Hunters and Hollows

by thatguyvex

Chapter 6: Tempest

Tempest Shadow's blade slashed down, and it was like someone had unleashed a compressed typhoon, blasting the area in front of her with a pressure wave several dozen meters wide and which swept out in front of her in a powerful arc. Gigan, Megalon, Irys, Roka, and Di Roy were all caught in the pressure wave of air and raw spiritual force, knocked back in tumbling heaps. Megalon, the heaviest and most durable of the bunch, got a drill arm out and dug it into the ground, his other hand flashing out to grab Irys. Gigan fired off his grappling hooks, a set from each arm, one hitting the ground to root himself in place, and the other snapping around Roka to keep her from tumbling away.

Only Di Roy was left rolling around like a trash can lid caught up in a hurricane’s wind, landing some distance away in a dazed heap.

Gaw, seeing this, gained a blood red aura around her body and proceeded to growl out, ”Go for the throat; Cazadora!” (Huntress)

Energy with an almost liquid quality to it boiled and bubbled up from both her sword and body, gleaming and crimson. It swirled up around her in a bloody torrent until it encased her body in a growing surge of fountaining blood. X, standing next to her, felt a similar surge of pressure akin to what he’d felt from Tempest Shadow, but nowhere near as strong. Whatever this transformation was, it was obvious it wasn’t on the same level as their opponent... but it was better than nothing, and Gaw clearly was done holding back.

When the fountain of blood-like energy subsided, what stood in the lanky, washboard girl’s place was a thirty foot tall, humanoid dinosaur. It was as if someone had taken a savage, bulky and muscular version of some primal carnosaur, fused it with a feminine humanoid body with a waspish waist, thick reverse jointed legs, and long muscular arms, then proceeded to grow white bone-like armor segments across its ferocious, mostly bipedal body. Small spikes jutted from the brow and crest of her head, all the way down the ridges of her back, to the tip of a long, powerful tail that ended in a fan of blood red feathers. Her eyes still burned fierce and gold behind what now looked like a helmet made from a skull. Jagged blades of bone extended from her forearms, not dissimilar from Gigan’s metal blades but with a more uneven appearance, sporting numerous notches and jutting spikes. 

Overall the transformation probably would have seemed more impressive had she done this during the fight with the Dark Hunters, as opposed to now, when it was clear Tempest Shadow still held a large power advantage, but X wasn’t about to complain.

In fact he used a gravity assisted leap to jump up the thirty feet onto Gaw’s right shoulder, balancing there with ease as he said, “I’ll pin her down, if you can blast her with everything you’ve got.”

In response Gaw gave an enthusiastic roar, a barking noise that suddenly made her name make much more sense to X, given the similarity. X held on as he felt Gaw start to move, expecting the force of the high-speed motion. Even braced for it, it was a little jarring, but nothing X couldn't handle. He’d experienced worse G-forces before. Gaw’s Sonido too her over to Tempest Shadow on the woman’s right side, and X, having prepared for it, sent out a curtain of gravity beams that vastly increased the gravity around her, crushing down on the Soul Reaper.

At the same time, Gaw opened her mouth, much as she had before, only this time the gathering motes of blood red energy took the shape of a large, three meter thick spike of compacted Cero energy that she then fired like a missile straight at Tempest Shadow.

Despite X’s efforts to keep Tempest pinned down with his gravity control, he still felt her moving within the gravity field as she swung her sword at Gaw’s unusual Cero spike. The Zanpaktou cut the spike cleanly in half, the two parts of the energy spike distorting then exploding on either side of Tempest Shadow in a pair of massive, blood red detonations. 

An instant later X felt Gaw heave beneath him, and for a second he wasn’t sure what had happened, until he looked down to see that Tempest Shadow had launched herself straight out of his gravity field and flown up, delivering a straight kick to Gaw’s chest that struck with a thunderclap and forced Gaw out from under X, her entire thirty foot tall body driven back nearly fifty yards by the blow. Her clawed feet dug into the sand, along with her forearm blades as she forced herself to a halt. A rough, pained cough escaped her saurian jaws and blood poured out of them, splashing down to the dry, hungry sands.

X, having landed readily enough on his feet, looked and saw that the kick Tempst had given Gaw had cracked the armor on the Arrancar’s chest, denting it inward like bent cardboard. Gaw was still standing, at least. X didn’t waste time concerning himself beyond that, knowing now that he had no choice but to put on the pressure himself.

His team were back on their feet, and Roka had gone to help Di Roy, who was shaking sand out of his ears. 

Seeing Gaw injured, Di Roy glared, but there was still shaky fear in his eyes, “Ah hell, for once can’t I take you somewhere without you getting bloodied up, Gaw?”

X had never seen a thirty foot tall humanoid/dinosaur flip someone off before, but now he had. 

“You know I’d prefer it if all of you just came at me at once,” Tempest Shadow said, bouncing her sword over her shoulder, “I’m not unsporting, and seven on one might actually even the odds out. Not even going to say you can’t win, because I keep sensing at least the four of you who aren’t Arrancar are holding back reserves of power. I think that’s what I’m sensing, at any rate. Not sure what this energy is. Doesn’t feel like any reiatsu I’ve ever encountered, but it’s definitely there.”

She was probably sensing the untapped power of their true kaiju forms, which they couldn’t access without a ready boost of magical power from the outside to ‘trigger’ a transformation. Since no one here used magic, apparently, that left them with no means of assuming their true forms. At least as far as X knew. 

However that wasn’t to say he didn’t have a means of empowering himself. He’d been experimenting with the idea ever since his fellow Dark Hunters had helped him suppress his other self, the ‘Kaizer’. That alternate personality was also attached to a whole pool of additional power within him, the same power sources that granted him his control over gravitons. Only with the ‘Kaizer’, he was significantly stronger in that department, and also gained a fair physical boost as well.

It just meant letting his other self take the proverbial wheel, while the ‘X’ personality essentially became a passenger. It was doable, and his alter ego, now that he’d been subdued, was cooperative for the most part. Which didn’t mean X necessarily liked switching places with him, but what was that old saying about desperate times and equally desperate measures?

It wasn’t hard to reach for that place within himself where Kaizer resided, almost as simple as opening up a door within his mind. And Kaizer was there, almost as if he’d been eagerly yet somehow smugly awaiting X’s arrival. The voice spoke in X’s mind almost before X had even sought for it.

Hmph, about time you stopped playing around and came to me. I could have crushed that half-pint earlier if you’d let me, but I think this woman will make for better fare. Now hurry up and let me out already!

X didn’t so much frown as just ever so slightly narrow his eyes, Remember, we do this together. Your aggression and power must be supplemented by my calm and tactical mind. Either of us alone will not be enough

The reply was a reluctant but accepting snort, Yes, I am aware. I won’t ignore you, just so long as you don’t hold me back too much.

There was no wait. The power just flooded up from within X in an instant, surrounding his body in a nimbus of intense gold light that was accompanied by crackling bolts of gravitons that writhed around his body like living snakes. His skin changed, parts of it turning to a gold hue in sharp angled swirls, while his white hair turned to onyx shot through with streaks of gold. His body grew in size. Not dramatically so, but there was a noticeable increase in height and muscle mass. The sclera of his eyes turned black as well, although his pupils retained their ruby red color. The changes took only a second, and X didn’t waste any time, or rather ‘Kaizer’ didn’t. X was now a mere passenger in his own body, able to feel everything Kaizer was doing, but not in direction control. He could feel Kaizer’s hot, eager desire to fight, and could sense his counterpart’s thoughts to see what Kaizer intended. X had his own refinements to add to the plan, essentially sending images and ideas right into Kaizer’s thoughts. There was no need for words between the two personalities, which made planning all but instantaneous. 

Kaizer X took in the entirety of the battlefield. Tempest Shadow was essentially surrounded, with Irys, Gigan, and Megalon on one side, Di Roy and Roka a little separated by essentially on the same side, while the injured but still battle capable Gaw behind and a little to Kaizer X’s right. There wasn’t time to give commands, and Kaizer X wasn’t as concerned with that anyway. He just needed to prevent Tempest Shadow from being able to focus on any of his allies. 

He knelt down in something akin to a stance like a sprinter preparing to take off at a dead run, placing his fists on the ground in front of him. His control of gravitons was boosted and refined incredibly in his present state, and Kaizer X took advantage of the fact as streams of gold, lightning-like gravitons flowed into the ground in front of him, arcing up in a long line that lead straight towards Tempest Shadow. Only this wasn’t a beam attack, but rather a zero gravity field along the length of the ‘tube’ leading to Tempest Shadow. So when Kaizer X launched himself forward, the lack of gravity let him essentially catapult himself forward at high speed. To increase his speed even further, he put a high gravity field directed at himself at the end of the tube, so essentially he wasn’t just throwing himself towards Tempest Shadow with his own strength, but was magnifying his movement by multiple forces of gravity. 

This technique was too complex for X to have used without having Kaizer in charge, but for the time being this method could essentially replicate the same high-speed motions of an Arrancar Sonido or a Soul Reaper Flash Step.

The speed at which he traversed the space to Tempest Shadow clearly caught her by surprise, because Kaizer X was able to slam a gravity enhanced fist across her jaw and knocked her skidding back half a dozen yards, a small shockwave blasting out from the point of impact. He didn’t stop there, rushing in like a freight train with fists, slamming another hefty blow to her stomach and following it up with a haymaker... that she proceeded to catch with her free hand. 

Blood trickled down her lip as Tempest Shadow cracked her neck and looked at Kaizer X with an appreciative look, up and down. “Better. Much better.”

