//------------------------------// // Episode 82: Repercussions // Story: Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls // by thatguyvex //------------------------------// Episode 82: Repercussions With the power of a thousand avalanches Torch’s axe crashed down towards Night Light. He nimbly avoided the edge of the titanic blade, the axe shattering a length of desert several football fields long with just its impact alone. Yet Night Light didn’t just avoid it, but danced on its edge, then with a fractional second of time he used a Hirenkyaku at such high speed that he was beside Torch’s head before the sand had even started to fall from the axe strike. Night Light’s large, crescent moon shaped bow fired a punishing arrow at a mere meter away from Torch, the perfect arrow hitting like a cruise missile. Yet Torch took the blow without barely rocking back, his unimaginably hardened Heirro scales tanking the attack with only moderate damage to show for it. Granted, any damage at all was a surprise to Torch. He was used to his Heirro being all but impenetrable, save for a rare few exceptions like Lord Tirek’s might, or, Torch recalled with an angered growl, Grogar’s underhanded methods. Torch had figured the Quincy must have had heavy hitters who could injure him, and was pleased to know he’d found one of them. Possibly two. Shining Armor wasn’t out of the fight yet, and had proven his worth already, and Torch could smell the blood relation between the younger Quincy and this elder fellow, Night Light. So all the pain really did was excite Torch more, causing him to bellow with something between a mountainous roar and thunderous laughter. “Keep it coming, Quincies! I’m starting to feel this, so don’t hold back now!” He raised his upper left arm and jabbed his spear at Night Light in a shockingly quick series of thrusts for one his size, generating pressure waves of air akin to powerful wind gusts with each stab. Night Light flowed around the attacks like a sparrow, lightly stepping off the edge or shaft of the spear as he dodged, firing his bow in return with a series of powerful and pin-point arrows that hit with tremendous force, blasting scales off Torch’s chest, yet never seeming to penetrate deep enough to actually wound. Torch’s armored body had layer after layer of hardened scales covering him, and each of Night Light’s attacks blasted off another layer, yet Night Light could tell those layers were slowly regrowing as well. Shining Armor in the meantime had circled around to Torch’s right side, flying to get behind Torch. The Fifth Espada spotted him and was having none of that. He lashed out with his lower right arm, the gigantic spiked flail there snaking out towards Shining Armor with rock crushing force. Shining saw the flail coming his way like a dark iron meteor, and swung his bow around to fire an arrow that created a concave barrier in the flail’s path. The flail still smashed through the barrier, shattering it like a sheet of ice, but that slowed the flail enough for Shining Armor to dive out of its path and continue circling behind Torch. Once in position he followed the instructions his father was giving him via the power of the Command and withdrew a Seele Schneider from his belt. Activating the blade of blue reishi he, rather than attack Torch, dropped the Seele Schneider so it would plant itself face down in the sand around Torch. He then proceeded to continue circling Torch, working to do the same thing in other spots around where the Espada stood. Torch was wise to what the young Sternritter was doing and snorted a laugh as he brought the sword held in his lower left hand into play and effectively doubled the strikes coming Night Light’s way. This forced Night Light to pull back, suffering a light wound on his thigh from a near miss of the sword. Even when Torch’s blade didn’t touch flesh, the shear reiatsu and air pressure along the blade’s path created a cutting force, and Night Light kept up his Blut Vene to ensure the wound he took was only a small one, rather than losing his leg altogether. Night Light, opening up the distance from Torch, now aimed his bow and the blue energy around the silvery weapon grew to a brilliant, circular halo. “Licht Regen.” On the surface level, one might have considered Night Light a weak example of a Sternritter. His Schrift was of limited use in a one-on-one duel, more suited to his role as a battlefield commander. He possessed no unique techniques or abilities that were exclusive to himself. Indeed many of the very cadets currently in training knew merely as many techniques as Night Light did, with one or two exceptions, for his skill was focused upon the fundamentals of the Quincy power set. The difference was that Night Light had perfected those fundamentals to a level of mastery unmatched by any other Quincy save for Sombra himself. The Licht Regen was a rapid fire technique favored by many first-class soldats. It could usually produce hundreds of arrows at once, sometimes thousands for more skilled and powerful Quincy. Night Light’s produced over a million arrows of light in a torrential rain beyond any typhoon. A galaxy of arrows in a unrelenting mass crashed into Torch like a literal tsunami, with the resounding crash of such a wave breaking over a mountain. Each individual arrow didn’t possess much strength, far less in fact than the usual concentrated, spear-like arrows he usually fired. But the sheer number of them bore down on Torch like a irresistible weight, a flood that broke upon his scaly hide and actually drove the monstrous Espada back a step or two. “Urgh, well now, this is something,” Torch said, crossing his four weapons in front of him like a shield against the constant deluge of arrows, “Ain’t seen one of you Sternritter pour out this much firepower in... huh, don’t think I have, actually. Kudos. But it doesn’t matter if its one arrow or millions, if none of them can get through my armor! Now how about you take a little something in return?” He sucked in a breath, and then opened his mouth to belch out a fire laced, spiraling Cero beam of deepest red. The Cero cut through the swath of reishi arrows like a plow through snow, driving the rain apart and homing in on Night Light. For his part Night Light ceased firing with his bow and with his left hand drew a Seele Schneider of his own. Yet much like with the Licht Regen, this Seele Schneider was different than the one commonly used, as it had been personally tuned by Night Light himself. The silver tube was broader, and at one end extended into a wider, cross shaped guard. When it activated, the blade it formed was both longer and lager across than a regular Seele Schneider, and its edge had an almost physical looking quality to it, as if the reishi inside the blade itself was denser. Night Light swiped that Seele Schneider through the oncoming Cero, splitting it in half around him. The beams of red energy still flowed off to either side and impacted into the battlefield behind Night Light, creating twin explosions that rocketed up a towering distance into the sky, shaking the desert. Torch, mouth still flickering with smoke and wisps of red energy, grinned and huffed out a chuckle, “You really ain’t shabby. Why haven’t I fought you sooner?” “If you had, you wouldn’t be standing here today,” stated Night Light firmly, then brought his sword up in a perpendicular stance, still holding it with one hand while he kept a grip on his bow with his left hand. He then streaked into a cutting haze of high-speed motion as he assaulted Torch with a flashing series of strikes with the Seele Schneider. Torch, while larger and slower than Night Light, still had four arms to work with, and swiped his massive weapons in a shockingly quick series of parries and counter-strokes for someone his size. More often than not Night Light’s glowing blue blade was deflected by Torch’s giant weapons, and he had to block more than a few powerful and swift counter attacks. Yet despite that Night Light didn’t let up, and at first one, then two, then ever more of his own strokes broke through Torch’s guard and the Seele Schneider cut blazing blue lines over Torch’s armored body. White scales flew off, sheared cleanly through. More took their place, the layers of Torch’s body seemingly impossible to fully penetrate, yet Night Light didn’t cease his striking for nearly a solid minute before he was forced by back off by a particularly powerful chop of Torch’s axe. Torch brought the axe down in a punishing blow that while Night Light parried it, the force alone still drove Night Light into the ground like a pitched fast-ball. Night Light skidded across the desert, feet digging into the sand, and he looked carefully for where his son was even as he sent a mental command to confirm Shining Armor’s status. Are they ready, son? Shining replied not through the mental link of the Command, but by appearing next to his father, his own Seele Schneider in hand as he planted it into the ground. “Just finished, father,” Shining Armor said, winking. As Night Light had been keeping Torch occupied, Shining Armor had used five Seele Schneider blades to form a pentagram pattern around Torch, all five of the glowing blades of reishi planted firmly in the sands of Hueco Mundo. Night Light nodded, and pulled out his own ginto tube, a thick silver flask that he turned over upon the final of the Seele Schneiders that had been placed in the ground, “Good work. Let’s see him withstand this.” As Night Light tilted the ginto tube, Torch