Quincy spiritual pressures within. The cadets had escaped, probably having suffered only minor casualties.
It seemed this attack was a wash, but at least he could still claim his other prize for the day.
“The two of you seem confused,” he told Fleetfoot and Soarin, rubbing his sore jaw, “You won’t be finishing me off today. In fact you’ll be saying a fond farewell to your comrade, as she now belongs to me.”
Soarin eyes hardened, “Not happening, buddy. If you’re not going to take the chains off yourself, we’ll bust them off her after we put you down!”
A near invisible arrow fired from Soarin’s wing-shaped bow, a streak of sonic force that Guto could sense was no normal reishi arrow, but instead contained some odd power. Likely the Sternritter’s Schrift. Guto laped back from it, pulling his chains backwards as he did so.
Fleur was yanked towards him as Soarin’s arrow exploded in a sphere of vibrating sound waves. Guto hadn’t leapt far enough back to avoid the waves and felt them shake his bones, and immediately disorient his senses. Yet the Espada didn’t falter and despite the disorientation he maintained his focus as he summoned up a fresh storm of Balas around him and fired them at the Sternritter as he continued to drag Fleur towards him.
Fleetfoot and Soarin were forced to dodge aside or get torn apart by the barrage of reishi bullets that ripped up the landscape as they both took to the air. Fleetfoot coiled her legs beneath her and muscles bulged as she launched herself at Guto, arms cocked back to punch. He charged up a line of golden energy in his remaining forearm blade and swung it to unleash another Cero Cotar. Unlike most Ceros that tended to expand into wide beams, Guto’s attack was designed with penetration in mind.
Fleetfoot met it with a punch that created a pure shockwave that managed to deflect the Cero Cotar and deflect it off course until it cut a gouge across the desert, and then a swath through the lake without stopping. Guto whistled, impressed. No way that Sternritter’s strength was the result of simple muscle mass. So the male had a Schrift based on sound, and this white haired female’s had a Schrift that gave her ungodly strength? Either way he couldn’t afford to stand and fight them head on. Perhaps if he hadn’t used up so much power on Fleur... but either way, it was time for a tactical withdrawal.
Guto quickly fired a set of Balas up into the sky, specially modified to burst with a pattern of specific colors, not unlike fireworks. This was a coded message that Gruff, who Guto had left in charge of the rest of his forces, would see. They were simple orders to disengage and regroup on Las Noches’ southern wall. Since Guto had troops shifting in and out of combat using Squirk’s Gargantas it would be easy for Gruff to relay the info to Squirk and coordinate the redeployment of Guto’s troops. As for Guto himself, he began to form his own Garganta right behind him. At the same time the chains springing from his back continued to drag the struggling Fleur towards him while he resumed a constant stream of Balas targeted to keep Fleetfoot and Soarin at a distance.
To their credit the pair were undaunted by the Balas, charging through the barrage in a last ditch effort to save Fleur, even as Guto stepped back into the Garganta and gripped the chains with his hands and pulled her the last few feet to the yawning portal’s entrance.
Fleur, eyes wild, wasn’t going without a fight either, and as battered and drained as she was she dredged up a final attack at Guto. As it turned out, while Guto had been dragging her towards him, she’d been gathering reishi infused wind into a focused sphere concealed in her left palm. She now slammed this sphere towards his face, hoping to blow his head clean off with the concentrated burst of air. It struck, hitting Guto on the right side of his face as he twisted away from the blow. Blood flew as Guto growled in pain, but his head remained intact, only his right eye being turned to pulp by the attack. With his remaining eye blazing in anger he gripped Fleur by the throat and pulled her into a headbutt, shattering her nose and dazing her, leaving her hanging limp.
The Garganta started to close around them, and Soarin shouted, “Fleur!” as he made a dive for the portal, firing an arrow, but it didn’t make it before the Garganta closed.
“Goddamnit!” Fleetfoot shouted, punching one fist into her palm hard enough to create a shockwave, “We got to find out where he took her!”
Soarin, looking beyond frustrated, looked towards the rest of the battlefield with a sour look pinching his features, “How?”
Fleetfoot uttered a rough curse, shrugging, “I don’t know, but we gotta do something!”
“I’m all for that, but what are we going to do while this battle’s happening?” Soarin said, voice heavy, shoulders sagged, “We’re still under orders to protect the cadets. Even if they’re falling back from the battle, we have to stick with them, just in case the enemy makes another go for the kids.”
She certainly looked as if she wanted to argue, but Fleetfoot gave a stiff nod and said, “I hate that you’re right. Dammit...”
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Above the western battlefront the sky was alight like it was boiling. Most of the Quincy VTOLs form Spitfire’s battalion had retreated due to the shear spiritual pressure emanating from the few elite combatants currently battling in the sky, the machines hovering half a kilometer away and providing limited fire support to the tank units on the ground.
The battle on the ground was a field of constant motion and explosions, the expert tank drivers keeping their machines mobile and encircling the Arrancar and not presenting still targets for Ceros. Already the area was a pockmarked field of smoking craters, burning wreckage, and torn bodies, but amid the chaos it was still possible to make some sense of the flow of battle.
Spitfire, even while dedicating most of her attention to her opponent, could still quickly analyze the situation down below. The tank units were holding firm, gradually stretching thin the Arrancar hordes of both Catrina’s violent little fuzz balls and Chrysalis’ uniformly dark and fanged children. The key factor was discipline. The tank units were falling back in swerving, leap frog motions, backed by well timed pushes by Quincy soldats that prevented the tanks from being overwhelmed. Meanwhile the Arrancar fought like a pack of animals. Ferocious, but without coordination. They got in each other’s own way as often as not, sometimes even devolving into fights breaking out between Catrina’s strange fuzzy servants and Chrysalis’ forces.
Then there were the one on one battles. As if by instinct Quincy and Arrancar alike were avoiding the spots where Sternritter and Espada’s were dueling. Spitfire could sense Lightning Dust, and feared for the cocksure young woman as she felt Smooze release his Zanpaktou. She didn’t think Lightning Dust would last much longer.
As if I’m one to talk, she thought with a sardonic, self recriminating grin as she narrowly avoided a series of strikes from no less than what appeared to be four different Catrina’s. There was no illusion to this, the Third Espada was just moving fast enough to literally be multiple places at once.
Spitfire was keeping up due to the boost, and nature, of her Vollstandig and Schrift.
Some religious texts referred to chariots, or wheels of fire when describing angelic beings, and if such folk saw Spitfire now they’d likely be reminded of such texts. Her ‘wings’ were the shape of a large, perfectly shaped circle of blindingly bright white fire, five meters wide. Six small vestigial wings sprouted from the edges of the wheel, each flap from them generating shimmering waves of heat. The wheel was connected to Spitfire’s back via a curtain of flames, akin to a cloak. The halo sitting atop her brow was a six pointed star of alabaster flames, extending across her brow into a visor. The bow in her hands had turned into a living inferno, and much like her halo was a star of six points, the tips of each point ending in a small wheel of fire so bright they left constant trails of phantom light in their wake.