Her sword swung in like a silver bolt of lightning, but Kaizer X could feel it coming. Their whole body projected enough gravitons that even the slightest movement or disturbance alerted them, and their physical reactions were faster now as well. He stepped back and slammed an elbow down, graviton energy bursting from it as he struck the flat of her sword and halted it’s blow. A shockwave burst forth from the pair as they clashed, strength to strength, and Tempest Shadow’s expression turned even more engaged, eyes gleaming.

Kaizer X sent a snap kick at her side, but this was just a feint, for when she moved to block with her hand again he unleashed his gravity beams, not from his hands, but form his eyes. The energy output of his gravity beams was easily twice what it had been before, and the powerful, crackling bolts of power flared from his eyes and slammed Tempest Shadow square in the chest. The blast continued on, driving Tempest Shadow back like being pushed along by a wave, and an entire furrow half a dozen meters wide was carved by the beams as they drilled onward. 

Tempest Shadow took the blow with a mountain-like durability and steadfastness, although the energy sparked all over her body and singed it in places, even cracking a few pieces of her armor. Her raw spiritual energy pushed out of her body, helping her absorb the blow, but when the beams finally petered out she was smoking in several places, and took she took a deep breath.

“Felt that one,” she said, glancing at the others, who had yet to make a movie, “ The rest of you feel free to jump in anytime.” 

“Screw it, wasn’t planning on living a long, healthy life anyway,” Gigan said, accessing all his own personal arsenal of built-in weapons. Small slots opened up in his forearm, firing out small, flying buzzsaws, while his eyes flashed with multiple shotgun-style laser blasts. Megalon spat multiple flaming grenades from his mouth, while taking his drill arms and immediately drilling into the ground once his barrage was one as he burrowed down. Irys sucked in a deep breath and disgorged the strongest sonic ray she could, and as she did so she felt an odd, cold echo inside her that seemed to resonate with the sand around her. Unbeknownst ot her, her sonic ray was tinged ever so slightly red around the edges.

Di Roy held out his Zanpaktou and focused a Cero beam at its tip, firing a wide, ruby beam to join the barrage of other attacks flying in at Tempest Shadow, while Roka drew her own small, dagger shaped Zanpaktou while lashing out with her sharp strings using her other hand. Meanwhile Gaw launched herself into the air and swung her forearm blades, small sanguine colored spikes of energy flying from them, her own altered version of Bala.

The maelstrom of attacks descended on Tempest Shadow in a furious hail, and the Soul Reaper reacted with equal, storm-like speed and ferocity. Her body flickered with motions so fast she seemed to split into multiple bodies, but even then the density of the attacks did allow some to strike home. While one of Gigan’s flying buzz saws was knocked aside, the other cut a bloody line on Tempest’s upper left forearm. Another swing of her Zanpaktou blasted aside Roka’s cutting strings with a wave of pressure, while she used her other, bare hand to grasp and turn aside the Cero beam Di Roy fired, sending it careening off into the distance. Moving faster still, she bent backwards like an expert limbo player to let Irys’ sonic ray pass over her, yet it was close enough that Tempest could feel the cutting ray leave a thin burn mark across her right brow, drawing blood. Megalon’s grenades detonated around her then, but Tempest pushed out with her reiatsu and took the brunt of them with the resilience of a hardened bunker. With a final back swing of her sword she sent Gaw’s spike shaped Bala scattering like arrows striking a steel wall. 

Tempest Shadow didn’t wait even a split second to counterattack, wearing a deep smile of personal enjoyment as she flew out of the churned up sand and dust from the attacks that had landed around her, and Flash Stepped towards Gigan. The cyborg already had both chain blades snapped out from his forearms, and was swimming both of them at where his instruments were predicting Tempest would appear, but her Flash Step was on a different level than the Sonidos Gaw had used, which Gigan was using to calibrate his calculations. His swings hit little more than air, clipping a little of Tempet’s mohawk as she darted past him and then continued on towards Irys.

“Get back here you-” Gigan turned, preparing to fire an eye-laser, but suddenly found himself off balance as three seperate slashes just appeared across his chest and back. It actually took a second before his systems registered the damage from the blindingly fast cuts, and fortunately the incredibly dense and durable construction of the Nubulan technology in his body kept him standing. A normal human would’ve been outright killed, but Gigan’s injuries were comparatively light, and he grit his teeth as he fired his eye-beam, the ruby bolt spearing towards Tempest Shadow.

The beam didn’t reach Tempest, but it did make her Flash Step upward, vanishing and reappearing a few dozen feet up from where she’d been. She still descended towards Irys, but Gigan’s beam had bought her a precious moment to produce a thick, black cloud of fog around her to obscure herself. Tempest dove into it, and hit the ground with the force of a meteor, her sword cleaving a wide swath of sand. The shockwave alone forced Irys to come tumbling out of the fog, thankfully unharmed, but the fog was quickly dispersed by another swing of Tempest’s sword and she focused her eyes on Irys.

“I keep sensing more power inside you bunch, so where is it?” Tempest asked, taking a step forward, but then a pair of thick gloves burst out of the sand at her feet and grabbed her ankles.

Tempest actually looked taken aback as Megalon, having dug beneath her, yanked Tempest down into the sand up to her waist, and then burst out of the sand himself like a jumping dolphin. 

“Double-Drill Divebomb!” Megalon shouted, wearing a surprisingly serious look as he deployed both of his hand drills and revved them up to a high-pitched whine, both weapons spinning in a solid blur as he dove right towards Tempest with the drills extended before him.

A pleased laugh escaped Tempest as she swung her Zanpaktou to meet the attack, and drills and spiritual blade met in a titanic clash of sparks.

“That’s more like it!” Tempest said, “Coordinated attacks, actual teamwork! I’m getting more and more convinced I should keep you lot around. You’re wasted working for an Espada.”

Glittering strings fell around Tempest, while Megalon was keeping her busy. Roka appeared nearby, hands extended as she constricted her strings around the Soul Reaper, while Di Roy appeared behind Tempest with a Sonido, his own weapon raised to strike at her back. Tempest, seeing this, smirked and took one hand off her Zanpaktou, still keeping Megalon’s drills at bay, and turned back to catch Di Roy’s sword. Roka gasped as her strings were bent and  pulled apart as if they weren’t even there, and she shouted a warning to Di Roy a moment too late.

Tempest threw Di Roy’s sword aside like an angry adult tossing away a child’s toy and proceeded to shape her hand like a knife and then drove it into Di Roy’s stomach, nearly to the wrist. Di Roy blinked, then blood exploded from his mouth as Tempest Shadow tore her hand free and then all but ripped her feet clear of the sand, kicking Di Roy hard enough to send him skipping like a stone over a lake for a few dozen yards.

Roka sucked in a sharp breath and immediately rushed to help him, while Gaw roared and fell towards Tempest like an avalanche. Megalon actually jumped back, his face suddenly no longer grinning, as he drove in again, this time putting as much force as he could behind his right arm drill. At the same time Gaw was driving down from the other side with one of her forearm blades. 

Tempest Shadow spun, Zanpaktou catching the edge of Gaw’s massive forearm blade and turning it down to get stuck in the ground, while her other hand shot out and caught Megalon’s wrist. She redirected the drill punch towards one of Gaw’s legs, but Megalon countered by planting his feet, deactivating the drill, and then swiftly snapping his head forward to headbutt Tempest Shadow in the chin.

With an almost metallic ring this made both of them stagger back, Tempest shaking her head just in time to hear Kaizer X’s deep tone shout, “Everybody move!”

He hadn’t been idle this whole time, having been building up a storm of gravitons around his body, compressing them into a sphere about five feet in diameter above his head. Gaw and Megalon saw this, and Gaw grabbed Megalon in one large claw and zipped out of the way with Sonido. The moment they were in the clear, Kaizer X narrowed his eyes and drew back his arms, then hurled them forward, sending the compressed ball of graviton energy flying at Tempest Shadow with speed sufficient to shatter the sound barrier.

When the sphere impacted with Tempest, it abruptly expanded into a crackling, pulsing explosion of energy beams that tore through the surrounding area with deep, burrowing beams that ripped up scores of meters of desert. The center of the explosion was a golden nimbus of crushing gravity forces, carving out a large crater and throwing up enough sand to obscure the area in a dense cloud. The ground itself shook for half a mile from the discharge of energy, and most of Kaizer X’s companions had to cover their faces from the shockwave. 

As the energies faded and everything quieted down, Roka got to Di Roy and quickly started extending strings from within her robes, the tiny, glinting strands moving on their own to enter into his wound and start stitching up internals.

“O-one of these days I’m going to learn when to just stay out of fights that’re outta my league,” Di Roy muttered past bloodied lips while he lay there, letting Roka work. She just gave him an enduring, if small smile as she focused on her work.

“You always do try...” she said, a touch of fondness in her voice. Di Roy just made a noncommittal grunt and looked away, which only seemed to amuse Roka more, although her expression was heavily shadowed by the severity of their situation. While her strings worked on his wounds, probing further and delicately through Di Roy’s insides, Roka noted that while the wound looked bad from the outside, it was curiously placed. 

Given the strength of the blow, that Soul Reaper could have taken out Di Roy’s spine, or targeted his heart. Instead she struck in such a way as to cause pain, but only minimal damage to anything vital. Roka shook her head at the thought. Perhaps this Tempest Shadow wasn’t outright trying to kill them? Even if that was the case, it didn’t change that they had no choice but to keep fighting until either they took her down, or the other way around. 

The Dark Hunters were dusting themselves off, although Kaizer X was standing with his eyes locked on the center of where the explosion had been. Gigan helped Irys up, although she eyed his injuries worriedly.

“You okay?” she asked.