himself saw what was happening and laughed, “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but I’m not as dumb as you think, Night Light! I saw what your boy was doing!” Torch jumped up into the air, an impressive feat for one as large as he was, leaping backwards away from the circle of Seele Schneiders just as Night Light’s alchemic water from his ginto tube hit the top of the last Seele Schnier that had been planted. A stream of blue light from potent Quincy reishi flowed along the sides of the Seele Schneiders, and streaked out to form a pattern that connected them all together in a massive pentagram form. The reishi from each Seele Schneider, combined with reishi gathered from within the circle of energy itself, transmuting all the potential reishi within the sands between the blades, fused with Night Light’s own reishi and became a sudden and humongous explosion of brilliant phosphorus light. “Sprenger.” (Explosion)   The Sprenger was an exceedingly potent, if still basic Quincy technique. It was difficult to use in battle due to the time it took to set up, requiring five Seele Schneider to act as a focus for the alchemic circle that would transmute massive amounts of reishi both form the user and the area within the circle to create a concentrated and whirling storm of explosive reishi. Shooting high into the dark sky of Hueco Mundo, there was little doubt such an explosion would have been painful for even one as ludicrously tough as Torch. But Torch had seen the move coming and had leapt out of the way at the last second, jumping back and landing at the very towering walls of Las Noches. He grunted and cracked his neck. “Impressive, but a move like that is pretty useless if you can’t hit me with it.” “I agree,” said Night Light, just as the light from the Sprenger’s explosion faded. “That’s why I set up two of them.” Something streaked like a shooting star through the remains of the first Sprenger’s fading light, passing by Torch’s face in an eyeblink and stabbing into the wall of Las Noches behind him. Torch looked back, only just now registering that the object was Night Light’s own Seele Schneider. It was implanted in the wall, a ginto tube tied to its hilt that opened up and dripped its alchemic water onto the Seele Schneider’s hilt in the same moment the blade hit the wall. Blue light, blazing brighter than the first Sprenger, flowed out and connected to four more Seele Schneiders that were planted across the surface of the wall, forming the pentagram in an instant. Torch had no time to react, only to realize what had happened. The Licht Regen. All those hundreds of thousands of arrows Night Light had fired earlier. They hadn’t been meant to damage him at all. Only blind him to the fact that Night Light had fired four Seele Schneiders amid the torrent to form the base for another Sprenger on the wall. Night Light had predicted Torch would see Shining Armor setup the first one, and logically dodge away from it. Son of a bitch, Torch thought, not with any  malice, but genuine respect as a second, even stronger Sprenger exploded upon him. The titanic blast of white and blue energy shattered a large portion of Las Noche’s wall, while utterly engulfing Torch. Night Light and Shining Armor had to each dodge to the side to avoid the stream of power as it ripped apart a wide swath of area, exploding outward from the wall. Now standing on the air a good distance up, Shining Armor wiped his brow and glanced at his father. “How did you know he’d dodge backwards anyway?” Night Light shrugged, “He’s an instinctual fighter from what I’ve observed. It's just instinct to dodge backwards when you dodge at all. Move away from a threat. I just guessed, and it paid off.” Shining Armor accepted that with a nod, looking back at the dust settling around a near fifty meter wide section of what had been part of Las Noche’s wall. “Do you think that got him?” “I doubt it. I used my Seele Schneider to weaken the reishi particles bonding his scales together, but even so I don’t think an Espada of Torch’s level will die from just this.” “...Freakin’ monster,” Shining Armor muttered. “They’ve survived centuries of warfare with us for a reason, son. Remember that, and never forget to respect their power. Had I not arrived when I did, you could very well be dead right now.” Shining Armor nodded in agreement, then looked at the clearing trails of smoke and dust from where Torch had been standing and his grip tightened on his bow, “Not gainsaying you, dad, but kinda glad I’m here to back you up too, otherwise I’m not sure you could take this guy alone.” His words were punctuated by Torch emerging from the fading dust and growling in such a manner that the two Sternritter could feel it in their bones. The Fifth Espada stood tall, but far from unscathed. In fact he looked distinctly mauled by the blast he’d taken at ground zero. His back was a blackened mass of charred scales and bleeding red wounds that ran with oozing blood. His lower left arm, the one that had held the sword, was twisted and hanging limply, several of its fingers missing. The burn marks rolled over Torch’s neck and scarred the right side of his face with raw crimson burns, and his right eye was burned to a milky white, clearly blind. And for all that he stood to his full height, it was clear he was breathing heavy, labored breaths, and favoring his left leg, which shook under the strain of keeping himself standing upright. Torch was too proud to show the pain he was in. The Sprenger was bad enough, having hit as hard as the strongest Cero Torch could’ve mustered himself. He knew only his specialized defensive qualities, his insanely hard and layered Hierro scales, had kept him alive through that attack. Even someone higher tier than him like Catrina might not have survived that blast. Then again, Catrina probably would have dodged it, Torch imagined with a rueful grin. He briefly assessed himself. He was hurt, no doubting that. Almost all the scales on his back were gone, leaving just bare, scorched skin. They weren’t growing back quickly either. Not after losing that many, that fast. Worse, his old injury was acting up. His left leg was in horrific pain, and cramping like crazy. Torch could barely stand on it. Damned Grogar. The wound had never fully healed. He wasn’t about to let the injuries, ancient or fresh, make him back down from a fight. Torch grit his teeth and let out a challenging roar, beat his axe and spear together in a clamorous clash of metal, and called out to the Quincy, “Is that all you got!? My daughter hits harder than that!” She didn’t, but Torch would take any opportunity to talk up his Ember. He hoped she was doing alright out there. He’d gotten a bit caught up in the fight and lost track of how his horde was doing. Torch wasn’t exactly the most tactical leader, but he did encourage a lot of independent thinking among his horde, so they generally didn’t need him to lead them around by the noses. Night Light and Shining Armor exchanged brief looks with each other, the younger Sternritter holding up one hand in a helpless ‘what are you gonna do?’ gesture. “Don’t suppose you can just go Vollstandig, dad?” “The rest of you have His Majesty’s leave to do so. He hasn’t given I or my particular subset of peers permission to do the same.” A small twitch of a frown crossed Shining’s face, “I don’t understand that. What makes our Vollstandig’s different from yours?” “Ours are more... extreme in their design,” was all Night Light said before he paused and looked up sharply, eyes focusing on Las Noches itself. His golden eyes turned to narrow channels, then shot wide. Shining Armor could see the sudden ratcheting up of tension in his father, and didn’t miss the implication of how abruptly Night Light was focusing upon the interior of the Hollow fortress. “Dad? Dad what is it?” Night Light himself couldn’t be certain. The hole that had been blasted into Las Noches had made it easier to sense some of the spiritual pressures inside. Much like all his other basic Quincy abilities were refined to mastery, his spiritual senses were similarly honed to a fine edge. He’d been out of contact with Velvet and her team after they’d gone into Las Noches, but now that he was close to the fortress, able to sense its interior clearly with that large hole punched through it, he could tell more or less what lay within. He sensed Cadence and Sassy Saddles readily. He knew their spiritual pressures well. He also knew Twilight Velvet’s reiatsu intimately. Out of all the Quincy, he could’ve sensed her more clearly than anyone else, even if she was trying to hide her spiritual pressure. ...And he didn’t sense her presence at all. ---------- There was an all to quiet instance after the Soul Reaper’s portal had closed where Adagio just stood there, her hand gripped so tightly around her ruby tipped trident that she thought she could hear her bones grinding. A roar of guttural, deep frustration tore itself from her lips as she smashed her left fist into the ground, taking out her fury in a cratering punch that sent a shockwave through what was left of Squirk’s former abode, literally cracking apart the wall in front of Adagio and letting in light from outside. Adagio could feel her newfound strength flowing through every muscle and sinew of her new body. It was a feeling that married itself well to her anger as she stood, examining her new Zanpaktou. Instinctively she knew the white shafted, crimson tipped trident in her hand was the new wellspring of power for her Arrancar