Episode 199: Serenity, Wrath, Resolve
Episode 199: Serenity, Wrath, Resolve
Although many of Guto’s loyal warriors had gotten distance from the arena due to Gilda’s caustic display of power that melted away much of the coliseum's seating and surroundings, the flock of curious Arrancar didn’t go far. They hung around the lip of the melted hole in the earth or at the relatively unscathed underground entries to what had once been the arena. None wanted to miss a chance to watch their Espada fight, and many more were curious to see the human girls of this “Coalition” that had been the gossip of Las Noches since the explosive duel with Tirek no more than a day earlier.
Neither Fluttershy or Pinkie Pie seemed to mind having an audience, their attention fully fixed on Guto and Hydia standing before them. Behind the two girls, Gilda could still barely stand due to her wounds from battling Greta, but she edged closer to Greta regardless, who herself could no longer even move. Greta gave Gilda a confused and curled grimace as the other woman scooped her up and slung her arm over Gilda’s broad shoulders.
“Put me down,” Greta said with a voice weary and strained.
“Make me,” Gilda replied flatly, then with what little strength she had left she leaped up towards the top of the melted hole. Guto saw this with a snarling twitch and moved to intercept them.
“I have not given you leave to depart, you failures!” his Zanpaktou cut a curving path at Gilda’s unprotected back.
Then a firm, pale yellow hand held his wrist and stopped the blow dead in its tracks, the force of the strike being halted creating a shockwave of air pressure to explode outward. Gilda kept going, barely landing atop the hole with Greta still slung over her shoulder. She then turned back to look down, seeing that Fluttershy was standing on the air beside Guto, one dainty hand wrapped firmly around the Seventh Espada’s sword wrist.
Guto’s eyes held a momentary shock that soon burned away into rage as she yanked his hand back. Fluttershy let go, face placid as Guto leveled his Zanpaktou at her, “I have absolutely had it with your interference. I’ll be putting you in chains right beside my pet Quincy by the end of this day, mark my words.”
Fluttershy calmly turned towards him and held her six arms in a relaxed, meditative pose, her eyes betraying nothing but a smooth lake of awareness. “The only chains are the ones you’ve placed on yourself, and the more you try to control those around you, the more those chains weigh you down. I know you don’t have ears to listen, so I’ll show you with the violence you prefer. Smooze?”
Rather to Gilda’s surprise, Smooze was already up top with her, as if he simply appeared next to her and Greata. “Yes, my lady?”
“Protect Gilda and Greta until this is over.”
“As you wish, Lady Fluttershy. ^_^” Smooze said, his digital faceplate smiling as he bowed.
Guto still wore a sneering expression, eyeing Smooze, Gilda, and Greta was if still trying to calculate if he could manage to kill them with Fluttershy in the way. His eyes then also shifted to his tower, his voice snapping in barked command towards his warriors, “While I deal with this human whelp, the rest of you secure our tower! Gilda’s foolish technique has damaged it and all of my wards are going off. Sweep the area and ensure my Quincy is still where she’s supposed to be!”
The gathering of Arrancar all swiftly hoped to his orders, most rushing into the tower’s ground floor to start searching it floor by floor. Fluttershy kept her expression neutral, silently hoping Twilight and her Quincy friends were getting Fleur out safely even at that moment, but there was no way to check, not with Guto right in front of her, reiatsu spiking high as he readied himself to attack. When he did, Fluttershy was ready for it. She’d been carefully observing his posture for the minute traces of tension that would tell her when and how he’d move. When he came at her with a maiming vertical slash at her left shoulder, clearly meant to take her left set of arms clean off, she was already stepping into his attack and spinning her body to the left, angling herself just short of his attack’s arc while ramming her right set of three elbows into his gut.
His Heirro was not weak, absorbing a great deal of the significant impact that sent him flying up at an angle and out of the hole. Fluttershy pursued, sending energy from herself and into Guto, having established a link for her Fullbring’s power to flow into him from the moment her hand had touched his wrist earlier.
In mid air Guto twirled his body around and aimed a palm at her, generating a circle of six points of arcing golden energy that then exploded into a stream of incredibly fast firing Bala bullets. Yet Fluttershy flickered a thought of her power’s influence into his arm and caused him to yank his aim well off center, and the destructive stream of reishi bullets tore a path of explosions along a long line of Las Noche’s desert instead.