In terms of speed her Vollstandig had most assuredly given her a significant increase, but Catrina was still faster. This was not what was allowing Spitfire to match the Third Espada. It was the fact that her Schrift, the Inferno, let Spitfire control the heat she generated with incredibly precise and deadly effect.
Even as Catrina’s multiple speed clones tried to surround Spitfire, a incandescent stream of laser-thin heat beams flashed out from Spitfire’s wings and bow, each bar of light so hot that they’d instantly melt steel. This web of incineration would have burned smooth lines through any number of other opponents, and it was only Catrina’s supreme specialization in speed that kept her from being speared through hundreds of times over in the span of mere seconds. To any casual observers of the battle it would have looked as if the sky was being torn open and boiled by constant streaks of white, fiery light, and sonic booms of sound as Catrina and Spitfire danced in intricate death dealing patterns where either one could have potentially ended the other with the slightest misstep.
Which was why Spitfire continued to crank up the intensity of her attacks, pouring more and more atom demolishing heat out from both her wheel of fire and her bow. Along with the intersecting beams, she added small spherical bombs that hung in the air like fireflies. These mines were triggered by the slightest proximity of Catrina’s Hollow reiatsu, blossoming into small suns as they exploded. Yet Catrina lithely flowed through it all, with all the grace and agility of her faintly feline features might suggest, although Spitfire noted a distinct frustration burning in the Espada’s emerald eyes.
She’s getting more and more angry she can’t hit me, despite all her speed advantage, Spitfire thought, not losing any concentration on maintaining her stream of heat beams, Which makes me wonder why she’s still holding back. I’ve got her at a stalemate for now, but if she transformed as well she’d gain the upper hand. So why isn’t she?
The answer to that question came in two parts, not that Catrina was going to tell her Quincy opponent anything. The first reason was simply that Spitfire’s impressive heat beams were coming so rapidly and with such accuracy that Catrina didn’t want to risk speaking her Zanpaktou’s release phrase. Taking the few seconds that would require might well be the opening Spitfire would need to land a telling hit, and Catrina wasn’t foolish enough to trust her Hierro against heat attacks of this level. She wasn’t Torch. Catrina, while weaker only in comparison to Lord Tirek and that hussy Chrysalis, still relied on her speed for defense. Even lower ranked Espada like Guto had stronger Hierro’s than Catrina did. For the most part she was fine with that, because her Sonido was so unmatched she rarely ever feared taking damage to her beautiful flesh. Unfortunately this Quincy was capable of such a vast volume of attacks that even Catrina had to focus to avoid the densely packed barrages.
Catrina wasn’t worried. She was confident the Quincy would run out of stamina and make a mistake before Catrina did. Which was why she didn’t feel too embarrassed about the second reason she didn’t release her Zanpaktou. Catrina, on a very personal level, hated her appearance in her Resurreccion form.
It wasn’t horrific like Smooze’s was, but Cantrina detested the way her transformed state changed her body from the sculpted beauty she was into something more... feral and altogether animalistic. She’d avoid using it at nearly any cost, if she could. But if Spitfire did push her that far then Catrina would take great pleasure in ripping her to tiny shreds with her bare claws.
But first she wanted to see if she could win in a more elegant and beautiful manner.
Just as Spitfire was increasing the intensity of her attacks, Catrina pulled out all the stops on her speed. Normally she’d have enjoyed exchanging more words of banter with her foe, but for a battle like this, at such insane momentum and deadly speed, there was no time for talk. Each passing second involved the exchange of dozens of micro-instants of near death for either of them as Catrina started moving fast enough to effectively create scores of speed clones, while at the same time Spitfire was lancing the sky with so many beams of earth melting heat that some might have confused that portion of the sky for the surface of the sun. Some of Spitfire’s heat beams speared through the speed clones rushing her, but each time the speed clone merely vanished, Catrina herself unharmed by attacks that were only striking her afterimage. In fact Catrina was letting a growing number of her speed clones fall prey to Spitfire’s attacks, forming a pattern, a rhythm, within the overall pace of the fight.
At the same time some of her speed clones struck at Spitfire with Catrina’s war fan, spinning in a constant dervish of steel around the Sternritter, who was starting to take small cuts and wounds. Which Spitfire was intending, following her own pattern, injecting her own rhythm, to draw Catrina in.
Unbeknownst to each other, the two women were thinking along the exact same lines as their attacks drew closer to each other and the beat of their battle increased into a savage tempo that both were conducting against one another.
Just a little more... Catrina thought...
...and I’ll have you right where I want you, Spitfire thought at the same time.
Faster and faster they went, streaking across the battlefield’s skyline, Catrina’s speed clones falling one after another, while Spitfire’s body started taking more and more wounds. Then, abruptly, Catrina’s speed clones halted, all of them getting torn asunder at once by beams of raw heat. To an observer it would seem as if Catrina’s multiple forms vanished to show just one left, reeling back, apparently stunned.
Eyes sharpening at the opportunity, Spitfire fired a single, focused beam of white heat from the center of her six pointed bow. The beam instantly lanced through Catrina, burrowing a ashen hole through the Espada’s chest.
Only this, too, was a speed clone, the bait on the hook that Catrina had been preparing, getting Spitfire focused so much on the idea that she was gradually overwhelming Catrina’s speed clones that she could lure the Sternritter into believing she’d exposed the real deal.
So in that moment of distraction, that moment of assumed triumph, Catrina appeared behind Spitfire and raked her war fan across the back of Sternritter’s neck. The razor sharp blades of the fan-shaped Zanpaktou tore through the slim neck, neatly severing the head from the body, and Catrina grinned widely in victory.
“What are you smiling at?”
Catrina froze, spinning around at Spitfire’s voice. The woman was standing a good distance away, wagging a finger at Catrina, “You didn’t think you were the only one with a clone technique, did you?”
Just as Catrina had been trying to lure Spitfire in with the idea of losing all those speed clones gradually, Spitfire had lured Catrina in by allowing herself to take several small injuries, convincing the Espada that she was genuinely at the extent of her ability to dodge. What Catrina didn’t count on was that Spitfire’s control of heat allowed not just for intense beams of incineration, but much more subtle forms. Including heat’s ability to create mirages, which she used to conceal the fact that she moved away while crafting a replica body out of concentrated fire.
A body that now was losing its mirage that made it look like Spitfire and was exploding in a expanding sphere of earth scorching white fire, the explosion catching Catrina at point blank range.