form, and even knew its name without having to think about it. Instinctively she knew she could release its power like any other Arrancar, and silently kicked herself for not thinking to do so against Luna right off the bat. But no, there had been no time for that. Even taking a few seconds to call out her Zanpaktou’s name and undergo the transformation of a Resurreccion would have taken seconds that Ember hadn’t had to spare. Adagio had done the only thing she could by charging Luna and trying to fight through to her friend’s side, but the Soul Reaper Captain had simply been too powerful and skilled to be overcome. At least for now. The next time they met, however? Adagio intended to give Luna more than a mere scar. Looking over her new form, taking stock of herself, Adagio was almost a tad disappointed. She looked just like she had when she’d been trapped as a mere naked monkey, save for the Hollow hole still in her chest, with her siren gem suspended perfectly in the center. There was a crown-like fringe of bone on her brow with three spikes, which Adagio hardly minded. It had a regal feel to it. She also didn’t mind the hair, the only part of her human body she’d actually missed. It’d been fine enough in her Vasto Lorde form, but now it somehow felt a bit longer, and if anything, poofier. Adagio could work with that. She could use some clothes, however. Naked didn’t bother her, but it made social interaction with most people tiresome if they were distracted. At least if she was once again going to have a human shape, she could take some small pleasure in knowing it was a hot human shape. She did have the boys gather clothing from the human world in preparation for when she'd evolve to this state, so clothes wouldn't be a problem once she had time to go about raiding her own wardrobe, but she wasn't exactly in a position to do that right now. In a few seconds she ran over her options. She had no intention of rejoining the battle, if she could help it. She’d accomplished her goals, and she’d do Ember no good if she got herself injured or killed by fighting more Quincy. Ideally it seemed the smartest move was to return to her quarters, get Twilight out of her room and back to Canterlot City, then return to Las Noches to deal with the fallout of the battle, after getting herself a proper outfit and checking up on her own people. She needed to know if Dumbbell and the other boys had accomplished their goal, and she needed to check on Lament’s tower, where she’d left Di Roy and Gaw. She’d sensed a battle taking place in that direction, which was worrying. Should she go there first to check on that before anything else? Lament was an ally at this point, and she had multiple people there to be concerned with. Could clothes and Twilight wait? She almost laughed at the notion of her showing up to the fight stark naked, but it wasn’t as if she could just summon clothes out of thin air. Bah, I’ll never hear the end of this from Di-Roy, but I’d best check the tower first, in case my help is needed there. Damn, I’d settle for a bedsheet at this point. I can rock a toga look with the best of them. “Well, can’t say this is what I was expecting to find...” Adagio whirled around towards the opening in the wall her earlier outburst had created, trident at the ready, and found herself facing the vaguely familiar, pink skinned Sternritter she’d seen battling with Squirk before. The Sternritter woman stood in her blue, crystalline armor, and equally crystal wrist mounted crossbow pointed at Adagio. Her four glowing butterfly wings shone with a dance of a thousand colors, and Adagio had a gut instinct to look away from those luminous patterns, lest they bewitch her. A temptress knew another temptress when she saw one. This woman likely had powers similar to her own siren song. “Oh?” said Adagio, “And what were you looking for? If its companionship, I must warn you, I’m not a cheap date.” A flash of impatience crossed the Sternritter’s eyes, her pretty mouth set in a harsh line, “I don’t have time for games, unfortunately. Where is Squirk?” “You just missed him. Can I take a message?” A flash of pink was the only warning Adagio had, but her new body had even more improved reflexes than before, and her trident spun once, deftly knocking aside the arrow that had been aimed for her throat. The Sternritter spoke again in a tone of poison syrup. “I only sense a residual amount of Squirk’s reiatsu, but that doesn’t mean anything, as he could have used a Garganta to escape again. So I’ll ask one more time, to give you the chance to answer willingly; where is he?” A long couple of seconds ticked by as Adagio considered things. Was it really worth it to start a fight with this Sternritter if all she’d been after was Squirk? Adagio had better places to be, after all. She wasn’t even completely certain that if she fought with this woman that victory was a guarantee. She felt strong. Adagio hadn’t really stretched her new powers yet, so she wasn’t sure if this Sternritter was an even match for her or not. She didn’t feel overwhelmed, like she had with Prime Hemline’s reiatsu, but was that because Prim Hemline had been stronger than this pink woman, or was Adagio just that much stronger herself now? Either way, a fight wasn’t really worth it, if one could be avoided. She considered lying and saying it was the Soul Reapers that had killed Squirk, but that wouldn’t make any sense. Luna had been adamant about capturing Squirk, so the lie would pan out. It seemed she was stuck with the truth, but no matter, it wasn’t as if this woman was going to tell any other Espada who had offed Squirk. Not letting her guard down, but lifting her chin and meeting the woman’s eyes, Adagio said, “He’s dead. I killed him myself.” A confused frown passed over the Sternritter, “Is that what made you evolve into an Arrancar? No, don’t answer. It doesn’t matter. I believe you.” She paused, Adagio all but seeing the gears turning in the Sternritter’s mind, then the woman lowered her crossbow. “As long as he’s dead, that’s all that matters. I won’t ask what happened here or where the Soul Reapers went either. Now, I have somewhere I’m needed. Are you going to cause trouble for me, or shall we part and pretend we never saw each other?” “I’m all for pretending I never saw you, and in fact have places I need to be myself. So...” “So...” The two stared at each other, neither one willing to trust the other enough to turn their back and leave first. That standoff could have lasted for some time if not for the abrupt manner in which the Sternritter jerked as if struck by an electric shock, but in truth was was just that she was clearly surprised by something she sensed, by the way her head whipped around, staring off to the southwest with eyes wide. Adagio heard the Sternritter whisper, “Velvet!? No!” And with no further hesitation the Sternritter was off like a pink lightning bolt, streaking across the sky. Adagio walked out of the shattered hole in the wall of Squirk’s palace and noticed the Sternritter was heading in the direction of Lament’s tower. She pushed out with her Pesquisa, sensing the reiatsu in that direction. She felt Lament. His presence was still overwhelmingly strong, but not at the dark heights its had been just minutes before. What had happened over there? I don’t sense the Quincy he was fighting... did he emerge victorious? There’s still too much of his reiatsu around for me to sense Gaw or Di Roy, or even Roka or Fenice. Crap, and the other Sternritter is making right for them. Why does this day keep getting more complicated? There was nothing for it. Adagio, with her newfound power and speed, burst into a series of Sonido assisted leaps that sent her all but hurtling across Las Noche’s inner desert, pursuing the pink Sternritter towards Lament’s tower... and whatever awaited her there. ---------- He gathered his thoughts like trying to pull in cold waves from the sea. Lament’s mind still felt scattered, as if he was only half awake. This day, this battle, it had hammered parts of his psyche that he hadn’t realized were even there. Names and images he didn’t know still hung there, like low hanging apples he could pluck from the tree, but not hold onto them, the thoughts tumbling from his grasp. Orchards. A farm, touched by autumn. A woman’s smiling face, framed by golden blonde hair. The sound of children laughing. Hayseed. Yet for every thought there was an ocean of deep pain and regret attached to it, sweeping the thoughts (memories?) away. And those memories were intermixed with what he knew was solid and real. His home, the large, obsidian tower behind him. His family, beloved daughters Roka and Fenice, hurt and in danger, along with all the other little ones he’d sworn to himself he would protect. The Quincy woman, whose power and threat had required he unleash his own dangerous might to defeat... She was dead. She’d said her name was Twilight Velvet. The name itself seemed to scrap at his mind with hints of memory, but like all the other thoughts they slipped into the darkness of his regret and remained cloaked in shadow. But he somehow still understood he’d known this woman, who now lay dead at his feet, her blood soaking into the ground, much of it still coating the steel of his Zanpaktou. Lament shook his head. He needed to stop thinking about this. Not right now, with his family’s safety still in question. He turned his attention away from the woman he’d killed and focused upon the young girl who sat a short distance away, still spattered with the blood from Velvet. Judging by her uniform she too was a Quincy, though clearly no Sternritter. The girl’s right hand had been severed at the wrist, yet the wound had ceased to bleed. Strange. In fact the girl, purple skinned and wearing glasses, struck Lament was very strange indeed. She wore an unusual gauntlet of thin metal plates upon her left hand.  