“What!?” Guto blurted, eyes boggling at his own hand as if it had betrayed him.
His surprise afforded Fluttershy plenty of time to streak in a lightning motion of Bringer Light to appear above him and with aching grace she raised her right leg up almost straight over her head in a rather limber motion, then smashed down her heel with such force that even when Guto blocked it with his Zanpaktou the impact broke the sound barrier and sent him smashing to the ground with a skidding landing that left him tumbling for several dozen yards before he dug his heels into the sand to stop himself.
“You’re not used to it, not being in control,” Fluttershy said, her voice soft yet cold, like a snowdrift as she landed a few paces from him, “You’ve taken it from so many others you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be on the receiving end.”
Guto’s face bore an unbridled look of scornful anger as he stood to his full height, which did tower a head or so above Fluttershy’s slight form, and he exploded forward with renewed speed and fury. Air tore as he lashed a string of slashes at her, generating a storm of sand with the whirlwind of expert strikes that would have torn a lesser opponent open in dozens of places at once. Yet Fluttershy navigated that storm of steel like a streaming creek flowing downriver, her body shifting and bending in small ways that wasted no motion. She was not unharmed, small cuts finding her flesh, cutting the fine silk of her Fullbring’s elegant robes, yet despite these shallow wounds, Guto could gain no deeper score. It was like trying to cut water. Even in striking it, it parted, leaving no trace of one’s furious efforts in the rolling waves.
Changing tactics on a dime, Guto flung himself upward, lips still curled in a chiding sneer, “You know nothing about me or what I do, girl! And your manipulative tricks won’t save you forever.”
Points of golden light flowed into being around him, a multitude of them that multiplied as he soared upwards. Then with a flick of his blade, the points of gold light spread out and swarmed like locust, surrounding Fluttershy in a dome before bursting into streams of Bala shots. There were so many being fired at once from so many individual points that it was as if a literal blizzard of light was converging on Fluttershy, each one a reishi bullet containing enough force to puncture a fortified bunker and faster than lightning.
Guto felt confident that this barrage of thousands of Bala would, at the very least, severely wound the arrogant brat he was fighting. He didn’t want her dead, of course, because this willful girl was, to him, another object to add to his collection. Like Fleur De Lis before her, Fluttershy would serve as an example of his own power and the value of owning and training humankind to serve their Hollow betters. Lord Tirek would surely see that Guto’s way of doing things was the correct way with one of these magical girls serving in chains...
He frowned. There should have been a cacophonous series of detonations as his Balas struck. Even if Fluttershy had used her remarkably skillful dodging techniques to evade some, the impacts still should have been rocking the Las Noches sands. So why...?
His eyes boggled wide, mouth hanging open. “Ridiculous.”
Gold light, but not from his own reishi, was radiating across the sands. The light stemmed not only from the immense and beautiful sunburst halo that hung behind Fluttershy’s back and framed her head in golden rays, but from the hundreds of luminous arms of gold light that bloomed from that halo and spread around her like a glorious flower. Between them any fingers of these hundreds of hands were clasped Bala after Bala, the entire swarm of thousands of reishi bullets, all caught simultaneously by the wreath of hundreds of Fluttershy’s golden hands.
Guto could barely grasp how the girl could have reacted so fast as to accomplish the feat, and with a shuddering breath he felt her spiritual pressure flow out of her like a calm ocean of pure serenity.
With a surprising ease and gentleness did Fluttershy take the reishi from Guto’s Bala and scattered them, her golden fingers pinching away the Bala one at a time like a child popping bubbles. The wreath of many hundreds of golden hands shrank back into her halo, which remained as a golden aura behind Fluttershy as she looked up at Guto, “Your reiatsu feels awful, like boiling tar. Can you really not see how damaging your own actions are to yourself? Every person you try to make lesser than you only ends up making you all the smaller, weaker, and alone.”
“Spit all the prattle you wish, I will still be the one to make you kneel in the end,” Guto declared with a near manic laugh as he drew back his Zanpaktou, the blade of which began to glow with pale yellow light, “I’ll grant that you are stronger than I expected. But if this is the extent of what you can do, then don’t be so proud of yourself, child! Not until you’ve faced an Espada at their full power! Plunder their corpses; Conquistador!”