For a second there was too much heat and light for Spitfire to see much of anything and even she had to shield her eyes for a second against the blaze her fire clone’s explosion unleashed. However she never lost her focus on Catrina’s spiritual pressure, and knew well before the light faded that the Espada had survived the attack.
Survived, but not unscathed.
Even knowing just how fast Catrina’s Sonido was Spitfire was still surprised that the woman had managed to avoid being burnt to cinders. Catrina’s left side was scorched, much of her arm and leg on that side now showing bleeding, blackened skin, and even part of her face on the left side was left blistered and raw from the narrowly escaped bomb. Catrina made a choking noise somewhere between unimaginable rage and shocked pain, her eyes wide and twitching as she touched her face.
“You... you disgusting cow. You wretched little piece of gutter sputum! Marring this perfect body is unforgivable!”
“Perfect?” Spitfire smirked, “You’re a high eight at best. Well, closer to seven now. I’d still do you, but I wouldn’t brag about it afterward. Kind of a ‘I’m bored on a Friday’ sort of lay.”
Spitfire had to all but vanish with lightning speed to avoid a powerful and thin Cero of a dark green hue that would’ve pierced a hole straight through her if she’d been a millisecond slower. Catrina, her finger still pointed and crackling with bolts of green energy, had a furious heat filling her eyes. Her mouth was wracked in a twisted expression of rage that barred feline teeth.
“Laugh for the few moments you have left, Quincy. I was hoping to give you a beautiful death...”
Her whole body was shrouded by a fiercely flickering aura of deep emerald light, and she took her warfan and cut her palm upon its razor edge, flinging her bleeding hand out where the blood mixed with a growling swirl of gathering emerald energy.
“But now it will simply be brutal. Gran Rey Cero!” (Grand King Cero)
Space itself was distorted by the power and speed of the blinding emerald Cero that flooded the sky in a beam hundreds of meters wide that shifted and twisted through the air as it was compressed by the weight of its own spiritual pressure. Spitfire didn’t have any time to try evading an attack like this, which crossed the space to her in a literal flash. All she could do was hold her bow in front of her and try to counteract the Gran Rey Cero’s power with her own arrow of unrestrained, blinding white heat and light.
Every wing on her wheel shined like a reborn star, and the air lost all its moisture as unimaginable heat flowed through Spitfire and into her bow as she shouted, “Gottesfeuer!” (Godfire)
Aside from the clash between King Sombra and Lord Tirek, there hadn’t been an equivalent unleashing of raw destructive force on the battlefield to match what occured between Spitfire and Catrina at that moment. The Espada was using the strongest Cero technique reserved solely for Espada to use, one forbidden for them to fire while still inside the confines of Las Noches. Meanwhile Spitfire was using the strongest technique she could muster in such a short timeframe to counter, shunting all of her heat control from the Inferno and personal reishi into a focused beam of sunfire. She had stronger attacks, but all of them would have required charge time that she didn’t have.
There was no moment of struggle between the two colliding forces of spiritual energy, only an overwhelming bright light as the Gottesfeuer and Gran Grey Cero tore into each other and then intermixed, the volatile clash of Quincy and Hollow energies creating a detonation of force and heat that flattened many of the combatants fighting on the ground hundreds of feet below. The resulting shockwave of force and flame saw both Catrina and Spitfire being flung away from the epicenter in opposite directions like blazing comets, both of their bodies trailing smoke. Each one impacted with the ground at angles, gouging out large swaths of desert and resulting in both women laying in craters on either side of the western battle.
Spitfire rose first, coughing and clutching her side, where stray energy from the explosion had opened up a seeping wound.
“Note to self; trying to cancel out a giant ass beam with another giant ass beam while standing in close proximity to said beams equals a bad time,” she muttered, wincing but straightening herself out and assessing the damage. She wasn’t as bad off as she expected after tanking an explosion that size, but it helped that her Vollstandig enhanced her Blut Vene and that her Schrift made her nearly immune to heat based damage. The wounds she had were almost purely from the raw force of the explosion and the Hollow energies of the Cero.
Across the field of battle she could just make out Catrina standing up as well, the Espada looking battered and burned, but still very much mobile and if the way Catrina’s head of bright coppery red hair bristled was any indication, Spitfire had really only succeeding in making the Third Espada even more pissed off than she already was.
This just ain’t my day. Some reinforcements would be great right about now. Where in the damn hell is Hoity Toity anyway?
She hadn’t seen him since the fight had started, though that wasn’t necessarily unusual. Hoity was an expert in stealth techniques, even without the use of his Schrift, so most likely he was slinking around the battlefield taking advantage of any opportunities he could find for glory. Just would have been nice to have some backup against this damn Espada. Oh well, no point complaining. Just suck it up and keep the fight going. She could sense Lightning Dust not too far away, fully engaged with another Espada, and if the other Sternritter’s spiritual pressure was anything to gauge by the fight was either going really well, or really poorly. Either way, Lighting Dust wasn’t far off from death. Which by that girl’s standards could have been exactly what she wanted.
Either way, we can’t take much more of this. C’mon Cadence, Velvet, Sassy, hurry your asses up!
----------
Groaning as he slowly picked himself off the ground, Wind Rider dusted sand out of his graying hair and glanced bleary upwards, where the last vestiges of light and flame were dissipating from the sky.
“So was that one of ours, or one of yours, setting off nukes right above our heads?” he asked.
Smacking the side of his head to dislodge some sand from his ears, Thorax said in a quite casually conversational tone, “At a guess, I’d say both. Probably Catrina getting testy. Mother wouldn’t be so reckless as to use a Gran Rey Cero this close to her own kids.”
“You’re giving mother more credit than I would,” said Pharynx, spitting out sand.
All three of them had been slammed to the ground by the recent explosion in the air, which had caused a temporary lull in the fighting as Quincy and Arrancar alike had to collect themselves and shake off their shock. Windrider was glad for the brief reprieve, as it let him assess his troops for a brief second. Things were going better than he expected, but that wasn’t saying much. He’d been locked in combat with Thorax and Pharynx somewhere around the center of the battle, but the lines of combat had shifted somewhat an he was now left maybe a hundred or so meters from his troops’ central line, which was now shaped more or less like a horseshoe with its sides encircling the main Arrancar hordes.
“Well gentlemen, shall we get back to trying to murder each other?” Wind Rider said, taking aim with his twin pistols.
A soft sigh escaped Thorax, “That does seem to be the trendy thing to be doing today. Honestly I’d much prefer to be engaging in some pleasant debauchery, but since you Quincy decided today was a great day to start lobbing explosive ordinance at my home, I’ll have to settle for enjoying a spot of violence. Which, I’ll note, hasn’t been going well for you, Mister Wind Rider.”