Some kind of new Quincy weapon? It didn’t seem to matter. What drew Lament’s attention was that the girl was sitting completely still, with her eyes shadowed by the bangs of her hair, and the Quincy spirit energy that Lament had been sensing from her had quite suddenly vanished. Lament considered whether he should kill this one too, or simply allow the girl to flee? He had no desire to take another life, but he had to ensure his family’s safety against any potential threats that remained. But she was young, clearly still a child in most ways that counted, and Lament was not inclined to be harsh towards a child, Quincy or otherwise. He was about to tell the child to flee while she could, but before he’d opened his mouth to speak, the girl moved. Lament frowned, hand tightening around the hilt of his Zanpaktou. The girl’s motions seemed... wrong. Halting, jerking, as if she was standing under the tugs of a hundred puppet strings, all trying to yank her in different directions. She took one, shaking, unnaturally shifting step towards Velvet’s body, her boots dipping further into the pool of blood surrounding the fallen Sternritter. Lament took a step back, and wasn’t sure why. He still felt no reiatsu coming from the girl. Yet something deep rooted and primal in his soul was telling him that this Quincy child was a threat. A deadly threat. The girl stepped again, her one remaining hand twitching at her side, her head still hung so that her face was cloaked in the shadow of her hair. She reached Velvet’s body, and knelt down, knees becoming coated further in blood. That twitching hand reached out and touched the corpse, tracing a path up to Velvet’s face and resting there for a moment. Finally Lament did feel something. It wasn’t reiatsu. Not spiritual pressure as he knew it. Yet the air was stirring with an energy he’d never felt before, something that made his skin feel cold. He thought he saw the air wavering around the girl, like a heat distortion, yet somehow more twisted. His sense of danger was only increasing, further and further by leaps and bounds by the time the girl finally raised her head and looked straight at him. Utter black. Her eyes had no color, no pupil, nothing but black, and that darkness poured out of her eyes like globs of living ink. When she opened her mouth, more of that total, complete shadow poured out as if she was vomiting it out along with a scream that didn’t belong to a human throat. More of the ink black substance flowed from her nostrils, the edges of her fingernails, her ears, practically any part of her exposed skin. At the same instance the gauntlet on her left hand started to spark and flare with teal flames, and that same pale blue fire rose around her, coating her feet and legs and rising up her body like a cloak. Lament took another step back and readied himself, raising his blade. He could feel more of that unusual, cold and unnatural energy rising around the girl. He had no true sense of how much power was gathering, but he was certain enough that he shouldn’t underestimate it. Especially considering his own power was still weakened considerably by the seals that Velvet’s last actions had placed upon him. He still possessed a great deal of his own power, but he knew he couldn’t activate his Resurreccion right now. As the teal fire engulfed the young Quincy’ form, he saw that the black substance spurting from her body like a shower of blood was pooling upwards, rising like strands of oil and forming into a oblong pool above the girl’s head. That tar-like substance stretched out, forming a giant, near perfect oval, hanging fifteen feet tall and suspended about five feet above the Quincy girl’s head. It was connected to her by a obsidian black string of darkness that emerged from the back of her neck. As for the girl herself, her own body had changed. Her Quincy uniform was gone, replaced by a uncomfortably sensual dress of midnight purples mixed with strands of the same tar black substance that poured out of the girl. Rivers of teal fire proceeded to form boots and elbow length gloves, all dripping with strands of inky darkness. The girl’s solid black eyes became framed by more of those pale, otherworldly fires, and a bubbling of more black tar combined with the fire to form a jagged horn from her brow. Finally, a pair of magnificent and large raven wings, dark purple save for where they seemed coated in more of that black substance, spread from her back. Strings of that darkness formed up from her wings, connecting to the giant oval of shadow above her head. Then that oval quivered, and with a wet, squelching sound, it opened to reveal a massive white eye. The eye was shot through with veins of dark, but its pupils were a rich, raw violet color. The eye shook and shifted, looking around like some manic beast before fixating upon Lament. Then the girl spoke, and her voice held the distorted howl of three voices mixed together, one the pain filled cry of a girl who’d lost her mother, another that of a crazed madwoman, and the other the deep resonance of something primal, ancient, and furious. “Treasonous murderer! I welcomed all to my Palace and was repaid with betrayal!? My dearest ones slain at my feet!?” A tick of the girl’s head, and the voices distorted again, “Mother, he killed mother-” She twitched, the voice turning into twisted laughter, “Hahah, but we can fix everything Twilight! Just let me out! I’ll fix everything with enough magic-” The primal voice boomed out now, louder, so much so that it shook the ground and made Lament flinch. “Silence! Voices in my head! Where is this place!? The Hollow Realm? Why am I here? I will have answers!” “NO!” Once more the anguished cry of the girl rose over the distorted mingle of voices, “He killed her! I won’t let him get away with it! Midnight, please, help me!” Abruptly all three voices merged into a single, murderous and vengeful whole, “Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Killhimkillhimkillhimkillhimkillhim!” That was the last warning Lament received before the twisted, changed girl attacked. She didn’t charge at him, or summon a Quincy bow to fire arrows upon him. No, she simply gestured, and reality buckled and tore apart at the motion. It was as if the air itself was cracking like broken glass, spearing towards Lament in a jagged line of shattering space. Fortunately for Lament whatever the girl was doing, it didn’t surpass his pure speed, and with a Sonido he vanished out of the path of the tear in reality. Landing a dozen meters away he observed the attack with a keen, cold eye. He could see the edges of the cracks, like purple glass that continued to break off in small pieces. It opened up in a long, haphazard line, a hole in the air that looked very much like a portal. He could even see a strange, alien landscape beyond, like some aired green tundra with a yellow sky. Twilight screamed in three voices at him, and beneath her feet the ground cracked. Not with raw power creating an indent, but rather the same ripping in space occurred beneath her and he saw a literal hole tear itself open under the girl’s feet. The hole widened to several meters in mere seconds, flecks and shards of space breaking off like fractured pieces of ice. It was just a dark void within that hole, and the girl rose into the air upon her raven wings, black eyes still oozing darkness. Velvet’s body would have fallen into the void, but tendrils of the dark substance stemming from the girl reached out and coiled around Velvet, cradling the body and drawing it up along with the girl. The giant eye above her remained utterly focused upon him as she raised the stump of her right hand. From the stump poured out teal fire in a condensed, near solid jet stream that poured at him like a high pressure water hose. Lament’s unease was not gone, but he was gaining a sense of this girl’s ability, and while he had no idea how she’d gained this power, he was not going to flee from it while his family remained in danger. He swung his Zanpaktou, using such force as to create a shockwave. He’d hoped the shockwave would disperse the jet of pale blue fire, but it only slowed it down enough that Lament could block it instead. His blade held against the stream of power, but he felt a distant pain as the hand holding his Zanpaktou started to burn under the mystical heat. Strangely, he still didn’t sense reiatsu from the girl. This power, whatever it was, was either based in some other form of energy, or was of a transcendent quality that surpassed his ability to sense it. He saw her gesture again with her other hand, and this time saw a trio of distortions in the air behind him as a fresh set of tears in reality came spiking towards him, leaving ragged holes in the very fabric of space as they came. Lament pushed back the stream of teal fire with his Zanpaktou and jumped to avoid the oncoming rips in reality, but they twisted to follow him, joining into one giant wound in the sky that flew towards him in a choppy, erratic motion. Though he managed to avoid it, he could tell these tears being created by the girl were getting faster and more accurate by the second. Worse, they didn’t go away. Each