He was engulfed in the swirling vortex of near liquid gold energy that poured from his blade and body. As his spiritual pressure crashed outward from the process of assuming his Resurreccion form, back in the remains of the arena Hydia bounced her poker Zanpaktou on her shoulder and let out a whistle.
“Whew, your gal pal has really lit a fire under ol’ Guto’s tush,” Hydia said to Pinkie, “Didn’t think he’d release his Zanpaktou so quick, but sounds like the walking stick of butter seriously prodded his every ego-driven button. Hahaha, kinda sad we’re missing the show.”
Pinkie laughed with casual merriment and all but bounced on her feet, mimicking Hydia’s actions with her hammer, rocking it on her shoulder while facing off with the present Eighth Espada, “Hey, I’m all for grabbing some seats to spectate. Shy’s a treat to watch fight! All smooth and graceful, like watching taffy get made.”
“Heh, much as it’d be fun to watch Guto get humbled, I ain’t in the business of sitting on my own prodigious posterior while my co-workers are on the clock,” Hydia said, and made a disgusting sound in the back of her throat as she rubbed her palms together, then spat up a thick glob of saliva that was faintly tinted purple into her hands. Rubbing the saliva together she then ran it over her Zanpaktou, and Pinkie noticed the weapon began to smoke and sizzled with a faint purple smoke.
“So let’s get right to it, eh, candy girl?”
Pinkie Pie hadn’t known precisely what to expect from Hydia. Which was fine by her. Pinkie wasn’t really a “detail oriented” kind of person. But she wasn’t quite the same girl who’d first broken off a piece of her own mind to form her Fullbring all those months ago. Even as Hydia moved in a bulbous bounce of breakneck speed, the razor mind of violent focus that was Pinkamena combined with the intuitive flow of pure chaos information that was Pinkie Pie, and she saw clearly Hydia’s motions.
The Espada was shockingly agile for her rotund form, spinning like an expertly kicked soccer ball at Pinkie, a large whiff of burning purple smoke trailing her like a long cloak. Where that smoke touched stone, it melted and stained purple, even faster and more viscous than what Gilda’s acid had done to it. Pinkie coiled her legs, feeling them all but turn into springs as she bounced away from Hydia’s smashing blow, the hot poker Zanpaktou the big woman wielded ripping apart the ground where Pinkie had stood. Then more deadly violet fumes spewed from the saliva coating the weapon, chasing Pinkie’s jester motley and almost sizzling one of the bells.
“Wowie zowie, that’s some some serious sewer breath you’ve got, lady!” Pinkie Pie said, and her leap took her to the wall where she landed sideways and spun her hammer around in a powerful swing, “How about swirling some mouthwash in there to freshen things up!”
Her swing smacked a giant bottle of Listerine that suddenly appeared and knocked it like a supersonic baseball right at Hydia, who tilted her neckless head curiously at the comically oversized bottle of mouthwash that crashed into her like a literal wrecking ball. Hydia took the blow on her belly, letting out a deep laugh as she was driven back a few dozen feet and then with a thrust of her stomach she sent the bottle flying skyward.
“Hah, gonna need a lot more mint flavor than what you got in that bottle to degrade my poison, girlie!” Hydia said, then her whole body got soaked in Listerine green as the upended bottle managed to somehow lose its cap and dump its full contents right on Hydia’s head. “Gah! No! Not a refreshing mint flavor! My gingivitis!”
“You shall not oppose my proper dental care, foul fiend!” Pinkie said, diving at Hydia as her hammer transmuted into a twelve foot long, mechanical toothbrush with bristles like giant spears. Pinkie’s hands flipped the switch and the unnecessarily large toothbrush began to vibrate like a high frequency blade as she began to swing it in a spinning arch at Hydia, who with equally ridiculous poise held her poker Zanpaktou like a fencing foil and began to rapidly parry Pinkie’s toothbrush while being pushed back.
“I reject your standards of hygiene and replace them with my own, pink menace!” Hydia declared, shockwaves of force blasting out from each clash of her Zanpaktou with Pinkie’s hammer turned brush. Then, spewing from Hydia’s armpits like a disgusting fog, was a blast of thick purple gas. Pinkie immediately knew the danger she was in and with pure comedic timing whipped out a big white sign from behind her back that read in big red liters “Yikes!” and then used said sign to begin fanning the air, generating an incredibly large amount of wind to keep the gas away from her in a great big swirl.