Wind Rider couldn’t argue with him there. Between himself and his two foes, Wind Rider was by far the more severely injured at this point. He was favoring his right leg due to a clean sword thrust from Thorax that had struck right above the knee, while he sported a even deeper gash on his left shoulder down to his mid-chest, courtesy of Pharynx’s glaive. Compared to that the two Arrancar only sported a few bruises, burns, and light grazes from Wind Rider’s own efforts.
Hefting his glaive up in a ready stance, Pharynx spat and said, “No point talking with him, Thorax. If you’re too much of a wimp to finish things, then just stand back while I do it.”
“I was going to ask him what those pillars of light were about, but I suppose we can just get back to bloodletting, sure,” Thorax said with a shrug.
“Wouldn’t matter if you asked, he clearly can’t do it himself, otherwise he would’ve already,” Pharynx pointed out.
“We don’t know that for sure. Maybe he’s just waiting for the right moment to unleash his true power?” Thorax shot back, “You know that’s how a lot of these top fighters like to do things. Waiting for the dramatic moment to go all out. So stupid.”
Pharynx frowned, looking at his brother deadpan, “Uh, you do realize neither of us have used our Resurreccions yet, right?”
“Of course not, it's not dramatically appropriate yet!”
“...Are you being serious right now?”
“I’m always serious, brother. This is my serious face, see?”
“You’re an idiot-” Pharynx’s comeback was interrupted by the sound of multiple clinking metal objects that landed between the two brothers; a batch of grenades tossed by Wind Rider.
Multiple blasts of bright blue spirit energy rocked the area, and Thorax and Pharynx were both knocked back by the explosions, each taking some damage from the deadly detonations of reishi, but none so bad that they weren’t able to still land on their feet.
Wind Rider vanished and flickered into view between the brothers with a swift Hirenkyaku, crossing his arms to fire his pistols in both directions at the pair. Thorax and Pharynx both twirled their respective weapons to deflect the quick, stinging bullets of reishi, but Wind Rider only used this as a distraction as he quickly ceased firing with one hand and yanked out another grenade, this one of a different shape. He tossed this one straight down as he jumped into the air, and the canister burst into a thick white cloud of smoke. No normal smoke, this was a creation of Quincy alchemy that diffused spiritual energies, making it not only hard to sense reiatsu through it, but slowly weakening pure spirit beings that remained inside the smoke for long.
Coughing and sputtering, both Thorax and Pharynx rushed out of the cloud, looking up to see that Wind Rider had gained a good hundred feet on them, now standing in the air and looking down on the two brothers.
“Say boys, since you both seem to damn chatty, you want to hear a story?” Wind Rider asked, reaching into the breast pocket of his uniform.
“No,” said Pharynx.
“Kinda, yeah,” said Thorax.
“Don’t worry, won’t take long. Just thought I’d clue you two in on why I was put in the Strafbattalion.”
“That what?” Pharynx tilted his head, making a pinched, confused face.
“Oh, I know them,” said Thorax, “King Sombra’s punishment detail. You did something horrible against your fellow Quincy.”
“That’s right. Each schmuck in the battalion earned His Majesty’s displeasure in one way or another. Usually by committing a crime against another Quincy. My crime was stealing a technique from one of the Quincy’s long ago allies; the Bount. You familiar with them? Doesn’t matter, they’re nearly all dead now, but once upon a time we Quincy fought alongside them. The Bount were a interesting bunch. They could consume the souls of others to gain power and stay young. Eventually that soured our relationship with them, but personally I rather liked the idea of a quick and easy way to get stronger. So I found a way to replicate the technique and distill soul power from people. Norma humans at first, but I figured out how to do it to other Quincy, and got an even bigger power boost out of that.”
“Neat, but what’s your point?” asked Thorax.
“Glad you asked,” Wind Rider said as he withdrew something from his breast pocket, a small vial of glowing blue liquid. “You see, when I was found out, and sentenced to the Strafbattalion, I had to give up all the soul essence I’d collected. All but a couple that I managed to hide a couple of vials. I swore off ever creating more of the juice, but figured that since I had some left, I might as well save some for a rainy day. Well, shit sure is raining today boys, so bottoms up!”
As he popped the top on the vial and upended its glowing contents down his waiting gullet, Pharynx thrust his glaive upward and concentrated a vibrating Cero blast at the weapon’s tip, unleashing the beam in a bloody wave of red light. The beam crossed over where Wind Rider stood, but the Quincy had already vanished with another burst of high speed motion and as the Cero faded, Wind Rider’s body started to emit curls of steam and a pulsing aura of blue.
With grunts somewhere between pain and pleasure Wind Rider’s body shook as it underwent subtle yet clear changes. His graying hair with a receding hairline became fuller and turned to a rich, dark brown. The lines of age around his face tightened to filled out to the strong features of youth. His eyes brightened and his muscles bulged with new tone and mass, his aged body gaining the vitality of a much younger athlete. Even his voice changed, going from rugged and strained to twanging and energetic, the voice of a young man in his prime.
“Whoooboy! That’s the stuff I’m talking about! Man I missed this feeling. Mmmm, damn, soon as I’m done kicking your asses, I’m going to find me Cinch and have ourselves some quality time because damn does this put some sauce back in the old banana!”
“That was entirely more information than we needed to know,” Thorax said, crossing the distance to Wind Rider with a single swift Sonido and lashing out with an equally quick horizontal strike with his cutlass.
Wind Rider, with renewed speed and vigor, ducked the blow and thrust one his pistols past Thorax’s guard, firing point blank at the Arrancar’s exposed chin. Thorax ducked back, the bullet, which was empowered by Wind Rider’s boosted reiatsu, grazed his cheek and drew a long and bleeding gash there. Wind Rider followed this up with a incredibly fast and brutally strong snap kick, its strength increased with Blut Arterie.
The blow struck Thorax in the stomach, making him skid back across the air, but the lithe Arrancar maintained his balance and countered with a devious smile and stuck out his tongue. In a flash that tongue speared outward, moving in a blur a it tried to pierce Wind Rider. He dodged with expert timing, but still took a cut on his arm as Thorax’s tongue passed by. The tongue was hard and abrasive, like it made out of sharp thorns. Wind Rider zipped around Thorax, firing his pistols, forcing the Arrancar to evade. As he did so he still directed his now shockingly prehensile tongue to extend out further, chasing Wind Rider.
Wind Rider kept ahead of it easily enough, but Thorax had just been herding the Quincy into position. Pharynx, who’d been gathering his strength down below, now burst upwards, his body lined with violet light as he shouted a deep throated battlecry. His glaive formed a shockwave around itself as it slammed it towards Wind Rider, who’d been moving in just the right path due to Thorax’s attacks.