tear remained like a pulsing wound in the air, and each one grew slowly larger on its own, its edges breaking away piece by piece to widen the tear. If he left things like this, they’d consume his tower, and his family along with it, in due time. The hole underneath the girl had already widened to over a dozen meters wide, a yawning void that was already consuming the desert sands around it. He had to end this threat. Now. He rushed her, full speed. There was a deep, pained regret in his heart as he moved, sword poised to strike the girl’s head clean off. Conflicting memories still tried to push their way through his mind, screaming at him to stop. But his family needed him. He’d make it quick, painless. Lament’s sword swung, but hit nothing but air. He blinked. The girl had vanished in a burst of violet sparks and teal flame, only to reappear an instant later, higher above him. That hadn’t been a high speed maneuver. That had been literal teleportation. He didn’t think the girl’s reflexes were quick enough to respond to his motions, but he suspected that huge, unblinking eye had something to do with it. That eye hadn’t so much as moved a centimeter away from his position, and even when he’d moved to strike, he saw the eye track his movement. Before he could ponder that further the girl lashed out again, this time with a sweeping gesture that ripped open and entire wave of tears, easily more than twenty this time, that cascaded down at Lament in a barrage that was accompanied by the sound of thousands of breaking pieces of glass. Lament felt a twist in his gut as the air around him wavered, as if reality itself was starting to groan and bend under the weight of so much warping of space. As Lament flickered in and out of view, dodging the relentless rips in reality that were seeing to carve into him, he realized that if he didn’t deal with this girl soon, not just his own family, but possibly the entirety of Las Noches was in grave danger. ---------- Sombra’s first indication that something had gone wrong in his predicted plans was the abrupt and all too familiar sensations that accompany the death of his Sternritter. While he had a connection to all of his Quincy, it was only with his Sternritter that he could discern the exact moment of their deaths, due to the potent and almost intoxicating feeling of a portion of his own power returning to him in the form of the late Sternritter’s Schrift merging with him once more. Their Schrift, and one other rather important thing, but Sombra didn’t like thinking about that, especially while facing off with Tirek. He could identify the Sternritter’s who were dying as well, and while he’d been disappointed when he’d sensed Jet Set’s death, that at least had been within the realm of casualties he’d predicted possible. Not Jet Set specifically, of course. Sombra was not prescient. Rather he knew it was likely he’d lose at least one, maybe two of the weaker Sternritter in a battle this open and intense against the full might of Las Noches. It was saddening to lose one as young as Jet Set, but that death hadn’t distracted Sombra from his battle with Tirek. The prison dimension was nearing its limit at this point, countless cracks of white light forming over the cavernous void’s edge like glass fracturing under water pressure, only this pressure was from the constant outpouring of spiritual energy from Sombra and Tirek. Sombra had abandoned a defensive posture in favor of seeking to keep Tirek off balance with an all out assault that involved conjuring a set of three mansion sized spacial warps that looked like perfectly shaped spheres of solid shadow that Sombra was using to crush towards Tirek from all sides. Each sphere was essentially made from compressed space that was rotating at high speed, creating its own deadly, ripping gravity well. Mere contact with these spheres would tear apart normal matter, but this wasn’t enough to kill Tirek, only slow him down. Even the Primera Espada had to push back with the lion’s share of his own strength and potent reiatsu to keep himself from being smashed between the powerful spheres. He was using his sword on one sphere, while holding back another with his free hand, while firing a continuous Cero from between his horns to fend off the third sphere, and while Tirek was holding them at bay readily enough, this had created a temporary stalemate between the two. Sombra knew this was only buying time, and that this kind of blunt attack would never overcome Tirek’s incredible raw power. But Sombra just needed this to keep Tirek occupied for a few minutes more. He couldn’t imagine the battle would take much longer, if the information he was getting from Night Light was accurate. Guto had been forced into retreat, Smooze defeated if not outright killed, and the other Espada were still being held off by Sombra’s other Sternritter. All they needed was confirmation that the Espada with the Garganta specialization had been eliminated. Yet in the span of a mere minute, everything about Sombra’s priorities changed. First, quite disturbingly, he felt Twilight Velvet’s Schrift return to him. Sombra was not a man used to being surprised. Feelings of genuine shock were rare for him. For a fraction of a moment he felt his senses had to be wrong. There was certainly no way one of his most capable and competent Sternritter had been killed while dealing with a lower tier Espada. Unless another Espada had managed to interfere? The Fourth Espada had retreated from the battle outside, and that one was strong enough to be a respectable threat to three Sternritter together. His surprise lasted only for a second before he took firm hold of his emotions and remained focused. Even a second of distraction had allowed Tirek to shove back on the spheres, his Cero blasting the one sphere backwards towards Sombra while almost shoving away the other two. Only Sombra’s iron discipline allowed him to regain composure and control enough to hold firm and push back. As much as it seemed improbable, he couldn’t deny what he felt in his soul. Twilight Velvet was dead. He just had to look within to confirm as much. It was a horrible pity. Remorse for what young Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor were going to have to endure now tried to strike, but Sombra shut the door on those emotions. He was even more regretful for Night Light, who was such a loyal and diligent servant. Sombra knew well the pain Night Light was about to go through, but just as before he kept the iron door of mental control shut tight on those feelings. Not now. Later. At least that was what Sombra wanted, but less than a minute after sensing Velvet’s death, his control was broken but a far, far more dire sensation. Sombra had a few contingencies in place in case of certain emergencies. If the Silburn was compromised, he had a tie to that castle that went straight to his soul and would alert him if the Silburn was directly attacked, no matter where Sombra was within the living world or even the Spirit Realm. He also had a similar tie to Twilight Sparkle, to alert him in case a specific thing ever happened, although at the time he’d forged the tie he’d imagined he was just being paranoid. He’d even felt a bit guilty about forging the spirit tether without her knowledge, but it’d just been a precaution, nothing more. He thought he’d have far more time to work on her before this ever came up as an issue. Clearly he’d been wrong. Horribly, monumentally wrong. The “Eye” had awakened. How and why didn’t matter. All the mattered was that Sombra could sense the severing of the spirit tether he’d put on Twilight, the warning that the Eye had woken up, and only a moment of concentration on the remains of the tether told him where Twilight Sparkle was. Inside Las Noches. ...Why was she inside Las Noches!? Then Sombra put two and two together and realized what might have caused the Eye to wake up from its dormant state inside young Twilight, and break free of the bindings he’d placed upon it. If Twilight had witnessed her mother’s death, then that would cause unimaginable tremors within her psyche that’d weaken the seal Sombra had put on the Eye, and given it plenty to wake up to, like an earthquake waking a hibernating bear from slumber and giving it plenty of rage to break a few chains placed on it. I have to go to her, NOW! Sombra’s distraction was all Tirek needed. The Primera Espada let out a volcanic roar and with a hefty slash of his golden sword he cleaved one of the dark spheres in half, and then smashed his fist into the second one. The fist blazed with an aura of power, orange and black energy crackling around the fist like a solar nimbus as he smashed it into the sphere of darkness and sent it flying backwards like an oversized beach ball. Then Tirek focused upon his Cero, shoving even more power into the torrent of energy that poured out from between his horns. The raw beam of utter destruction bored its way into the third sphere, drilling through it and blasting out the back of the sphere. The Cero beam continued on, cascading towards Sombra, who saw it coming barely in time to vanish into a spacial shadow and emerge a few dozen meters away to avoid the beam. Tirek didn’t give Sombra a second, recognizing the Quincy King’s distracted state, and in an instant Sonido he appeared in front of Sombra, two handing his massive gold-edged blade as he slashed it down with cliff shattering force. “Something on your mind, boy!?” Tirek taunted. Sombra blocked Tirek’s strike with his shadow stained