“These scratches? Nothing to worry about,” he said, ignoring the minimal seepage of blood from the cuts Tempest Shadow had given him. His internal diagnostics showed some damaged wiring, a few fluid leaks, and a slight reduction in the efficiency of his power systems and torso motion, but nothing he couldn’t fix with a spare hour and a halfway decent workshop. “I’ve taken worse from accidents during routine maintenance.”

Gaw walked up with large, stomping steps, and with surprisingly care set Megalon down next to Gigan and Irys while she sniffed the air with her large saurian snout, speaking in a voice that was deep and guttural, but still somehow distinctly feminine,  “No relax yet. I still smell enemy.”

“You mean you smell what’s left of her, right?” asked Irys, eyeing the smoking crater, “There’s no way she’s still standing after that.”

“Of course there is,” Kaizer X said with a gruff laugh as he walked past them, heading right for the crater, “Haven't you been paying attention to our enemy? She’s been making sport of us. Warming up, without fighting seriously. That last attack was just my way of telling her to stop playing around.”

Gigan cracked a devil-may-care half-smirk, looking sidelong at Kaizer X, “Personally I would’ve been fine with her not taking us seriously. Makes it easier to catch her off guard.”

“She’s pretty tough,” Megalon admitted, “But so far this hasn’t been too bad. I haven’t been dropped kicked or anything!”

Gigan shuddered at memories he’d rather leave buried, “Don’t remind me. Still can’t believe that stupid grinning robot could fly.”

A deep, rumbling growl issued forth from Gaw’s throat as she tensed her large, thirty foot tall body and nodded at the crater, “She’s coming...”

A shadowed form emerged from the dissipating smoke. Tempest Shadow was far from unscatched by Kaizer X’s attack. Her armor was broken and crumbling off her, the body suit beneath it torn in more than a few places, revealing bleeding wounds beneath. Her white Captain’s coat was even more tattered now, its right sleeve torn off, the arm beneath dripping blood. Tempest grunted a bit, rolling her left shoulder, which looked awkwardly limp.

“Yup, that’s dislocated,” she commented dryly. Still holding her Zanpaktou, she raised her right hand to her dislocated shoulder, then proceeded to shove the joint right back into place with the hilt of the blade, eliciting a loud popping noise of moving cartilage. “There we go.”

She gave Kaizer X an appreciative look, “Good hit, and you’ve made your point. Guess it was rude of me to treat you lightly, but it’s been awhile since I’ve had a decent opponent. I would’ve liked to make this last awhile. But you’ve earned me putting my back into this...”

An unmistakable sense of pressure rose from her, like being abruptly dunked deep beneath the ocean. Tempest Shadow raised the katana blade of her Zanpaktou vertically before her, the weapon gaining a misty aura of white spirit energy around its edge. 

”Hold the line; Hagane-hei.” (Steel Soldier)

A sound like a deep metal gong sounded across the air, followed by the sight of a dark gray substance with the consistency of sand billowing out from the hilt of Tempest Shadow’s Zanpaktou. The whirling gray mist encompassed the blade, covering it entirely, and then abruptly expanded with a burst of power that washed out around Tempest in a wave that shook the ground. Even without that physical display, every one of the Dark Hunters and the Arrancar could sense the heavy increase in spiritual pressure flowing off of the Soul Reaper, like the sensation of a stiff wind constantly pressing on one’s skin.

The Zanpaktou now had the shape of a large butcher’s cleaver, like a curved rectangle of thick, sharp metal. The blade itself was easily four feet long and two feet thick, with another extra two feet of overall length added for the naked metal handle that lacked any semblance of hilt or guard. The weapon was pitted and scarred with nicks from what must have been countless battles, yet this did nothing to take away from the aura of incredible, deadly menace that the Zanpaktou exuded, as if it was now fully awake and eager for its edge to taste blood.

“Well,” said Gigan with a tone heavily marinated in sarcasm, “This day just keeps getting better and better.”

“Be careful!” Roka shouted, still working on trying to save Di Roy’s life some distance away, her strings trying to sew up internal organs and stop the bleeding. Still, there was little mistaking her fear as she spoke warning to the Dark Hunters and Gaw, “She’s activated her Shikai! That sword will have new abilities-”

Suddenly she jerked, as if struck, once, twice, three times. For a second it was hard for any of the Dark Hunters to tell what had just happened, but Gigan and Megalon’s cybernetic perceptions picked it up first, followed a moment later by Kaizer X and Irys as their eyes adjusted. The dark Hueco Mundo horizon helped the chains blend in, given they were shade of gray dark enough to be nearly black. Three chains had shot out of the Zanpaktou, Hagane-hei, seemingly formed from the blade’s own metal, and shot out with speed beyond any bullet’s to strike Roka, once in each arm, and once around the neck.

The chains ended in spiked tips, the ones hitting Roka’s arms digging in through her robes, while the chain around her neck wrapped it like a grappling hook without piercing flesh. 

“Nothing personal,” Tempest said with a simple shrug, “But I don’t need you healing people I’ve already knocked out of the fight.”

With shocking force and speed the chains yanked Roka back towards Tempest, so fast it actually created a small wake of sand at her passage. Then the second Roka was within arm's reach, Tempest Shadow whipped her Zanpaktou around, the chains releasing Roka mid-swing and catapulting her into the ground like a ballistic missile. She impacted and went spinning and skipping across the ground several times before coming to rest in an unconscious heap, one of her arms clearly bent at a horrifically broken angle.

Tempest looked back at the rest of them and said, “And then there were five.”

Kaizer X saw the slight shift in her feet that he was now familiar with enough to know meant a Flash Step was coming, and immediately moved to counter it, X providing a mental image of the route he predicted she’d use while conjuring a new use for the gravity beams that he’d previously contemplated but had never felt pushed enough to risk trying.

Kaizer fully approved of the plan, risk and all, and when Tempest Shadow vanished with a  Flash Step, he sent himself flying forward with a graviton boosted leap and extended his arms to either side. Channeling the full force of the power of gravity at his command, Kaizer X shot out twin beams of gravitons... the looped them back in on themselves. With a supreme effort of will, and X in Kaiser's subconscious focusing purely on the matter of controlling the streams of energy, the pair worked together to create a stable, tightly compacted loop of gravitrons that extended from either hand.

The result was a set of twin energy blades that looked very much like crackling, twisting bolts of golden lightning given the loose shape of swords. 

Intercepting Tempest Shadow, Kaizer X brought both graviton-blades to bear and slashed with them in a cross pattern. Tempest saw this just in time to swing Hagane-hei in a counter that brought her Zanpaktou into a direct clash with the twin graviton-blades. They collided in a combined, concussive blast that cratered the ground beneath them and, surprisingly to Tempest Shadow, stalemated the pair.

The force of potent, tearing gravity pouring off of the blades of energy was strong enough for Tempest Shadow to feel in her very bones, and she gave an appreciative look towards Kaizer X over the sparking clash of their weapons. She pushed off with Hagane-hei and launched herself upward with the force of it, bending in mid-air to flip vertically over him as she slashed downward. Kaizer X pushed himself back, manipulating gravity to leap up to meet her, one gravitron-blade catching Hagane-hei while he spun around to slash at her with the other. Tempest Shadow’s eyes followed the attack, and with a slight twist of her wrist she angled Hagane-hei towards the other blade. A metallic growth of jagged metal shot out of the blade, much like the chains had grown from it, and parried the second gravitron-blade.

In that same instant, the Zanpaktou grew additional blades from its front, as if the metal could just keep producing more metal from itself. These smaller, spike-like blades caught Kaizer X slightly off guard. He was able to twist away from them, but several cuts appeared on his arm and shoulder from what otherwise might have been more grievous wounds had he reacted more slowly. 

Their clash ended with both landing on the ground about ten paces from each other, the entire affair having occurred in the span of mere seconds. Only then did the others catch up, all leaping into the attack.

Irys covered Tempest Shadow in a gust of black fog, while Gaw, with Megalon riding one shoulder, and Gigan on her other shoulder, jumped up above the impenetrable cloud of fog. Gigan’s eyes flared to near overheating as he unloaded a focused laser beam down on where his scanners told him Tempest Shadow was. The hot stream of light and plasma split into multiple spreading beams that webbed out in a series of bright, searing bursts. Megalon followed his brother cyborg’s lead with a rapid-fire set of spitting grenades that exploded amid the fog one after another. This was all capped off by Gaw opening her salivating, blood drenched jaws, a hellish glow of crimson bathing her throat before she disgorged a point-blank Cero into the ground. The combined attacks exploded outward, dissipating the fog cloud, but replacing it with a rising pillar of energy.

Yet an instant later, jagged metal blades shot upward from the cloud of dust the explosion had created, six in total that struck with blinding speed. Gaw’s arms and legs were pierced through, each by one of the blades, while the remaining two went for Gigan and Megalon. Gigan teleported out of the way of the one that went for him, although his energy reserves were starting to run low due to the large drain teleporting caused. Megalon was less capable of evasion, instead barely getting one of his drills up in time to block the blow, and even then the jagged metal blade struck hard enough to knock him from his perch on Gaw’s shoulder and sent him tumbling to the ground.

As for Gaw, she roared in pain as the blades tore free of her arms, but before she could fall, or even move to eade, the blades that struck her transformed their shape into chains that wrapped around the thirty foot tall Arrancar’s midsection and smashed her to the ground.