For a second Pharynx thought he’d made a clean hit, expecting to cut Wind Rider straight down the center. Instead what happened was that his glaive clashed into a pair of glowing blue Seele Schneider blades. In an instant Wind Rider had seen the attack coming, and whipped his pistols behind his back where bayonet rings on the bottom of each pistol attached to a waiting Seele Schinider tube. He’d then brought both blades, connected now to his pistols, and crossed them in front of him to block Pharynx’s blow. Wind Riders freshly empowered reiatsu and youth let him match the massively muscled Arrancar pound for pound.
Thorax came in from behind, leading with his spearing tongue, but Wind Rider pushed off from Pharynx’s blade and flipped out of the way of the attack. Thorax ended up next to his brother once more, squaring off with Wind Rider as he sucked his tongue back into his mouth.
“Now that’s just gross,” Wind Rider said.
Thorax shot off a cheeky grin, “But the ladies love it. Some men as well.”
“Heh, now who’s proving too much information?”
The three faced each other, slow seconds ticking by as they all tensed their bodies to resume the lethal dance of battle. Only both Quincy and Arrancar alike paused when in the distance a spectacular sight and sense of spiritual pressure became visible, not stemming from the already active battlefield, but coming from Las Noches itself.
The roof of Las Noches was blown open in several points by pillars of light, two of them the wide, white, cross-tipped pillars of activating Vollstandigs, and the third a harsh crimson pillar filled with Hollow energies. Amid those three pillars was a fourth spiritual pressure, no visible sign of it given but its spiking power clear to feel amid the others.
“Oh crap, that’s Lord Squirk’s reiatsu!” said Pharynx, his expression darkening, “The Quincy sneaked some bastards inside the fortress!”
“Not just Quincy...” Thorax breathed, licking his lips, “You feeling that? That’s a Soul Reaper. A Captain, if it feels this strong, this far away.”
“What do we do?” asked Pharynx, but before he could get an answer Wind Rider cut in with a barrage of bullets that forced both Arrancar to dodge out of the way.
“I’ll tell you boys what you’re going to do. You’re going to finish this dance with me. You don’t have time to worry about anything else!”
With that he launched himself at the pair, bayonet blades swinging. He wasn’t under the delusion he could readily or easily win against the pair. Even with his old, ill gotten power from his disgraced actions in the past he figured he’d, at best, only match these guys when they went Resurreccion. But that didn’t matter. Now that the gig was up and the assassination team had been forced to use Vollstandig, revealing their presence within Las Noches, this whole battle was a race against time.
----------
Chrysalis would have been bored if it wasn’t for the fact that she actually had to pay attention to a degree in order to keep pace with Coloratura and Sapphire Shores as the two glamorous Sternritter were doing their level best to annihilate the Second Espada. Well, as much as they could given neither one had transformed like their comrades had.
“Would it be horribly hypocritical of me to point out that neither of you seem to be taking this very seriously? Its starting to hurt my feelings,” Chrysalis said in a relaxed drawl as she casually slung a dark jade Cero beam towards Sapphire Shores that was near as strong a Catrina’s Gran Rey Cero had been, without Chrysalis putting any more effort into it than a flick of her wrist.
The devastating beam did not have its desired effect of disintegrating matter and ripping asunder the Quincy’s existence. As had every other time Chrysalis had fired an energy attack at the woman, Sapphire Shores stuck out a hand and used it to part the cascade of energy. At the point of contact Sapphires hand was glowing a blinding, incandescent blue, like a thousand blowtorches fused together. Chrysalis could both see and feel the way her Hollow energies within the Cero beam were being broken down and reassembled into harmless spirit particles that vented out behind Sapphire in an annoyingly cute and glittery stream of golden motes of light.
“Our deepest apologies, Chrysalis,” said Coloratura as she appeared above Chrysalis, fingers dancing across the glowing bars of her spectral keyboard, “But we won’t transform unless you do first. Strict orders from His Majesty. You see we’re a bit different from our... well let’s be polite and call them ‘lower tier’ Sternritter comrades. Sapphire and I are part of a special group. No transforming unless absolutely necessary.”
A painstakingly beautiful symphony of sound, far beyond what could be a achieved by a mere piano, soothingly flowed from Coloratura’s keyboard and all the sky around her rippled with waves of multicolored light. Bands of light pulsed in rhythm to the music, and even though Chrysalis knew it was coming it was still difficult to dodge as she felt the vibrations in her skin.
A spirit being’s defenses began with their reiatsu, the spiritual pressure that flowed out of them from the massive amounts of spirit energy within their soul bodies. That pressure meant that most spirit based abilities, regardless of form, had to be able to overcome that pressure in order to function. There were of course exceptions and loopholes, and most powers could still have some effect even against a superior reiatsu. Chrysalis’ personal reiatsu was rivaled by few, eclipsed by even fewer.
Today she had to begrudgingly add these two Quincy women to the list of those with enough reiatsu to affect her, although she didn’t think either one was stronger. Regardless, it was enough that Coloratura’s Schrift could penetrate Chrysalis’ Heirro entirely, and still affect her body even through the weight of her spiritual pressure.
Muscles and bones ripped and tore themselves apart as sound vibrations, minuscule but finely controlled to an insane degree, literally broke apart the bonds between particles. The result was that even as Chrysalis evaded with Sonido, the near invisible bans of sound produced by Coloratura’s playing still turned her left arm into an explosion of meat and gore.
“Ugh, really?” Chrysalis said as the ripped muscles and exposed bone pulsed and bulged, her regeneration kicking in and rapidly rebuilding her arm. “How many times are you going to do that? You’re far too slow, Rara, to get all of me with that attack. And also, do you have to be playing such wretchedly yawn inducing music? Throw in some death metal, hun. You literally rip people apart with your music, you might as well make the music match.”
She could see the irritated vein appearing on Coloratura’s brow, and Chrysalis smiled. Whether it was the nickname Chrysalis had picked out of the ether, or just having her music mocked, Coloratura was remarkably easy to rile up. The woman flipped her ridiculously long ponytail while glaring down her nose at Chrysalis, “That’s Countess to you, plebeian! You’ll appreciate my music better once its torn your very soul into screaming pieces.”
“Screaming Pieces. Now that’s the perfect name for a death metal band,” Chrysalis said, flickering in and out of view as she evaded more of Coloratura’s symphony of carnage. The only visual cue for the incoming waves of destructive sound were those shimmer bands of multi-hued light, like someone spilling watercolors across the sky. She was relying more on her Pesquisa to sense the onrushing waves of Quincy energy to time her movements. Each time some small part of her was still struck and liquefied, but her high-speed regeneration took care of the wounds as fast as they were made.
If she’d just been facing Coloratura alone, Chrysalis knew she’d have had the upper hand.