bow, its own spurs sharp as a blade themselves. The warping energies encasing the bow were sufficient to hold up against the devastating power of Tirek’s sword, and the clash of the two weapons sent ripples of black and orange energy sparking all over the void. Nearly face to face with his arch-rival, Sombra only narrowed his eyes to red slits and spoke in a harsh whisper, “I don’t have time for you anymore...” “What!?” Tirek snarled, clearly offended by the insulation, but Sombra simply stepped back. He moved into the shadows coiling around his body from his cloak as he warped space and with the power of the Absolute he vanished from within the prison dimension. Tirek was left just blinking in his own moment of astonishment, now alone in the void. Not that this was a problem for the Primera Espada. Without Sombra present to provide a worthy foe that Tirek couldn’t ignore, he was now free to smash his way out of this prison dimension. Given how much damage it had already taken from his scuffle with Sombra, Tirek figured he would be able to finish shattering the prison and break free within a few minutes. He was wise to a possible trap, but after a few seconds of waiting, he sensed nothing of Sombra’s presence. The bastard had used his Absolute to essentially teleport away. But this didn’t make any sense. What would cause Sombra to retreat like this? Was this some kind of trick? Tirek had not become the King of Hueco Mundo through power alone. He had a quick and cunning mind. He couldn’t immediately fathom what would make Sombra quit the field so abruptly, but something had clearly distracted the Quincy. Something had suddenly taken priority over fighting Tirek, or indeed ensuring Tirek stayed imprisoned so he wouldn’t use his overwhelming power to annihilate Sombra’s army. The whole point of Sombra confronting Tirek was to ensure neither King could be free to destroy each others armies. So what could possibly have been more important to Sombra than protecting his army? ---------- The area around Lament’s tower was starting to look as if some great beast had taken its savage claws and mauled the air itself to split apart into dozens of bleeding wounds in the form of jagged portals, each one slowly expanding as pieces fell away form their edges. Within each portal lay the landscape of some other reality, some alien world or unknown realm, not one of which Lament recognized. Most seemed bizarre, or even difficult to look at with his eyes, as if the colors and shapes beyond weren’t meant to be perceived by his senses. Some of the realities beyond the portals seemed almost normal. Almost. One of them looked like, for all the world, like some idyllic country town, only with brightly colored ponies trotting around, many of them staring in bewilderment at the portal. That was all Lament had time to see, however, as he sought to put down the monstrosity that had become of the Quincy girl. For all of her rage, she was proving a cunning and unrelenting threat. He had slipped through her barrage of reality tears, bringing his sword to bear with series of viper swift strikes that left him little more than a blink of motion. The eye, that unblinking eye, tracked his every motion, and the girl teleported in rapid succession. She almost avoided all his blows, too, but he’d split her shoulder open with one strike that managed to catch her amid her flickers of purple, flashing teleports. She bled like any other human, despite this strange transformation, so Lament was encouraged. What was less encouraging was when the girl started to cackle like a psychotic and bloodthirsty madwoman and proceeded to summon forth a thin beam of teal light wreathed in fire that he tried to block with his hand, thinking it a weaker version of the flames she’d summoned before. It wasn’t. In fact it didn’t burn at all, but instead the beam started to turn his arm to stone, even the tattered sleeve of his duster! Surprised, but not to the point of inaction, Lament used Sonido to back away and avoid the rest of the beam, giving his left arm a brief glance. It had been turned to stone up to the elbow. Irritating, but not critical. Deciding to test her defenses against his own energies, she lifted his sword and pointed with the index finger of the hand holding it. An sallow and sickly green light formed before he discharged a Cero towards the girl, not imagining it would harm her but carefully observing her manner of defense. Her dark raven wings made a flapping motion, and more of that flickering teal energy flowed from them to form a barrier around the girl that looked as solid and angular as a crystal. It absorbed the Cero, although cracks formed along the crystalline shield even as it withstood the blow. So there was a limit to her energies, Lament surmised. Had he still been in his Resurreccion form, he could likely overwhelm her, strange powers or no. But he was weakened, both by his battle with Velvet and Velvet’s parting gift, so Lament couldn't overpower this girl by force alone. Indeed the problem wasn’t killing her, it was doing it fast enough before those out of control rifts in reality she kept creating consumed his tower, and his children along with it! Even as he thought that the Quincy girl let out a feral scream of vengeful anger, and with a gesture sent a series of rippling portal tears towards Lament from both above and below. Then, just as Lament was about to dodge, the girl gestured and a strange field of pale light snapped into being around him, accompanied by odd arcane sigils. Suddenly gravity itself felt reversed, disorienting Lament for a moment as he struggled to adjust his Sonido so he could still dodge properly. He managed it, barely, only avoiding the cascade of portals by a narrow margin. In fact one of them still managed to catch his side, ripping cleanly through a good two inch section of hip. The damage meant little to Lament, but confirmed what he’d suspected from the start. There was no way to block or parry these portal attacks. These holes in reality would go through any physical defense like a Hierro as if it wasn’t there. Dodging was the only means of defense. Perhaps an overwhelming amount of spirit energy might disrupt the portals, but Lament wasn’t about to try that unless he had no choice. The large portal in the ground the girl had made at the start was now less than fifty feet from the wall of his tower. Lament turned towards the girl, raising his sword up to his mouth. Since his other hand was made of stone at the moment, he had to use another appendage for this. He opened his mouth and jutted out his tongue, cutting it with the edge of his Zanpaktou. The blood welled up at the tip of his tongue a vast and a pulsing circle of intermixed green and blue energies swirled together... the beginnings of a Gran Rey Cero. He doubted her shield could hold up to that, but he wasn’t aiming at the girl. He was aiming at the eye. Whatever that thing was, he surmised if he destroyed it, that would likely end this faster than trying to kill the girl. It might even get rid of those portals. However, just as he started to fire, he felt a swift approaching reiatsu and didn’t have much time to react as a streaking pink form rocketed towards him like a thunderbolt of multi-colored light. A Quincy woman, pink of skin and with blazing eyes, rushed Lament from the side and with an impressive kick, boosted by Blut Arterie that left red veins of light pulsing along her long leg, booted him square in the side of the head. The block rocked him to the side and his Gran Rey Cero, already discharging, instead went stampeding off to the side and upwards, streaking past the young Quincy girl and eventually blasting a massive hole through the roof of Las Noches. “Get the hell away from her!” the older Quincy woman snarled with keen fury. Lament’s bell had been rung a bit, but the kick hadn’t done any real harm, and he regarded the new arrival with a cool and level gaze. If the armor and glowing butterfly wings were anything to go by, this was another Sternritter, transformed much as Velvet had done. He was about to recalculate his odds and priority targets, but that was interrupted further by the arrival of another individual who zoomed in with such high speed it was hard to even follow her motions. Lament saw Adagio appear behind the Quincy Sternritter, swinging her trident in a wide arc as streams of water formed around the trident’s prongs. That water expanded, then exploded in a pressurized water cannon that hit the Sternritter in the side and sent her flying away from Lament, tumbling end over end for a second before she righted herself, now hovering in the air between Lament, Adagio, and the still out of control Quincy girl. Adagio planted her trident and spoke in a huff, “How about everyone back off from one another and...” Adagio blinked at the literal dozens of random, haphazard portals that had been ripped open around the area and whatever she’d been about to say trailed off and she gave Lament a deadpan look. “Do I even want to ask?” Lament just pointed at the Quincy girl, and didn’t fail to notice Adagio’s look of pale faced recognition, followed by Adagio swearing in an exceedingly unladylike fashion under her breath upon seeing the girl. The situation was not helped by the fact that Adagio was, for reasons unknown to Lament, stark naked. And an Arrancar. He realized he had questions for her too, at this point, but that could wait. “Now is not the time for questions. We must deal with that girl before she destroys everything