Finally the dust dissipated enough to show a towering shield of dark gray metal that seemed to grow out from the tip of her Zanpaktou. The shield itself was rough and rectangular, easily ten feet tall and half that wide. It’s thick surface was smoking and pitted from the impacts of lasers, grenades, and a point-blank Cero, but it was still intact. Tempest Shadow hadn’t entirely gotten out of the barrage unscathed, due to Gigan’s shotgun-style laser spread, the wider detonations of Megalon’s grenades, and Gaw’s Cero creating a large enough explosion to get around the shield partially, but the Captain-class Soul Reaper’s wounds still mostly appeared to be surface level. Or at least if the numerous burn marks and bleeding, torn parts of her skin were bothering Tempest, she was doing a good job of hiding it from her opponents. 

 In an instant, the shield was reabsorbed back into Hagane-hei, while retaining the chain that now extended from the blade’s end remained firmly attached to Gaw. 

By now Kaizer X understood what Tempest Shadow’s Zanpaktou did. It appeared to transmute its metal form into other shapes, with a much greater volume than its normal form would suggest possible. It clearly had limits on how much additional metal it could produce, and thus far it hadn’t shown the ability to detach that metal or have it act independently. So far it had merely grown shapes like extra blades or chains, or that shield, to enhance Tempest’s combat versatility. However, given the speed and power at which she could utilize that versatility, it made her an even more exceedingly deadly foe than she already was. Furthermore, Kaizer X wasn’t sure just how limited the shapeshifting metal might be. For all he knew she was still holding back. 

For ‘X’, his mind was rapidly going over tactical options, all swiftly flowing through his consciousness in the one or two seconds that passed when Gaw had been slammed into the ground. It was clear that it just wasn’t possible to overcome Tempest Shadow through sheer power. The injuries she had sustained, while relatively light, still proved she was vulnerable and could be wounded. She wasn’t invincible. The mere fact that she’d put effort into parrying his graviton-blades suggested she feared taking a direct hit from them. As long as he could maintain the Kaizer X form, the power within those blades of highly compressed and looping graviton beams should be enough to land a telling blow. The problem was that with her current level of speed, combined with a weapon that could grow new shapes in an eyeblink, X had no reliable way to get past her defenses. 

You’re overthinking it, Kaizer’s voice told X, and X could feel Kaizer’s rising, seething anger, We just have to batter that ‘defense’ relentlessly until there’s nothing left. Shatter that blade of hers.

X couldn’t physically shake his head, but he conveyed the feeling with his thoughts, Brute force won’t work without a means to accurately apply it. We must create a weakness within her defensive measures that can be exploited before delivering a finishing blow.

YOU figure that out. I’M attacking!

X wanted to physically smack his alter ego, but Kaizer’s ire was up, like the pressure of an active volcano that had been forced to hold in its eruption for too long. A growing rage fueled every step as Kaizer X launched himself towards Tempest Shadow, leaving arcs of golden lightning in his wake.

Tempest clearly anticipated the direct attack, and had already been swinging her weapon around, the massive chain attached to Gaw whipping along with it. As if Gaw were the head of a  gigantic flail, Tempest swung the thirty foot tall saurian Arrancar up and around, slamming her right towards Kaizer X in a sidelong arc. He saw this coming and deftly launched himself in an upward leap over the helplessly swinging Gaw, then adjusted gravity to send himself rocketing down at Tempest Shadow with sudden, meteoric speed, twin graviton-blades slicing down side by side.

A growth of curved blades sprouted from the side of Hagane-hei, forming a phalanx of sharp edges that intercepted the graviton-blades. Even so, Kaizer X struck with enough force to cause Tempest Shadow to grunt in effort and nearly sank to one knee as the sand was intended downward beneath her feet. Graviton energy coursed over both her and Kaizer X from the clash of blades, and one of the reasons X had been hesitant to use this experimental technique made itself apparent as one of the blades started to crackle and writhe wildly about. Trying to focus such energy in a compressed manner and make it hold its shape was difficult, to say the least. In these constant clashes, he was having moments of losing focus, which meant the graviton energy could easily run out of control, even backfire on him.

He got the blade back under control within the span of a heartbeat, but it’d still been enough to cause some minor damage to his hand. It also gave Tempest Shadow a split second to regain her own balance and the curved blades that had formed from her Zanpaktou now extended outward, shoving Kaizer X backwards across the sands. One even slipped past his graviton-blades and made another painful gash on his side, but he didn’t even flinch at the wound.

The blades retracted back to Hagane-hei’s main body, and Tempest swung the weapon up above her head and then spun it forward, the chain extending from its tip contracting and dragging a dazed Gaw along with it. Tempest now flipped the Arrancar over her head, bringing her crashing towards Kaizer X. He responded with a gesture from his left hand. He had to cease using the graviton-blade in that hand in order to free up energy and concentration to instead create a reduced gravity field that slowed Gaw’s descent.

Even with the gravity field, the force Tempest Shadow was using to swing Gaw still slammed her painfully into the ground, but nowhere near as bad as it otherwise would have been. Still, with the injuries that had already accumulated on her it was clear Gaw was in terrible condition, with her bone armor sporting numerous cracks, the Arrancar’s breath running ragged from her throat. Kaizer X jumped past her, and swung his remaining graviton-blade at the chain binding her midsection. The stream of golden energy bit into the thick chain, sending sparks flying, and with a grunt of effort Kaizer X found his weapon severing the chain, breaking Gaw free.

The end still attached to Hagane-hei retracted back and was reabsorbed into the Zanpaktou, while the severed portion lost its solidarity and turned into a fine metal dust. Gaw barked out a pained noise and rolled over onto her stomach, struggling to rise, or even raise a claw to fire a simple Bala at Tempest. Kaizer X was already rushing to close the distance to Tempest, who in response lowered her Zanpaktou towards the ground, where metal extended out of the blade and into the sands. A moment later a field of metal lances sprouted from the ground in a deadly field, forcing Kaizer X to twist and leap about to avoid being impaled. Unfortunately Gaw was far less able to dodge, and while she managed to throw herself to the side, several spikes pierced her side before she tore herself free. The Arrancar fired one Bala in a last ditch effort, but Tempest slapped it away with her hand like swatting a softball, already having retracted the spikes back to her Zanpaktou, while Gaw slumped to the ground, utterly spent.

Tempest Shadow raised her blade to launch another attack, perhaps to finish Gaw off, or to continue keeping Kaizer X at bay, but then she was forced to abruptly side-stepped as a red-tinged, purple beam sliced past where she’d been standing. 

Irys didn’t cut off the beam, keeping it going as she turned her head and sent the sonic beam following after Tempest Shadow. The Soul Reaper held her Zanpaktou at an angle in front of her and caught the beam on its edge, redirecting it into, of all things, the distant Land Cruiser, which proceeded to be sliced cleanly into two pieces and then explode.

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me!” Irys shouted, “What does it take for you to just go down!?”

“If it makes you feel any better, you lot are doing better than literally any group of foes of mine has managed in several centuries,” Tempest Shadow offered, and Irys just grimaced.

“Yeah, it really doesn’t.”

“Hey, you could always still surrender and become my prisoners. Saves us all a lot of trouble.”

Kaizer X appeared behind her, having used gravity manipulation to cross the distance in an instant. He had his remaining graviton-blade raised, and brought it down hard, “I don’t do surrender!”

Tempest Shadow flickered out of view with a Flash Step, but as she reappeared, coming at Kaizer X’s side with a hefty swing of Hagane-hei, there was a clear gash over her right shoulder blade where the graviton-blade had managed a glancing blow. A more solid hit and she might even had lost the entire arm. 

However by the same token, Kaizer X turned and met Tempest’s attack with a parrying swing that was just a shade off, and the massive cleaver-shaped Zanpaktou tore a nasty wound across his chest. Not deep enough to slow him down much, but enough to bleed profusely and make it clear that had he failed the parry entirely, he may well be sitting in two halves at that moment.

The pair went at each other like a colliding set of stormfronts, thunder and lightning exploding from each clash of their blades.

Irys was left standing there, frustrated, fearful, angry at herself for not being able to do more, and terrified that if this continued much longer then there wasn’t going to be any hope of her or her family escaping this battle with everyone healthy and intact. And the more her thoughts turned towards that dark, negative spectrum, the more that odd, cold echo in the pit of her chest grew and she felt as if something within the very sand around her was... calling to her. Or was something inside her calling to it. 

She had no idea, but she knelt down, placing a pale hand on the white sands, her hand nearly blending into their surface. That echo felt almost like power, if she could just find a way to pull it towards herself...

Meanwhile Gigan and Megalon had split up, Gigan going to check on Roka, while Megalon went to Gaw.

Gigan found Roka was limp and out cold, but thankfully still alive. He didn’t have any particular fondness for any of these Arrancar, but Roka was the damn medic, and they’d need her to patch people up after this. Assuming any of the walked away at all. He was just practical and cynical enough to recognize their chances of victory were decreasing by the second, but ‘giving up’ was never a viable option in Gigan’s repertoire. With the Land Cruiser destroyed, there was no easy way out of here, but he had just enough energy for one or two more teleports. He could expand the field if he dumped his reserve power into it and get at leat the wounded, Irys, and Megalon clear. Gaw was too large to teleport, so she was shit out of luck, but Gigan would still come back and see the fight through to the end alongside X.

He picked up Roka with that general plan in mind when his scanners started picking up odd energy readings. The clash between Kaizer X and Tempest Shadow was overshadowing everything, the pair all but vanishing and reappearing in view with a series of high-speed clashes that sent sand blasting around them in a cloud with each meeting of their blades. Yet despite all that, Gigan noticed an erratic spike in energy levels from somewhere else.

...It was coming from Irys.

Megalon had reached Gaw, who was still shaking as she tried to force her wounded, bleeding body upright.

“Hey, hold up!” Megalon said, putting a hand on Gaw’s snout, “I think big bro’s got some kinda plan, and you’re pretty busted up. Just hang back and let us handle the rest.”