Sapphire Shores worked in perfect tandem with her partner, maneuvering into just the right position to take advantage of Chrysalis’ evasions by attacking right where Chrysalis was dodging. The silvery liquid bow that Sapphire wielded like a living stream fired bolts of the mercury-like substance high speed. The bolts snaked through the air like fingers of frost on a car window, spreading out and growing branching points that converged on Chrysalis.
Fortunately for Chrysalis, avoiding these wasn’t a much of an issue as the sound waves. They were, after all, physical bolts, despite their unusual properties. Instead of evading them, which would’ve slowed her down and made it easier for Coloratura to hit her, Chrysalis swung her Zanpaktou at Sapphire Shore’s liquid arrows. Each swing created a raw shockwave of physical force that dispersed or deflecting the branching arrows of silver liquid, creating openings for Chrysalis to fly through.
She knew she couldn’t afford to get even one of those liquid arrows on her. Just to confirm it to herself again she fired a quick, focused Cero at an arrow that’d gotten past her sword’s shockwave, and saw the arrow alter the Cero’s energy upon impact, dispersing the power into inert blue reishi particles.
Whatever the details behind Sapphire Shore’s Schrift, it clearly let her and her arrows disperse or alter spirit energy upon contact. Chrysalis wasn’t sure of the extent of it, but she had a guess, and if she was right then it made sense that Sombra sent these two specifically after her.
The loudmouth Countess’ sound powers can inflict quick and devastating injuries, which isn’t an issue as long as I have my wonderful regenerative prowess. Meanwhile the flashy one has a power that disrupts or alters spirit energies. Which means if she lands a hit, she might be able to disrupt my regeneration. Either one alone would be annoying, but the pair combined is a neat little ‘anti-Chrysalis’ package. Oh Sombra, you really do know how to show a lady a good time.
Yet despite this realization, Chrysalis was not worried for her life. If anything she was simply more excited. She enjoyed a challenge. It made toying with people so much more fun when they thought they were the ones in control. Besides, Chrysalis hadn’t even begun to fight back seriously, and had been preparing a little surprise for her two dance partners.
As she’d been taking and regenerating injuries from Coloratura’s murderous chords, Chrysalis had been leaving quite a few bits of blood and viscera floating about in the air, and neither Sternritter had quite picked upon on the fact that blood globs weren’t supposed to float. Sending out sparks of her power to those bits of floating material, Chrysalis activated one of her more unique powers as she grinned like a malicious shadow.
”Nacimiento Sanguinario.”
The bits of blood were wrapped in a blood red aura as they pulsated and bubbled with new growth, increasing in size numerous times over in a the span of a couple of seconds. Vague humanoid bodies took shape as jagged, clawed limbs exploded out of thin bodies so skeletal the ribs could easily be seen past the onyx black chitin of their skin. Faces halfway between a human’s and a fierce insectoid let out inhuman howls as several dozen blood drones were born and launched themselves towards Coloratura and Sapphire Shores both, while Chrysalis looked on like a proud parent.
These creatures were not like her other children, and were little more than barely conscious constructs formed rapidly from her own flesh. Even the basic drones in her army had more will and individual personality. And these things were certainly nothing like her precious true borns, like Thorax and Pharynx, and even little Ocelus. All these creatures were, were highly disposable yet deadly extensions of Chrysalis’ will. If she’d wanted to and had time she could have invested more power and independent personality into them, but that wasn’t needed here.
The blood drones moved with impressive speed for being such simple constructs, and both Sapphire Shores and Coloratura clearly hadn’t been expecting to suddenly be set upon by dozens of vicious creatures wielding long, scything talons. Yet each Sternritter reacted with incredible speed and calm acumen, not allowing themselves to be taken off guard.
With an elegant backflip that showed off just how limber and long legged she was, Sapphire shores swept her bow around and hammered eight or nine blood drones in a flash, liquid arrows splattering through the drones. Upon contact the silver liquid seemed to instantly spread through each drone, breaking its body down into a screaming mass of incandescent reishi particles.
Coloratura responded to her assailants with equal ferocity and lack of pity, fingers twirling across her keyboard with a smooth dance of motion, Coloratura’s body swaying both head and hips in rhythm to her beat. Like spilled wine on a tablecloth a wave of prismatic light spread out around Coloratura, expanding out in a sphere of vibrating sound as her symphony reached a high strung, screeching crescendo. The blood drones that had flown to assault her all started to shudder and pop like mites caught in an active microwave, bursts of blood raining from the sky.
Just like that most of Chrysalis’ drones had been destroyed, but that was alright by her. She only needed the Sternritter to take their eyes off her for that one, brief moment.
Catrina might have had the fastest Sonido, but if there was a spot for second place on that list, Chrysalis probably owned it. Tirek was more of a ‘offense as defense’ kind of guy, so Chrysalis would have placed herself as even a shade faster than him. Not that she’d ever make that claim to his face.
Even before the first drops of blood from her massacred blood drones started to properly fall, Chrysalis was appearing behind Coloratura. Her sword slashed out so fast it even parted several blood droplets just as gravity was starting to take hold on them. Coloratura sensed the attack coming, miraculously, and managed to pull an impressive move halfway between a bending dodge and a dance move as she spun away from the attack. Even so the raw force of Chrysalis’ strike turned into a cutting shockwave that still lacerated a painful line of red across Coloratura’s left shoulder, staining the woman’s uniform with blood. Impressively, Coloratura didn’t flinch or hesitate, her fingers blurring over her keyboard as her eyes narrowed with anger and focus.
Yet Chrysalis had seized the momentum, and fully intended to keep it. She moved with such speed that the sound waves that cut through the air where she had been barely reached her before Chrysalis was already above Coloratura, one long, smooth leg extending upwards above her head in a near even split before she brought her heel down in a punishing kick that tore the air as it came down.
Unable to dodge in time, Coloratura barely got her arms up to block, veins pulsing red with Blut Vene. The kick struck full force and with a cracking of the sound barrier sent Coloratura catapulting earthward.
Coloratura recovered with speed and aplomb, flipping several times before controlling her fall with her feet grinding against the air with controlled reishi. Her long fingers slammed hard, harsh notes over her keyboard, her face twisted with a violent smile as sh sent a shuddering wall of sound up towards Chrysalis, making the air itself appear to bend and ripple.
With a wry half-grin Chrysalis charged an overpowering Cero in her outstretched palm and sent it cascading down. The wave of jade power ripped through the destructive field of sound and continued towards Coloratura, but Sapphire Shores appeared in front of her fellow Sternritter, bow aimed skyward, and fired a literal river of silver liquid up like a massive geyser. Appearing from the geyser were the leaping shapes of dolphins, riding the stream as it collided with Chrysalis’ Cero.