nearby with these... wounds in the world she’s making,” he said, raising his sword. He paused, glanced at her sidelong, and added, “Okay,one question; why are you naked?” Adagio rolled her eyes, “As it turns out, evolution into an Arrancar doesn’t come with a free set of clothes. I imagined you’d knew that already.” “...Fair enough,” he replied, returning his attention to the Quincy, somewhat surprised the crazed younger one hadn’t resumed her attack yet. He could see the reason she hadn’t was that, mad or not, her intelligence wasn’t significantly impaired by her altered state, and she was clearly assessing the new arrivals. Her eyes were shifting between Adagio and the Sternritter with a shaking recognition that had temporarily halted her rampage. Her gaze eventually settled on the older Quincy, her voice still distorted, but carrying a stronger note of the original, frightened and mourning young girl. “C-Cadence? Help... mom, she’s...” The Sternritter, Cadence apparently, was sweating bullets while trying to maintain her composure, trying to keep one widened eye upon Lament and Adagio while looking with horrified shock at both the girl and the body of Velvet being held in tendrils of darkness beside her. “Twilight, I don’t know what’s happening to you, but I need you to listen to me. We have to run from here, as fast as we can.” “Run away? But mother... he hurt her... killed... NO! I have to fix this! We have to fix this! Cadence, help us? Help...?” The girl’s confused voice gave way to that deep, primal voice, resonate and echoing, yet still somehow feminine. The giant eye fixated upon Cadence, narrowing slightly with slits of darkness. “You. You carry a trace of his power? What are you, child? Answer me. Why do you carry a fragment of my consort within you? Why do you battle with the gods of the Hollow Realm? The wars were to end! Tell me what is happening!” A cloud of utter bafflement battled with the distress and sorrow on Cadence’s face as she stared at Twilight with incomprehension. “What? What on earth are you talking about, Twilight? You’re not... Twilight, are you?” “Answer me!” the primal voice boomed, and snaking tendrils of inky black shot out towards Cadence, who swiftly evaded, using short but smooth motions like a hummingbird on fast forward. “Twilight! Whatever’s happening to you, you have to get a hold of yourself! Please! I... I can’t lose you and your mother on the same day!” Cadence pleaded, a set of prismatic beams of let firing from her wings at Twilight. The girl made a gesture with her hands, forming another barrier of crystalline energies to absorb the beams. While this was occurring, Adagio had turned to Lament and grasped his arm, “Leave them to deal with their own issues. We should take this chance to clear out while we can.” “I can’t. My family is still inside the tower,” he said, pointing with his sword at the portal that was now barely ten feet away from the edge of his home. “If we don’t stop that Quincy, the portal will consume it.” A sound not unlike a growling cat rushed up from Adagio’s throat, “Nothing can ever be easy, can it!? Go get your family out of the tower, Lament, NOW! I’ll keep the portal at bay.” He was about to ask how she intended to do that, but Adagio answered by gesturing with her trident, and he heard a familiar yawning noise as a stunningly large Garganta portal opened up and stood in the path of the advancing rift the Quincy girl had made. The Garganta was larger than what Lament had thought Adagio could manage, but perhaps her evolution to an Arrancar had made her stronger than he’d thought. He questioned the wisdom of using one rip in reality to block another tear in the fabric of space, but surprisingly enough, it seemed to be working. The crumbling edge of the rift Twilight had created halted at the entrance to the Garganta portal, almost as if the two differing portals couldn’t interact with each other. The rift flattened itself against the Garganta portal and just... stopped. Even Adagio sounded surprised as she said, “Well okay then, I’m suddenly very glad that worked and I didn’t accidentally destroy Hueco Mundo by crossing the proverbial streams.” “You didn’t know that would work?” Lament asked, faintly incredulous, one slim eyebrow raising. There was a distinctly madcap manner to Adagio’s smirk as she said, “Didn’t give myself time to doubt. Now get your family out of harm’s way. I really don’t know how long this will hold.” He was about to do precisely that, when multiple things of note happened nearly all at once. First was that yet another Quincy appeared on the scene, an older woman with light blue skin and flaring orange hair, carrying what looked like the world’s largest sniper rifle. This woman took one look at the collective scene in front of her, and proceeded to move to aid Cadence against the grasping tendrils stemming from Twilight. Second, Cadence was grasped by the tendrils, so many of them swarming around her it was like a school of black squid had gotten a whole of her. Thirdly, Twilight, head twitching this way and that, started to summon forth a growing sphere of coalescing teal energy that in short order grew to the size of a modest hill and aimed it towards Lament and Adagio. Then, finally, a simple and slim shadow, like a small doorway opening, appeared and Sombra, King of the Quincy, stepped out, barring his glowing silver and blue edged blade. Without a word or a split second of hesitance, Sombra severed the tendrils holding Cadence, the tentacles of tar-like darkness falling away. He then instantly turned and made a sharp cutting motion with one hand, and a wall of darkness spread from the shadows of his cloak and washed away the sphere of energy Twilight had been summoning as if he was popping a bubble. The eye above Twilight focused upon Sombra, the primal voice exploding from Twilight’s throat. “You! You imprisoned us!? Why!? What has become of you? Why do you inhabit that shell?” “No,” Sombra said, his form vanishing and appearing in front of Twilight in an instant, “No questions. You are not meant to awaken until you are reunited with the rest of yourself. You will sleep, and you will not harm the girl. Her body and soul are her own, Eye, and you will not take either for yourself! Now begone and return to slumber once more!” Lament didn’t need to be told that this man with charcoal skin and even darker armor, contrasted by a streak of red from a regal cape that matched his hardened eyes. Sombra’s reiatsu alone would have marked him as the Quincy’s King, leaving even Lament feeling the brush of it on his soul like having a great fist pressing in on his chest. That spiritual pressure only sharpened further as Sombra raised his left hand and spoke in swift, decisive words that reverberated with purpose and power. “Erstes Siegel; Speak no Evil.” (First Seal) In stark contrast to the depths of shadow that clung to Sombra’s body like a miasma, rising columns of light shot up from his outstretched fingers and coiled together into spectral bands that spun around like a helix as they wrapped around the massive eye. The eye twitched and quivered, jelly-like, as the primal voice bellowed. “Why are you doing this, my love!? I don’t understand!” Sombra shook his head, “I am not who you think I am, and your own memories are incomplete. You are not complete. Just sleep.” More thick bands of light rose from his hand, “Zweites Siegel; Hear no Evil.” (Second Seal) The light took the shape of two spikes, almost solid in their form like they were forged from partially transparent ivory. They slammed into the eye, piercing it from either side. The eye quaked, as if trying to tear itself away from Twilight Sparkle’s body. The girl herself screamed in the eye’s elemental voice, but her own voice, scared and confused, came out as well. “S-Sombra... what’s happening to me!? I can’t see!” A note of pain entered Sombra’s voice, even as he spoke in a low, reassuring voice, “I will take care of things, Twilight, please trust me. It’s going to be okay.” He moved closer to her, placing his hand, which was now surrounded by a halo of light beams, right over her heart. His eyes closed in concentration, sweat appearing on his brow, as if the power he was enacting was causing even him a fair amount of strain, “Drittes Siegel; See no Evil.” (Third Seal) A bar of white energy shot from his palm, right through Twilight’s heart, and appeared from her back in the shape of a five pointed Quincy Cross. The girl convulsed, mouth agape, her whole body going into seizures. Cadence shouted, “Twilight!” and rushed to go to her side, but Sombra held a hand out. “Stop! Don’t interfere, otherwise the Eye could break free again.” Cadence stopped in her tracks, but not without giving Twilight an anguished look of fear and concern. But she obeyed her King and stayed still as Twilight started and twist and scream. It was the eye’s voice that was screaming, however, babbling incoherently as the bright bands of light around it started to constrict it and reduce it in size. The tar-like ooze of darkness started to burn away and constrict on itself, flowing back into Twilight as the eye grew smaller and smaller. Finally the eye was reduced to a size no larger than a normal eye, hovering above Twilight’s head like a small, trembling dot. Then the light surrounded it and formed into a cube. The cube transmuted from light to darkness, then darkness to light, as if it was pulsating between the two states, before it sunk into Twilight’s head and vanished within. The Quincy Cross