“N...no...” Gaw growled, blood dripping from her jaws as she suecked in panting breaths, only able to prop herself up in an awkward angle as her bone armor started to crack in multiple places, “Failed too many times... have to protect tribe... all I’m good for...”

“Whoa, okay is your body supposed to be getting all misty like that?” Megalon asked as Gaw’s body started to seemingly bleed a smokey gray aura. 

Gaw groaned as her body shimmered, armor turning to mist, then seemingly the rest of her. Megalon blinked as the small, thin red-haired girl that had first attacked them in Las Noches fell out of the swirl of mist that Gaw’s ‘Resurreccion’ form had become. He caught her limp form, and the mist swirled into the shape of her Zanpaktou, sticking out of the ground. Gaw’s now tiny, almost fragile looking body still bore all the wounds she’d gained in her transformed state, with bleeding holes in her limbs and a thick bruise over her abdomen, and blood trailing out of her mouth. She was still breathing, but it was very shallow.

Megalon just held her, not really sure what to do, but that was also around the same moment his own scanners picked up what Gigan’s had, and he turned to look towards where Irys was. 

The alabaster sands of Hueco Mundo were rising around Irys’ body, thousands of tiny grains that curled around her in a helix shaped swirl. Irys felt something akin to a frozen howl, echoing from the depths of the desert beneath her, rising in answer to her desperation, her fear, and a growing, bitter anger at the threat to her flock.

It was no stretch to say that X, Gigan, and Megalon were Irys’ world. After losing the flock of Gyaos she’d been alpha of, even if they’d never truly been a family to her in the sense others knew the word, she’d still be alone and desperate. Becoming part of the Dark Hunters had shown her a whole new definition of the word ‘family’, and the thought of losing what she had with them, of losing any of them, generated such a storm of churning, dark feelings within her that she felt they might claw themselves right out of her throat!

And Hueco Mundo itself responded to that.

For Hueco Mundo was a realm seeped for countless eons in the very essence of Hollows. Hollows, whose power and very being comprised of numerous shades of negative emotions within the soul. Not all negative emotions was inherently wrong, however. Power could be derived from tempering them, facing them, even embracing them under the right conditions. Hueco Mundo epitomized that nature, and every single grain of sand in the realm was infused with a mote of Hollow power.

Normally this might not have meant anything, only to the nature of the Dark Hunters, who were anything but human. Each was a unique entity, a kaiju cloaked now in the skin of a human only because the barriers between this world and the world they came from transformed their bodies into ones suited to the realm they entered. Yet they could assume their true forms if infused with enough energy to take that shape. In the past, only magic could have accomplished that feat. But while different, spiritual energy isn’t that far off from magic, and at the end of the day, energy is energy.

More important still, was Irys herself. Unlike the other Dark Hunters, her body was uniquely designed, yet also genetically aberrant. The Gyaos had been a ‘failed’ attempt at making Guardian Beasts, yet Irys’ mutation actually lead to a correction of that flaw. She didn’t even know it herself, yet, what she truly was, but she was Guardian Beast Eta, and while her body was normally meant only to gain power from absorbing certain elements... when she’d come to Hueco Mundo, the transference changed her body just enough that Hollow energy could act as a substitute.

And on instinct, and in desperation, Irys embraced that power that was reacting to her, and drew it in deep, like a parched person dunking their head into an oasis and drinking in as much as they could. 

 The reaction was as instant as it was dramatic. No longer merely floating around Irys in a slow, wafting stream, the pure white sand of Hueco Mundo exploded upwards around her in a storm. The grains flared with arcs of red energy as the sand was broken down to its base reishi spirit particles. Rivers of spirit energy then flowed right into Irys, entering through her eyes and mouth at first, then across her body as her skin flared up with a series of sharp angled, glowing symbols. 

These symbols had appeared on her once before, when she’d been in her true Gyaos form, battling against X’s Kaizer form in what had been a similarly desperate battle to this one. The symbols represented her true nature as a Guardian Beast, and normally their color was a raw and brilliant violet, and for a moment they were the same color in this instance. However, as the Hollow reishi was absorbed into her body at an incredible rate, the symbols bled from violet to an equally bright and stark red. 

Irys felt the power flooding through her, but along with that heated rush of power was also an overwhelming tidal wave of negative emotions that threatened to sweep her conscious mind away like a piece of driftwood. She struggled to maintain any semblance of self as pure rage, hunger, and deafening howls of madness scratched at her mind’s barriers. Even if she’d wanted to stop the process, however, she couldn’t. Her body soaked up the power, and her mind was left to fend for itself as her entire being underwent a swift and explosive change...

The Dark Hunters all knew what to expect, to a degree. They could sense the unleashing of one of their number’s true forms, and with an exchange of nods Gigan and Megalon wisely started to make a break for cover, carrying their unconscious cargos with them. Gigan even, if somewhat as an afterthought, accounted or Di Roy, firing a grappling hook onto the wounded Arrancar to drag him along as well.

Kaizer X was left standing alongside a somewhat confused looking Tempest Shadow as the spot Irys had been located exploded with a truly colossal vortex of crimson energy that surged up into the sky for hundreds of feet. 

Tempest Shadow could feel the incredible rise in spiritual pressure coming from Irys, along with the full brunt of other energies she wasn’t familiar with. As experienced in battle as she was, having faced countless Hollows of numerous levels of power, she could easily tell that this upsurge in energy was on par with a top tier opponent; akin to a fellow Captain or an enemy Espada. It was too wild, too uncontrolled, to tell just how strong, specifically, but on the order of threat scale, this new one had eclipsed anything the others present could offer, even Kaizer X.

Not that she let that drop her guard. She remained in a battle ready stance, facing Kaizer X even as she cast one eye sidelong towards the red vortex. Kaizer X was doing the same, mostly because Kaizer was listening for a change to what X was telling  him, which was to hold off and assess this new development. X wasn’t sure how Irys had managed to transform, but now that she was, he knew he and Kaizer might need to give her some space to handle Tempest Shadow. 

However he wasn’t quite expecting what he saw emerging from the vortex.

The crimson energies of the vortex faded away, flowing like water off of Irys’ now titanic form. In many respects she looked much as she should in her true body; a massive albino bat-like creature with a triangular head and huge two hundred meter wingspan, and measuring easily ninety meters tall. 

Yet she was different now, too. Her wings were more curved now, with their top portion covered in layers of bone-like white armor that was edged along the ends like blades. Segments of more bone armor formed a light plating across her chest, and other segments covered her legs and back. Like many Hollows that X had seen, Irys’ face was covered in a form fitting mask of bone, conforming to her head’s shape, but making for a longer, sharper, and more curved pair of points around the ends of the V shape. Perhaps the most striking change, while also being the smallest, was that her eyes had become pitch black around the iris’, which in turn glowed luminously golden. It was very similar to what happened to his own eyes when he used Kaizer energy, but it occurred to X that many Hollows also had yellow eyes. 

Irys’ head turned to fixate upon Tempest Shadow, and she let out a piercing shriek of noise that reverberated through the air loud enough to be felt as much as heard. 

Tempest Shadow winced slightly, but also sent a sardonic half-smirk towards Kaizer X, “So this is what you four have been hiding, huh? Why didn’t you start with these forms?”

“I think that should be the least of your concerns right now,” Kaizer X replied flatly as he leapt backwards a large distance, mostly because he could see Irys open her maw and the gathering of energies there.

An instant later, Irys fired her sonic beam. Only it wasn’t quite like it had been before. Thicker than normal, but still comparatively thin, cutting beam, it now held a largely blood red color as it sliced across the distance separating her and Tempest Shadow. Only a thin bar of purple still remained in the beam’s center. Tempest Shadow could feel the difference in power as the beam cut across the landscape towards her. It was still the same sonic beams that slip of a girl had been firing at her before, only now it was magnitudes more powerful, and enhanced by a huge dose of Hollow energy. It was practically a Cero, with extra sonic cutting ability layered on top of it. 

It was also much faster than before, taking all of Tempest Shadow’s skill in Flash Step to avoid as the beam tore open a ten meter wide, twenty meter deep gash across the Hueco Mundo desert for a length of nearly five kilometers. Even then, the near miss left Tempest’s left side marked raw with a bleeding red burn mark. A direct hit might well have ended the fight then and there. 

The realization lit up Tempest Shadow’s senses with an adrenaline rush she hadn’t felt in ages, and steeled her mind for the fight to come. 

Before she’d been having fun, testing these newcomers out and seeing what they could do. Now? Now it was time to get serious. 

----------

As they’d been ordered, Grubber and the rest of Tempest Shadow’s company had retreated to a “safe” distance of a few kilometers west of Forlorn Ridge. They waited atop the tallest of the nearby sand dunes, waiting and watching the battle unfold. Well, watching was perhaps not accurate, given they couldn’t actually see much from that far away. However the ones with acute spiritual senses, namely Grubber, Yin, and Yang, could feel what was occurring and had followed the battle purely through sensing the conflicting energies of their Captain and those she did battle with.

Of course none of them could miss the eight meter tall bat-Hollow kaiju that had taken form in the distance, nor the massive five kilometer long energy beam Irys fired across the desert. 

Yang’s eyes snapped open, having previously been closed as she’d focused on spiritually sensing the battle, and she breathed, “What in the Hell is that thing?”

“Were you expecting an answer or was that purely rhetorical?” asked Grubber, furrowing his bushy white eyebrows, “Because seriously, how would any of us know that? It’s big, looks like a bat got frisky with a pteranodon, and is sporting Hollow bits like a freakin’ Halloween costume! You tell me what it is!”