The liquid silver dolphins swam through the Cero blast and ate parts of it, morel like hungry giant piranha than smiling dolphins. As the strange reishi constructs ate the Cero they grew fatter and larger, until about a dozen big rounded dolphins of liquid silver floated lazily in the air. Chrysalis looked at them with a deadpan expression.
“Well, I think I’ve just about seen everything now.”
Then the dolphins opened up their bottle-nosed mouths and proceeded to belch back her own Cero energy at her in a barrage of swift jade beams. Chrysalis didn’t try to dodge, simply swinging her sword and using the pure shockwaves of her swings to turn these smaller versions of her own Cero aside.
Apparently having expended themselves, the dolphins lost shape and melted into streams of silver that returned to Sapphire Shore’s bow, and she glanced at Coloratura, who’s shoulder wound was still bleeding profusely.
“You quite alright there, Coloratura?”
With a sniff and another toss of her hair Coloratura turned her nose up and said, “A scratch such as this doesn’t even register to me as an injury.”
“Still, its not like you to get struck in the first place. Perhaps you should step back and let me handle matters from here,” Sapphire said, eyes gleaming as she pointedly eyed Chrysalis.
“As if I’d like let you take the glory for yourself. We kill her together, or not at all!”
“Pfft, so stubborn. I’m only concerned for your health. Whatever would I do if you lost that pretty head of yours? I’d have no one left to tease except Night Light.”
Chrysalis cleared her throat loudly, “If you two are having a lover’s quarrel, I can literally find a million other things to do with my time than watch. At least if its going to be tame like this. Get to some clothes ripping and some slapping going on and I’ll stick around.”
Sapphire Shores and Coloratura exchanged looks with each other, then looked at Chrysalis, then back to each other, both of them wearing the flat expressions of a pair of women who were quite fed up.
“It really is a shame we can’t use our Vollstandigs just yet, but perhaps its time to more thoroughly combine our talents?” Sapphire Shores said, and Coloratura nodded.
“Yes, you are the only partner who can create a worthy performance with me, so let us give our snarky friend here a show. Just don’t miss any steps Sapphire, and this time let me lead.”
“Oh, if you insist...”
Chrysalis raised a curious eyebrow as both women took up individual poses back to back with each other as if they were a pair of pop stars about to take the stage.
Which wasn’t that far off from the truth.
Sapphire Shores raised her bow, which shifted into a swirling pool of silver liquid that started to expand above them.
“Sapphire Shores, Sternritter Q, the Quintessence.”
Coloratura played a swift and upbeat melody upon her keyboard, a building set of uplifting notes growing into a stronger set of chords as the two women rose up through an expanding field of silver that was now taking the shape of a large square stage above them.
“Countess Coloratura, Sternritter O, the Octave.”
As they dipped up through the stage it itself grew more defined features, including large ornate speakers containing complex carvings of waves and dolphins, a massive lighting system covering the back half of the stage with disco-ball shaped lights that glittered like stardust, and a raising central dais with multiple steps from which emerged a silver sphere. This sphere opened up and out stepped Sapphire Shores, now wielding a long handled gleaming silver microphone in place of her bow. Coloratura remained at the sphere, which continued to open until it transformed into a full, three hundred and sixty degree keyboard.
Both women were wearing augmented versions of their uniforms with significantly more glitz and more revealing elements.
Chrysalis had no idea what in the name of Hell itself was going on, but she felt that Sapphire Shores’ and Coloratura’s reiatsu had somehow been combined. This was no transformation like what the other Sternritter had undergone, but rather a manner in which these two women had fused the power of their bows and Schrifts together to generate this ridiculous looking stage construct.
“Are you prepared, Chrysalis?” asked Sapphire Shores on her microphone, her voice amplified to new heights, “To experience a once in a lifetime performance?”
“Because it will be the last of your pathetic existence!” said Coloratura, spinning with elegant grace as her fingers lit upon the keyboard around her, creating the beginning of a fast, powerful beat of sound that shook the very air, “We play this funeral march just for you!”
Sapphire and Coloratura spoke as one, their voices intermingling.”
”Todesrhapsodie!” (Death Rhapsody)
As the pair began to play their literally soul crushing music, Sapphire Shores’ voice rising in song like a mad angel and Coloratura’s hands wracking her keyboard with a demon’s intensity, the stage itself lit up and disgorged a legion of destruction towards Chrysalis. Every speaker flowed with rings of silvery sound that tore through the air, while every light fixture and disco-ball started to flood the sky with a riot of painfully bright silver beams, arrows, and streams of liquid that practically burst with dolphins. All to the tune of some unholy mixture of techno-pop and hard metal.
Seeing this coming at her, all Chrysalis did was pinch the bridge of her nose, sigh, and say, “I miss Celestia and Luna.”
-----------
Thundering through the air with the constant, furious swings of an out of control helicopter blade, Lightning Dust spun through limb after oozing skeletal limb that rose from Smooze’s undulating body of horrific dark goo and shifting Hollow parts. Her boomerang shone with multiple jets of blue reishi that kept her moving like a top, hacking down twisting arms and claws that grasped for her with ever greater speed and frequency. It was as if for every limb she severed, two or three more rose with echoing screams from the mass of filth coating a near football field long pool beneath Lightning Dust.
She was coughing and sputtering, her lungs burning with mucus as disease spread through her, her blood feeling as if it was boiling and her body drenching itself in sweat. Yet none of it slowed her down, and in fact Lightning Dust only got faster and faster the closer her body came to death’s doorstep, her strikes getting stronger by the second.
Smooze protected his central body, the large bulbous head with its many shifting eyes and cavernous mouth, by raising entire entwined masses of limbs from the slime around him, so any time Lightning Dust made a run for his head she was stopped short by a wall of grasping talons and claws. She had more than just the sharp, slashing limbs to worry about too, as each one was a conduit for Smooze’s spirit energy and as some arms struck at her physically, others appeared like turrets and fired sickly purple Cero beams that bled fragments of goop as they flew at her.
Lightning Dust wove through these beams, evading most of them, but still getting grazed several times by near hits that still managed to melt parts of her uniform and burn her skin and turn parts of it putrid with sores. Lightning Dust wasn’t thinking on a conscious, tactical level anymore. She was functioning on pure combat instinct and the sheer, overwhelming buzz of her adrenaline rush. No matter how much her body hurt, it just didn’t matter to her. She was alive, every nerve in her body drenched in fiery, lovely adrenaline. Lightning Dust was so utterly high on her own rush that despite the fact that her body was slowly being worn away by disease didn’t even register to her as a problem. All she could feel was the thunderous crash of her own heartbeat and the need to destroy her opponent.