sticking from Twilight’s back then was absorbed into her body, and disappeared as well. Twilight Sparkle was left with her body returned to its normal state, though still missing her right hand. Her eyes stared blankly for a second, tear streaked, but she then closed them with an exhausted sigh and fell unconscious. Before she could fall from the sky, Sombra caught her, and cradled her like a child in his arms. He then turned to Cadence and the other Sternritter, while Lament and Adagio watched on cautiously. “Cadence, Sassy, we’re leaving.” “But Velvet-” Cadence began, but Sombra simply nodded towards the body and the shadows flowed from his cape, encasing Twilight Velvet’s body and then returning to Sombra. “I wasn’t going to leave her behind,” Sombra stated, “She has served me well, and her body will be treated with respect.” He then glanced towards Adagio and Lament, and the Fourth Espada prepared himself, just in case the Quincy King intended to enact some form of retribution before departing. Instead Sombra turned his attention to the dozens of portal rifts Twilight had opened, and with a tired sounding exhalation, his reiatsu flowed out to blanket the area. Shadows exploded form Sombra, reaching out and coiling around each portal until every single rift was covered in Sombra’s darkness. Whatever power the Quincy King was using Lament didn’t know, but he saw the tears in reality being forced closed by Sombra’s shadows. Within a few seconds there were no rifts left, and Sombra’s shadows flowed back into him. He looked once more at Lament and Adagio, eyes narrowing. “Consider your lives gifted to you by the necessity of time, Arrancar.” He then raised an eyebrow at Adagio, “And for goodness sake, woman, put something on.” He then turned away from them, shadows encompassing himself, Twilight Sparkle, Cadence, and Sassy. All of them vanished a moment later, taken away by Sombra’s power. Adagio, a vein pulsing on her forehead, shouted at the space they’d just occupied. “Do you see a damn clothing shop around here!?” ---------- Night Light had been about ready to abandon the fight with Torch in favor of rushing into Las Noches in search of his wife, when his King appeared before him. Sombra stepped from a doorway of absolute black, the power of the Absolute twisting space to instantly teleport him and his passengers to Night Light’s location. Beside Sombra stood a haggard, distraught Cadence, and a confused, worried looking Sassy Saddles. But Night Light’s eyes were torn towards the sight of his unconscious daughter held in the King’s arms like a sleeping child. “My King, what’s happened? Where’s my wife?” Night Light said, and felt his heart freeze over as Sombra gave him a heavy look that could only mean one thing. For a moment Night Light felt his world threatening to crumble away to dust, but a long life of training and a sense of duty as solid as steel kicked in and took control, keeping him from breaking down as Sombra spoke. “I’m sorry, Night Light, Shining Armor.” “Wait, what?” Shining Armor blinked, looking from Night Light to the King, “What do you mean by that?” “Shining...” Cadence looked at him with broken eyes, but a plea in her voice. Sombra didn’t give Shining Armor time to absorb what was happening and turned to Night Light, “Order the withdrawal. We’re done here.” He glanced at Cadence, “The target is dead.” Though he’d said it as a statement more than question, Cadence confirmed it with a nod, “He’s dead.” Down below, there was a bellow form Torch “Hey! Are you all ignoring me up there!?” Sombra didn’t respond to the Espada, instead just willing the power of the Absolute to expand around him. In seconds all of the present Sternritter and himself were whisked away by shadows that cut across the battlefield’s sky. Suddenly they were above the main Quincy fortified line, standing upon the top deck of the command VTOL, which remained airborne through the entire battle. “Night Light, the withdrawal. Quickly,” Sombra said, and on the heels of his words there was a noise like the breaking of a thunderstorm from high above. Many eyes, Hollow and Quincy alike, turned upward as the giant black sphere that had constituted the sub-dimension Sombra had imprisoned Tirek in gave a groan like a dying whale and then light erupted in multiple blazing fissure across its surface. The sphere broke like a shattering light bulb, and crumbled to nothing as Tirek flew free, a fiery comet of raw orange and black crackling reiatsu. Sombra glanced at Night Light, and his training continued to remain in place, making his body move and his voice speak, even as his soul screamed and his mind sought retreat from the reality of what he’d just lost. Through the power of the Command he issued orders across the entire Quincy army. This is Night Light. Our mission is accomplished. All battalion commanders, begin primary withdrawal procedures. Fall back and proceed to rendezvous point alpha. All Sternritter, disengage from your personal battles and cover the withdrawal. The results weren’t immediate, but they were swift. The Quincy, from lowest soldat to highest Sternritter, had been expertly trained for coordinated maneuvers and combined tactics. It was one of the greater advantages they had over the Hollow hordes they faced, and so what could have been a messy and deadly retreat was instead a highly skilled, well timed, and orderly withdrawal. Surviving VTOLs released final salvos of missiles to cover soldats falling back across the desert, not bothering to land for pick ups, given there weren’t enough to effectively lift away all the remaining soldats, but having more than enough firepower left to keep the Arrancar occupied while soldats used high-speed Hirenkyaku movements to get distance from Las Noches. The tank units, ridden upon by the surviving members of the Strafbattalion, rolled backwards while still firing their guns in coordinated salvos, blasting apart chunks of desert and driving back the fuzzy horde of Catrina’s servants, or the dark, chitinous lines of Chrysalis’ warriors. That flank of the battle was further supported by fiery beams of light from Spitfire flying overhead, wounded from her scuffle with Catrina, who was hesitant to pursue when it became obvious no other Espada were chasing after the Quincy. High in the sky above, Chrysalis was still facing off with Sapphire Shores and Coloratura upon their shining, floating stage. Parts of the stage were broken or mangled, melted off in sections, but it was still intact, and the two Sternritter were still standing upon it, largely uninjured. Chrysalis herself wasn’t particular injured either, but she was showing trickles of blood leaking from her ears and mouth, as if she’d taken an internal battering. Yet she somehow made the blood a fashion statement and twirled her Zanpaktou lazily in her hand. “Looks like the party is over for today ladies. Such a shame. I was starting to enjoy the combination of mating cats and banging kitchenware you call music.” Sapphire Shores chortled, “Says the woman with several smashed internal organs.” “They’ll heal.” “But not as fast as usual,” noted Coloratura, “Isn’t that right? I do hope you’ll think of us as you enjoy all that pain.” “Pain is the fond seasoning that spices up my nights, girls,” Chrysalis said with a rich, unfazed laugh, “Now run along, before your fellow Quincy leave you behind. Wouldn’t want any more Espada to block your retreat, would you?” Sapphire Shores let out a dainty snort and hopped off the stage, followed by Coloratura as the huge, ornate stage dissipated in a glittering hail of blue reishi particles. “Just remember, Chrysalis, today was just a demonstration. You haven’t yet seen our full might.” To this Chrysalis just let out a derisive chuckle, holding up her Zanpaktou, “Did you see me release my power either? Run away little Quincies, before the spider decides she’s hungry.” Such was the scene in similar mirror across the battlefield. A limping Rutherford, returned to his normal size, fled with the covering assistance of Gladmane from the still very present and poisonous fog cloud generated by Hydia. Torch’s hordes were held at bay by the still functional weapons built within the golden Quincy fortifications, controlled by Filthy Rich even as he helped organize the battalions falling back from the center line. Harshwhinny, still maintaining her Vollstandig, swept the field with streams of acidic liquid, holding the right flank while Upper Crust fell back with her husband’s body held in her arms. Tirek, face cast in a red glower, watched the Quincy army falling back from his fortress, and decided to provide a final parting statement. He raised his huge, gold edged blade and aimed it at the cluster of VTOLs flying away over the lines of retreating Quincy forces. Raw orange and black energy coiled together into a crushed down sphere, then released in a Cero as large and destructive as the one that had begun the battle. Sombra, standing upon the front of the command VTOL, made a sharp gesture with his left hand and cast out a wave of shadows just as wide as the oncoming Cero. The wall of spatial warping from the Absolute collided with the Cero in a world shaking crash, sending hurricane winds across the desert and buffeting Quincy and Arrancar alike. Tirek and Sombra’s power, as it so often had before, essentially canceled each other out, doing little damage to either side. But damage hadn’t been the point. Tirek had simply been making a point. The battle might have ended, but the war was far from done.