Yin opened her own eyes as well, looking pensively towards the battlefield as she said, “Whatever it is, it’s powerful. Should we... should we go help the Captain?”

“She told us, ordered us to stay out of it, Yin,” seethed Yang, clearly not liking it any more than her twin sister did, “We can’t disobey.”

“But look at what she’s up against!” Yin shouted, pointing with her Zanpaktou. Irys had taken to the air, and was gliding at high speed towards Tempest Shadow’s position, sand dunes being ripped to billowing clouds of sand in her wake. 

Grubber crossed his stubby arms and said, “Exactly, kid. Look at it. You think we’d even be of any help to the Captain against something like that? No, we’d be in the way.”

“We can’t just stand here...” Yin said, teeth grinding in frustration. “What if the Captain gets hurt?”

“You kidding?” Grubber said, shaking his head. He supposed he couldn’t blame the twins for worrying. They might have known Tempest Shadow since they were children, but they were still young compared to Grubber, and he’d been serving at Tempest Shadow’s side practically since day one, when the Storm King found her on the brink of death on that distant battlefield all those centuries ago. He might have been little more than a ‘sidekick’ to the Captain, but he liked to think he knew her well. Which meant he knew Tempest Shadow was only more dangerous when backed into a corner.

“You just watch. This fight ain’t even close to over.”

----------

Irys came on with the force of a living, super-sonic typhoon. Kaizer X had to make a full bore sprint for cover, just to get out of the path of the sonic blast that shredded the desert in the wake of the transformed Gyaos’ flight. Literally thousands of tons of sand were sent flying outward in a dry tidal wave on either side of Irys as she flew headlong at Tempest Shadow. 

Megalon and Gigan had taken cover further away near Forlorn Ridge itself, having carefully set Roka and Gaw down, and yanked along Di Roy. Gigan detached his grapple from Di Roy while the wounded Arrancar spit up sand.

“Blech, gee, thanks for being so gentle, buddy!” Di Roy groused, “Can’t you see I’m injured here?”

“You’re alive enough to winge, so you’re alive enough to shut up,” Gigan shot back, “There wasn’t time to do anything else.”

At that, Di Roy blinked and peeked over the sand dune they hid behind, his eyes making a good impression of dinner plates when he saw Irys. “What the crap!? Since when could you guys transform into that!?”

Gigan didn’t bother answering the largely useless question and instead focused his attention upon the fight, his scanners working overtime. It irked him to no end, but at this point he knew there was very little he, Megalon, or X could do to help Irys. This fight had become hers, and hers alone. If any of them tried to step in now, they’d just be putting themselves in unnecessary danger, and possibly just distract Irys. He wondered how she’d managed to transform into her true form at all, but the energy readings he was getting were about as nonsensical as usual. It was impossible to miss the Hollow-like qualities her form had gained, and he just hoped she had enough control of her faculties to recognize friend from foe right now.

The fact that she’d homed right in on Tempest Shadow was a good sign, at least.

For Tempest Shadow, she was equal parts humbled and exhilarated. There was no denying the power of the entity that was coming towards her in an avalanche of fury. Dozens of questions ran through her mind, but she dammed up that river immediately. She didn’t want a single iota of focus dedicated anywhere other than dealing with this new threat.

Summoning up her reserves of spiritual energy, the pressure flowing out of her increased and she coiled her legs beneath her. In her hands, Hagane-hei produced a swath of steel dust that expanded out from the blade and formed around it while also extended outward. The result was a weapon effectively fifteen meters long and ending in a long, hooked point. The Zanpaktou’s shaft extended as well, allowing for a firmer two-handed grip. For all intents and purposes, the cleaver was now shaped more like the world’s largest harpoon married to that of an oversized greatsword. 

She could have used her Shikai’s power to make the weapon larger, but extending Hagane-hei too far or into too many different components started to have rapidly diminishing returns on the weapon’s durability and cutting power. This was the largest she could make it without sacrificing the stability of the reiatsu she could pump through it or making it too brittle to survive use. The unwieldy shape and size was irrelevant. All Soul Reapers had an innate connection to their Zanpaktou that let them use them efficiently regardless of shape or size. Even this big, Hagane-hei felt light in Tempest Shadow’s hands, the living weapon exuding eagerness to test itself against such a powerful foe.

Then with speed that cratered the ground beneath her, Tempest Shadow shot up into the air straight towards the oncoming Irys, bringing her blade to bear in a swing clearly meant to meet Irys’ attack head-on. Irys let forth a piercing roar of challenge, her body practically distorting as it went even faster towards Tempest Shadow.

When the two met it was almost impossible to see clearly what happened, such was the combined speed the pair clashed with. At the very last instant Irys angled her attack to bring her left wing to bear, using the newly formed, edged bone armor along the wing’s upper portion to ram Tempest Shadow. In turn Tempest slammed her sword into the wing, as if intending to try severing the entire gigantic limb clean off.

A sonic boom of sound and force exploded from the pair, and something went flying with momentous force at a downward angle to slam into the ground. It was Tempest Shadow, her body and sword both sent flying by the combined weight and momentum Irys packed in her titanic form. The Soul Reaper hit the ground and the land erupted in a fissure of flying sand as Tempest’s body dug a furrow several hundred meters long before she finally skidded to a stop.

Meanwhile Irys angled upward, then made a sharp bank to the left, her eyes locked on the impact zone to observe her foe. Her left wing didn’t come out of the clash entirely undamaged, a deep cut raking it at the point of impact, but the wound didn’t impede Irys’ flight.

She saw Tempest Shadow stand up, battered but still very much alive, and Irys let out a furious bellow, turning and snapping her wings out with several rapid flaps that put her into a momentary hover. Once more her maw gleamed with both sanguine and deadly purple light as energy gathered there. Meanwhile Tempest Shadow was aching from head to toe from the impact of the hit she’d just taken. Her legs felt numb, and she was fairly certain a couple of ribs were cracked from that last blow. Shaking her head to clear the proverbial cotton from it, she sensed the built up of power from Irys and swiftly reacted, swinging Hagane-hei around.

In less than a second the giant sword/harpoon reformed into the shape of a thick, layered, circular shield, just a moment before Irys fired another “Sonic Cero”. The beam impacted with the shield with earth splitting force; quite literally, as the ground was ripped apart in two wide fissures that extended to either side of the shield as it split the beam.

While holding, the shield’s metal bubbled and distorted, parts of it flaking off in layers. Tempest Shadow had formed it into scale-like layers specifically to help it bleed off the energy of the beam, but even she was shocked at just how close the beam came to penetrating all the way through. By the time the Sonic Cero petered out, the shield was a partially melted, misshapen mass, smoking and glowing red from the heat. A pair of glass fissures several football fields long extended to either side of her, and Tempest Shadow shook her head in wonderment.

This ‘girl’ was displaying ability that would outdo more than a few Captains she’d known back in her day. Tempest pulled the real Hagane-hei out of the mass of distorted metal the shield had once been, the extra metal created by her Shikai returning to a dust form that billowed away in the wind from Irys’ wings. Tempest held up Hagane-hei’s cleaver shape in front of her, saying under her breath, “Well partner, it looks like I’m going to need all of your power for this one. Who’d have thought we’d run into someone this strong before we faced Tirek again?”

Irys was coming at her again, swooping down like the world’s largest bird of prey about to snatch a helpless rabbit.

Only this rabbit had one more card to play, and all it took was one word to play it.

“...Bankai.”

With the sound of a thousand claps of thunder, the ground beneath Tempest Shadow’s feet rumbled and heaved, then rose upward in a humongous surge of rock. It was as if the cliff face sheared from an enormous mountain just exploded upwards from Hueco Mundo’s sands, rising into the sky with Tempest Shadow riding atop it. Irys, surprised by the sudden emergence, took a sharp turn away, taking a moment to assess what she was seeing. Her mind was still in turmoil, her conscious self battling with a wave of unnatural anger and hate that didn’t feel at all like her own, but combined with her very real aggression towards Tempest Shadow and pushed her to abandon caution and just attack, kill, devour! 

Yet she knew something was here now to be cautious of. Still, Tempest Shadow just stood atop this newly formed cliff of dark, iron rich stone and looked at Irys expectantly. It incensed Irys just enough to make her throw caution to the wind and descend once more onto the attack. She didn’t quite notice the oddity of the fact that Tempest was no longer holding her Zanpaktou in her hands.

The moment Irys was close enough that she could almost reach out with her jaws to snap up Tempest Shadow, the cliff-face exploded outward in a shower of massive rocks. A hand of near black metal armor shot out of the cliff, its fist striking Irys across the face. The hammer blow caught her almost completely off guard, and Irys spun around, struggling to control herself so that rather than crash, she made a haphazard landing on the sands, her bell rung, her jaw bleeding, but otherwise unharmed.

The other Dark Hunters were watching this unfold from the relative cover of the distant ridge. Gigan’s scanners were going so haywire with energy readings that’d he shut half of them down with a disgusted grunt. Magic and other weird powers like this that defied common science and physics really irked him to no end. X didn’t look any more pleased, having reverted to his normal state to conserve energy. He gave Di Roy a sharp glance, “What is that?”

Still clutching the hole in his stomach, Di Roy managed to say, “That’s why I was browning my pants earlier. Soul Reaper Captains, their fancy swords got two stages of release. We were just fighting the first stage before. Your friend there, she’s about to go toe-to-toe with the second stage. Bankai, they call it.” 

“Stupid name,” Gigan said, then turned to X, “Boss, are we really going to just leave this to Irys?”