She just needed an opening. Whacking all these limbs was getting her nowhere. She flung her boomerang in a spiral arc that streaked like a cobalt cleaver around Smooze, circling him and annihilating dozens of his limbs at once before it returned to her, but more limbs started to rise from the ooze below even as the other severed limbs were still falling.
“Grrrr!” Lightning Dust growled, quite fed up. She wasn’t a thinking kind of fighter. She was a kicking ass kind of fighter, and if this Smooze guy wanted to keep playing defense on her to try to wear her own, well... she’d just have to stop playing his game.
Her boomerang lit up with more reishi jets and she blasted in towards Smooze’s main body, flying straight for the bulbous, goop coated head. Its many dozens of eyes all made sicking squelching sounds as they focused on her, and Smooze’s void-like cave of a mouth opened in what might have been a raspy, wet laugh. Limb after white skeletal limb shot up and entwined, forming a wall between her and his head, but unlike every other time where she backed off, this time Lightning Dust charged right into the wall and started spinning away. Like a living buzzsaw she started chewing through the barrier of limbs.
Behind her others limbs rose and shot towards her, but she didn’t stop spinning. Some were chopped apart by her constant spinning attacks, but others reached through and tore at her flesh, cutting deep bloody lines on her back, arms, and legs. Yet despite the wounds Lightning Dust didn't’ back down and certainly didn’t slow down. Instead she just got faster as more of her blood was shed. There was a moment where several limbs tried to grasp her arms to halt her spinning attacks, but whether by intention or luck that was the moment Lightning Dust broke through the limb wall in front of her and spun right towards Smooze’s head.
She aimed her boomerang for the center of his head, at the large central eye that stared at her with its wide, vieny expanse. She thought she would burst right through, but just before she reached the eye something stopped her with a cold, hard feeling right in her gut.
She looked down to see that a long spur of bone had impaled her through the gut, a spur that had shot out from Smooze’s mouth like the tongue of a frog.
Smooze’s central eye narrowed slightly, purple and black slime dripping down it like an eyelid. His voice echoed with nauseating, dripping echoes from the back of that cavernous throat.
“So eager to die. So stupid. Value your own life more. Too late now, mad, mad Quincy woman.”
The spur started to retract, pulling Lighting Dust into the shadowy mouth as if it was about to chomp down on her. Just as she entered its threshold, Lightning Dust’s hand shot up and grasped the spur, her body gleaming with a rising aura of gold and blue light.
“You’re right, dumbass, it is too late. For you. ‘Cause I don’t think you’re gonna dodge this.”
At the moment her body hit a terminal point in terms of damage, that was when the Daredevil reached its peak power. It was the moment, just when she was about to die, where Lightning Dust could use her full power and her strongest technique.
Her hand crushed the bone spur, and she ripped it free of her body in a spray of blood. She gripped both halves of her boomerang and yanked, tearing it in half. As she did so, each half of the boomerang grew in size and bent, each one becoming an individual boomerang, leaving Lightning Dust wielding one in each hand. Additional vents opened up along both sides of the twin boomerangs, and became an eye blinding pair of light beacons as a massive amount of spirit energy erupted from those vents.
”Glanz des Ruhms!” (Blaze of Glory)
Lightning Dust and her twin boomerangs spun, doing so with such speed and force that a literal slashing tornado of destructive reishi was born around her.
She did this while still inside Smooze’s mouth.
To an outside observer it would look as if Smooze’s many eyes all bulged across his body at once as fiery streams of blue light shot out of his mouth, then started breaking through every part of his shifting mass of an oozing head. Then that head exploded, the black and purple bits of filthy slime being consumed by a sudden, colossal pillar of swirling blue reishi that resembled nothing more than a flaming tornado that shot up into the sky for hundreds of meters. The size and force of the twisting pillar of energy was so great that most of Smooze’s body and the large pool of slime he’d created was blown away, sent flying in sizzling goblets for kilometers.
After about twenty seconds the huge swirling burst of reishi subsided, leaving a large crater where Smooze used to be.
From the sky fell Lightning Dust, her body slamming into the ground in the center of the crater in a broken heap. She was pale and blood drenched, the hole in her gut seeping her life blood into the sand.
Lightning Dust could feel her heartbeat slowing and her body growing numb and cold. Her eyes flickered open slightly, looking up at the dark sky above, and Hueco Mundo’s silver crescent moon. Not the ideal spot to die, but she wasn’t bummed out about it. This was fine. This is what she’d wanted. To fight, and feel the rush, until the fire burned its brightest... then went out.
She sighed, letting out what she figured was going to be her last breath.
Then she felt a spike of rather annoying pain, and the sensation of a hand on her shoulder.
“Glugh...gaaah! That...that hurts...dammit...” she turned her head, trying to spot her tormentor.
Hoity Toity knelt by her side, one gray hand on her shoulder, the hand glowing slightly as he used his Schrift upon her. Lightning Dust could feel the strange, alien sensation of Hoity Toity’s power, the Xenomorph, fiddling around with her insides. Being able to change the properties of what he touched let him do a lot of things, and she’d heard this extended to restoring injuries or even curing diseases.
“You... asshole...” she said.
“My, my, is that the way to address someone who’s helping you?” Hoity Toity said, giving her an amusing half smile, “I’d think the appropriate response should be ‘thank you’, or ‘I’m ever so grateful’. I’d even accept stubborn silence in lieu of actual appreciating. Perhaps I should alter your voice box to make you silent while I treat you?”
“Ugh...sunuva...bitch. You ruined...it.”
“What, your death? I knew you were somewhat unhinged, but I didn’t imagine you were actually that crazy. Perhaps the poor late, Tenth Espada was right to call you a madwoman.”
Lightning Dust grunted, “Ain’t...the point. Just would’ve been... perfect, y’know? Don’t wanna die old. This would’ve been a good way to go.”
“Well, His Majesty doesn’t appreciate losing servants unnecessarily, and I could use the brownie points, so you’ll just have to suffer through me saving your life,” Hoity Toity said, “Although you are quite the mess, so you’re quite out of the rest of the battle. I’ll do enough to keep you from dying, but don’t expect to do much else other than lay there for awhile. Even upon our return home I imagine you’ll be enjoying some time in a full body cast drinking through a straw.”
“Piss...off. Sound like freakin’...Spitfire.”
Hoity Toity took his hand from her shoulder, apparently having finished what healing he could, and adjusted the sunglasses he wore, “Speaking of which, it seems our dear Academy Mistress is having trouble with the Third Espada. I’d best go render her some assistance. Try not to move. I don’t enjoy putting together the same people twice in one day.”
With that he vanished with a high speed Hirenkyaku, leaving Lightning Dust to lay there and contemplate whether she ought to ignore him and try crawling out of the crater, or just lay back and take a nap, because either way she was done for this battle.