“If I thought there was anything we could do other than get in the way, I’d take us in without hesitation. This fight’s moved beyond our scale,” X said, although his tone, as pushed towards level calm as it was, still held an undercurrent of frustration that Gigan knew the man well enough to hear. Gigan knew exactly how X felt. Much as any of them might want to go help Irys, it would be just as foolish as if they decided to jump into a fight against the likes of a full sized Godzilla while they were still in human form. 

More rock was torn out of the cliff, which began to crumble as something colossal emerged from it with thunderous steps. Dark iron boots stomped as pillars of sand blasted upwards with each step. Thick shoulders had trailing lines of rock dust clinging to them as they emerged under the Hueco Mundo sky. Altogether near a hundred meters tall, what now stood upon the desert was a gigantic suit of armor, missing only a helmet. Tempest Shadow hopped down from the now crumbling cliff to land upon the upper edge of the headless suit of armor’s gorget. As if welcoming her, metal rose in liquid rivers from a triangular platform extending slightly outward from the top of the gorget, as wide as a stage. This liquid metal flowed up over her body, while she in turn intoned the name of her Zanpaktou’s Bankai. 

“Oniyama Hagane-hei.” (Steel Soldier of the Demon Mountain)

Tempest Shadow’s Bankai resembled nothing more than a towering suit of armor, its construction a stylistic mish-mash of traditional samurai armor and more western plate mail, with added flares of large, curved spikes upon the shoulders and elbows that gave it a distinct “oni” feel that was emphasized by the faint purple aura that surrounded it. The monolithic suit of armor bore a to-scale version of Hagane-hei’s cleaver shape, the now massive weapon held easily in the armor’s right fist. 

As the liquid metal finished moving over Tempest Shadow, she now stood with identical armor on her own body, holding the normal sized cleaver in her hand... and as she raised it, the now kaiju-sized suit of armor that was Oniyama Hagane-hei followed suit.

Irys reacted immediately to the threat, letting out a loud howl of challenge as she hurled herself into the air once more. She just barely evaded the towering blade that sliced down where she’d just been, the impact of the sword cleaving a wide swath of sand and geysering rivers of it into the air. Irys climbed higher, looking to angle for another dive bomb, but felt the raw air pressure shift as the entirety of the huge metal armor suit jumped into the air as well. While not technically able to ‘fly’, Tempest Shadow could put more than enough physical power into her Bankai to make leaps of great height. She couldn’t walk it on air like she could with her own body. The spirit particles weren’t dense enough to carry the armor’s weight. Regardless, she was still able to get enough height to reach Irys, swinging her blade while her Bankai mimicked the motion.

Irys flipped into a sharp barrel roll. The cleaver still cut a shallow line across her back, but her raw kaiju toughness, combined with a little extra durability from the segments of bone armor covering her spine, made the hit little more than a flesh wound. Still, she let out a roar of equal parts pain and rage as she briefly rolled onto her back and aimed her head dock her chest and towards the giant suit of armor. A scathing Sonic Cero lanced out, and Tempest Shadow raised her left arm. Oniyama Hagane-hei raised its own left arm, and the metal of the armor’s bracer caught the beam. It still impacted with deadly cutting power and heat, splitting upon the bracer and leaving a smoking cut across it. The cut mimicked itself upon the armor Tempest Shadow wore, and even drew a spurt of blood.

Injuries her Bankai took were reflected, in reduced form, upon her own body, and she shot Irys an impressed look.

She can even inflict damage on my Bankai. What a beast. I hope I can take her alive.

The apex of her leap reached, the Bankai began to fall back to the ground, but not before Tempest Shadow pulled back her sword and slashed it forward, utilizing a new aspect of her power only usable with her Bankai. 

Normally Hagane-hei could only extend metal out from itself in various shapes, but the shapes still had to be attached to the main blade itself. That was no longer a limitation with Oniyama Hagane-hei. With a swing of the behemoth cleaver, metallic shards were whipped from it in a flechette-like storm, each shard anywhere from four to five meters long and sent flying with prodigious might. The shards filled the air around Irys like a hail of kaiju-sized kunai, and while she was able to evade some with a swift climb, others dug into her hide at various spots. None sunk in deep, but each drew a little blood and stung fiercely.

Tempest Shadow and her Bankai hit the ground like a comet, needing to take a moment to absorb the impact of landing and regain their stance. Irys took advantage of the moment to dive down, then swiftly swoop overhead. Black smoke, thick and coiling, billowed out from her wings and within a split second Tempest was surrounded again by an impenetrable cloud of darkness.

“This trick again? It’s a good one, I’ll give you that,” Tempest said, not bothering to try and find Irys through the oily fog. Instead she cocked her head to listen, and stretched out with her spiritual senses. It was easier to sense Irys now due to how much power she exuded, some of it unmistakably Hollow energy, which Tempest Shadow was intimately familiar with.

She heard the rush of air to her left, and the spike of rising energy, and she turned her blade in that direction. Her Bankai followed suit, raising its cleaver and then thrusting it forward. Metal shot forward as the Zanpaktou extended several titanic spear shafts through the fog, but rather than strike flesh, they only moved through empty air. The force of the blow itself was still enough to clear part of the fog, and Tempest Shadow narrowed her eyes at seeing nothing there.

But I just sensed her there. Where-?

Irys burst out of the fog from the opposite side, barreling straight into the back of Tempest’s Bankai with all twenty seven thousand tons of weight behind her. Irys may have not been entirely in her right mind, with Hollow energy coursing through her, making her more aggressive, but she was still herself and still quite a crafty and intelligent fighter. She knew Tempest could sense her energy, so she’d intentionally raised her energy as if about to use a sonic beam, then immediately canceled it out and made a tight circle around her opponent. As she’d hoped, her blind foe had targeted the spot where the energy build up had been, and was momentarily taken off guard when it turned out Irys wasn’t there, but had already circled around to attack from behind.

Irys dug her claws into the back of the humongous suit of armor, talons scraping and ripping at the metal in a rain of sparks. Oniyama Hagane-hei staggered forward out of the vanishing cloud of fog, almost losing its balance. Identical claw marks appeared on Tempest Shadow’s back, but not quite deep enough to draw much blood. Irys hit hard, but this Bankai was utilizing the full measure of Tempest Shadow’s spiritual pressure, and it was far stronger and tougher than anything made out of mere metal could possibly be. Much as if she’d tried tackling and clawing at the back of a certain King of the Monsters, Irys’ ambush was able to score some wounds, but hardly fell her foe.

And the second Tempest recovered, she went on the counterattack. Curved blades like spines erupted out of the back of the armored suit, and Irys had to leap back to avoid being skewered. Then the entire Bankai spun with incredible speed, breaking the sound barrier with its sword a Tempest Shadow swung back-handed at Irys. 

Irys spread her wings and let out a sonic cry as she formed vibrating sound into a solid barrier between her wings that covered her entire front. The cleaver blade impacted with the sonic barrier with earth shattering force, but the barrier held. Irys still felt some impact tremble through her body as the sheer momentum of the blow sent her flying backwards. She managed to maintain some semblance of balance, using her wings to stabilize herself as her foot talons hit the ground and she skidded across the desert, slowly coming to a halt several city blocks distant from Tempest and her towering Bankai.

Tempest didn’t give Irys any moment to breath, the ground shaking for miles as Oniyama Hagane-hei came charging in with surprising speed for something so large. Iyrs tried to take to the air, but Tempest, despite still being out of melee range, made an upward strike with her blade. A spade-shaped hunk of metal came flying out, attached at the end by giant chains. Irys had to dive right back down to avoid the sudden emergence of the chain blade, then immediately erect another sonic barrier as Tempest spun the chain around and sent the heavy spade head crashing towards Irys.

Her barrier took that blow with relative ease, and not intending to just be stuck on the defensive, Irys lowered her head and tried something a little different with her sonic rays, sucking in the energy, but letting it out not in a continuous stream but in several quick-fire pulses. It was harder than she expected, but she maintained her aim and clustered the rapid succession of beam shots towards the chest of the hundred meter dullahan that was barreling towards her.

Tempest discarded the chain blade extension and instead shaped her sword into something akin to a huge warfan, spinning it in front of her. She managed to deflect several of the sonic pulse-rays in this fashion, but several still got through, burning holes in the chest and shoulders of the armor, or deflecting at angles that struck the armor’s legs. Tempest grunted at the pain from several of these wounds, mimicked in lighter form, appeared upon her own body, but she came on regardless, building more momentum as she shifted the warfan back into a cleaver and brought it up for a two-handed overhead chop.

Irys flung her wings out, her barrier coming up once more. The cleaver descended like a sharp-edged skyscraper, smashing into the barrier with so much force that a indent over a kilometer wide spread out from the point of impact where the two titans stood. Every bone in Irys’ body rattled under the blow, yet miraculously her sonic barrier held up. Still, she was dazed, and to her shock Tempest just had her Bankai raise its mountainous sword for another blow.

Knowing her barrier couldn’t stand up to a second hit, Irys made a desperate move, deactivating her barrier and plunging herself forward. Her mouth opened and in a flash chomped towards Tempest Shadow herself. Tempest reacted swiftly, twisting her body so the giant suit of armor turned it’s spiked shoulder towards Irys. Irys’ mouth bite hard onto the armor’s neck joint, but her left wing was impaled by the armor’s shoulder spike in return. Blood burst forth from both combatants as Tempest Shadow’s shoulder and neck gained a bite wound, while Irys’ torn wing leaked stark red blood. 

Irys stubbornly kept her mouth clamped in place, ignoring the pain. Tempest grit her teeth, sweating and bleeding as she hammered the pommel of her sword down onto the back of Irys’ head. Like a pit-bull refusing the let go, Irys shook her head and tried to tear the gap in the armor wider, while scratching at the armor’s belly with her foot talons. She couldn’t quite get a good enough hold to leverage a deeper wound, and Tempest kept smacking her with her sword, and bringing her armors knees up to smash into Irys’ chest.

Irys started to charge another Sonic Cero, intending to firing it point blank into the gouge she’d opened in the armor. However at the same time, Tempest produced a truly staggering amount of gigantic chains from her sword which wrapped around Irys and brutally yanked the kaiju off of where she’d been stuck on the shoulder spike.

Irys was flipped backwards, her Sonic Cero firing into the sky harmlessly. She struggled as more and more chains, each one as thick as a school bus, flew out of Oniyama Hagane-hei’s sword and began pinning her limbs to her side. Other chains wrapped around her mouth, cinching it shut. In a few moments Irys was stuck laying on the sands, almost entirely wrapped in the chains, unable to move. Yet even then she utterly refused to give up, using all her strength to slowly force her jaws open, despite the chains, aiming her mouth towards Tempest Shadow now standing high above her as she tried to charge up one last beam.

Tempest Shadow herself was breathing hard, her right side covered in blood as she held her wounded shoulder closed with her left hand. She looked down at Irys with obvious respect firmly planted in her expression. Even injured as she was, she could still move her sword, and raised it to block the beam, only Irys didn’t fire immediately, for Tempest Shadow wasn’t her target. Instead she lowered her aim at the last moment and raked the beam across the chains where they were connected to the Zanpaktou itself, severing them like a blowtorch.

As the chains went slack, Irys rolled across the ground, a somewhat awkward motion, but it was enough to throw many of the heavy chains off of her body. 

“Oh, clever girl,” Tempest complimented, looking at Irys as the kaiju rose to her feet, breathing as heavily as Tempest was, “You’ve given me far more fight than I could have hoped for, but you’re looking just about done over there. Then again, I’m not exactly in top condition either, am I? What do you say we end this with the next strike? I don’t think either of us want to prolong this any further...”

Irys could understand the words, even if she couldn’t verbally respond beyond giving a sharp roar, rearing up to her fully ninety meter height. It was as close to a ‘Fine by me!’ that she could give. Even through Irys was limited on what she could throw as a final attack. She could feel the power she’d absorbed to transform into her kaiju body was now running dangerously low, but she sensed she had enough for one more sonic beam. With her left wing as torn up as it was, she couldn’t get airborne to angle for a better shot, so she was essentially stuck matching whatever Tempest could throw in a head-on, one strike duel. 

Not an ideal situation, but Irys did have one last idea, although whether it would work was a total coin toss. But she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to try every trick she could think of to beat this woman!

Tempest Shadow saw Irys’ body light up, multiple curved symbols appearing across Irys’ form in alternating flashes of red and purple. Motes of energy started to collect towards Irys’ maw as she dredged up every last scrap of internal power she could muster for what was to come. Tempest nodded her approval, and shifted her Bankai’s stance, the giant armor turning to its side and widening the stance of its feet. She then brought her sword towards her hip, where the cleaver blade started to shift form, the metal of it flaking off until the cleaver became more the shape of a normal katana. The metal that flaked off the blade floated to the armor’s hip to take the shape of a large metal sheath, which Tempest used to sheath the katana. She then used one hand to grip the sheath, while the other rested lightly atop the pommel of the katana. Though Irys might not have recognized it, this was a classic Japanese iajutsu stance. The smoke-like white aura of Tempest’s reiatsu began to pool into the sheath, wreathing the blade within. Similarly, Irys’ power reached a peak, the light within her mouth flaring brightly. 

Both of them were ready, and were betting the outcome of the battle on the next few seconds.

For a moment a deathly silence hung over the two, then Tempest Shadow invoked the name of her final technique.

”Akiyama Mikazuki!” (Autumn Mountain Crescent Moon)

In a single, flashing motion, she drew her sword, and the mountain of armor followed the motion, tearing free it’s katna from its sheath in a sudden strike of raw spiritual energy and deadly cutting wind pressure. The blow was further enhanced by the fact that hundreds of tiny shards of metal flew out with the white crescent of energy, each shard solidifying and empowering the cutting power of the wave. It flew out in a left to right diagonal, flying straight for Irys.

At the same time, Irys had spread her wings, ignoring the pain in her ripped left wing. She threw her head forward, a circular shockwave blasting from around her mouth from the shear power and force of the final Sonic Cero she was firing, noticeably larger than her previous ones. Within the very same instant, she formed a sonic barrier in front of her, yet this time she tried something she’d rarely considered before. She modulated the barrier so that a hole was opened up in it, just wide enough for her beam to cross through. A simultaneous attack and defense. 

The two attacks met an an angle halfway between the pair, the Sonic Cero rippling across the crescent energy wave of the Akiyama Mikazuki. The clash altered the trajectory of both attacks slightly. The Sonic Cero veered to the right, and pierced straight through Oniyama Hagane-hei’s left shoulder, melting through the armor and blasting out the other side to continue on for miles through the Hueco Mundo dester. Blood showered out of the wound that appeared on Tempest Shadow and she let out her first real yell of pain that wasn’t a mere controlled grunt. This time she actually did fall down to one knee, her Bankai following the motion to crash down to one of its knees.

Tempest looked up to see what had become of Irys, and saw the kaiju standing there, right where she’d been.

It took a second or two for the wound to actually appear across Irys’ chest, spurting a curtain of blood. 

The crescent of energy from Tempest’s attack had been slowed by its contact with the Sonic Cero, and when it had struck the sonic barrier itself, it’s power had been further reduced. But it had still broken through the barrier, which was weakened by the simple fact that Irys had packed more punch into her beam. It was enough that, when the crescent had struck across her chest, it didn’t result in fatal damage. Yet it still cut a deep gash across the left third of Irys’ chest, from the middle of her stomach up to her left shoulder.

Under any other set of circumstances, Irys would be badly wounded, but still able to fight. But she’d thrown all of her remaining energy into that last attack, and even as she tried to take a staggering step forward to resume the fight, she felt her entire body lurch and start to go numb.

No! Damn it body, don’t quit on me like this! I need to win... I need to protect my flock...!

Valiant as her spirit was, her body was simply out of gas, and whatever boost she’d gained from absorbing energy from Hueco Mundo itself had also played out, as if her body’s ability to even absorb that energy had become overtaxed. She still got several more steps towards Tempest Shadow before the numbness overtook her mind as well as her body, and Irys lost consciousness, falling into deep, gray sleep.

Tempest saw the titanic kaju start to fall forward. Irys’ body glowed almost entirely red as the massive form of her true self began to revert back to the shape of a young, pale human girl, now falling from dozens of meters in the air. Yet before she could fall far, Tempest Shadow moved her Bankai forward, face twisting in pain from having to move so fast after taking so many grievous wounds. She held out her Bankai’s armored hand and caught Irys, then lifted that hand up towards the top of the armor.

Tempest Shadow leaped from the gorget and onto the hand. Her Bankai would move its swiftest and most accurate when controlled by her own motions, but she was capable of commanding it mentally as well. It was just much slower and less efficient to use it that way in battle. As she landed on the hand she winced again, sucking in deep breaths as she looked at herself. She could barely even move her arms, with her right shoulder torn by Irys’ earlier bite, and her left with a hole in it from that final beam. She was sporting numerous smaller wounds, dozens of claw marks and bruises that all bled. Between this, and the scuffle with the others of Irys’ group, Tempest Shadow was more wounded and taxed than she’d been since that fateful battle so many centuries ago.

She shook her head in wonderment, then knelt next to Irys. The girl looked like a mess, most of the wounds she’d taken in kaiju form now mirrored on her human body. Tempest quickly checked the girl’s pulse, and let out a small sigh of relief when she found one. While she’d been willing to take this fight to the death if that’s what it took, she honestly had no interest in killing any of these people. Having seen them fight, she was convinced she wanted them in her army. Whatever they might say to deny it now, she was willing to take the time to try and convince them. Besides, the Storm King had ordered her to keep an eye out for talented people to recruit. And failing that, he’d also told her to keep an eye out for any sources of power that might be useful for them. If nothing else, this girl had demonstrated power of a level equal to many Espada or Captain-class Soul Reapers. The Storm King would want to examine her, and likely her companions as well.

“Which won’t happen if you bleed out, so let’s get this bandaged,” Tempest said, removing the white coat of her Captain’s hiyori. She sighed looking at it. Tattered to all hell and back, and it was the only garment useful for binding these wounds. Oh well, she’d see if it could be cleaned and patched later. She knew how to make battlefield dressing, and did her best to bind her Captain coat around the worst of Irys’ injury, then carefully lifted the girl up. Tempest was a tad surprised at how little she weighed. 

Heh, the great and mighty Tempest Shadow, once Captain of Soul Society’s strongest combat division, and one-time holder of the title ‘Kenpachi’, and I was nearly defeated by a girl who weighs as much as a pair of wet chopsticks...

Yet there was no rancor or grudge in her thoughts. The fight had been a fair one, and if she’d gotten pushed harder than she’d imagined she would, then that just meant her opponents had been worthy ones. She wasn’t even particularly angry about the loss of the Hollows under her command. She did make a point of fostering a sense of comradery among the Hollows she trained for the Storm King’s army, and cared deeply for the Arrancar girls she’d adopted, Yin and Yang. She even somewhat liked Grubber, though telling him as much was something she’d never do. But she couldn’t fault fair losses in a battle that her side technically started, although she felt entirely justified in her reasoning for stepping in when she had. 

And beyond that, she still had a job to do, and duties to her liege to fulfill. This battle hadn’t been personal, although she’d personally enjoyed the unexpected challenge.

Now to have another chat with this girls’ comrades.