This wouldn’t keep the gas at bay for long, and one didn’t need to be a genius to tell how poisonous the fumes were. Pinkie jumped straight up before the gas could envelop her. With a spin of her weapon the giant toothbrush turned back into a hammer, only the front half of it opened up like a toy mallet and a ridiculous contraption of multiple giant fans appeared and proceeded to blast the ground, billowing away the gas exuding from Hydia.
“I’m not a judgy Mcjudgerson, really, but that’s some serious BO!” said Pinkie Pie, hanging in the air. Her jester mask shifted to the other side of her face, her exposed eye turning yellow as she grew a shark toothed grin, “Almost makes me not want to take a bite at all, but not about to let Fluttershy have all the fun here. Time to switch things up from comedy... to tragedy.”
All at once the ludicrously big assortment of fans that were attached together by pink mechanical arms suddenly shot back into the hammer’s face, which closed up. Pinkie Pie’s reiatsu shifted abruptly and with sudden, immense chilling focus as dark pink tendrils of energy flowed from the edges of her body’s outline. Each tendril grew mouths aplenty, like rows of eager saws, and Pinkie dropped to the ground. Tendrils grasped the floor like pulsating legs, Pinkie’s body suspended just above the ground as she faced Hydia with a lopsided grin of teeth.
Hydia looked momentarily concerned at the shift, and with a swing of her Zanpaktou, a thick and concentrated cloud of purple gas billowed forth, “Only tragedy I’m seeing here is that you crazy girls are still picking fights you can’t win. Don’t try to intimidate me with a few creepy smiles, candy girl! I literally flirt with monsters for fun. Nothing you got in your bag of tricks that’s gonna scare ol’ Hydia!”
As the gas cloud flowed like a dark wave at Pinkie Pie, she let out an intense titter that felt like claws tap dancing on frozen glass. “Hehehe, challenge accepted!”
The mass of sanguine pink tendrils before her roiled and combined in a hideous mass, expanding into a giant mouth of dripping, bladed teeth. This mouth opened wide to eat the advancing cloud of gas, as if the gas was being sucked into a void-like maw of emptiness. Hydia blinked, sure that her immensely deadly poison should have affected Pinkie even through those tendrils, for her poison was a lethal extension of her spiritual energy and would therefore degrade the reishi of an opponent’s abilities.
Yet Pinkie Pie’s reiatsu wasn’t degrading. If anything it was growing more pervasive and thick as Hydia noticed the light and color draining from the area around her. That mass of dark pink tendrils had become expansive and flowed with wet rippling noises and Hydia suddenly realized that with speed far exceeding what she’d expected, Pinkie’s reiatsu itself seemed to cover what was left of Guto’s arena. Things were dark, too dark. Hydia’s eyes couldn’t adjust to the shadow around her, and the air felt cold and dry. Hydia made more gas, enveloping herself in it in an almost protective gesture as she looked left and right, trying to spot Pinkie Pie in this ink black darkness.
What the hell had the girl just done? This wasn’t at all like the silly gags her hammer had produced before.
Giggles filled the air, not just one or two, but a chorus of mad voices that sent shivers down Hydia’s spine. Suddenly a spotlight clicked on and focused on Hydia, and she could see she was standing on what looked like... the dirt of a circus ring? More lights flicked on, neon pink and deep red, going up and down the spine of a tall circus tent bearing stripes in shades of blood red, cotton candy pink, and velvet black. The circus ring was encased in wreaths of pink metal razor wire and amid the dirt circle were dozens upon dozens of human sized butcher knives stabbed into the ground, gleaming red.
“Come one, come all, to witness the deadly delights of our harrowing phantasmagoria of painful plenty!”
A second spotlight lit up upon Pinkie Pie, standing above Hydia on a tightrope of thin wire crossing the circus tent, hammer in hand, but its long, spiked backside now dripped with pinkish liquid like blood as she swept it about to address the... crowd? Hydia looked to see that surrounding the circus’ ground floor was a set of bench stands packed full with dozens of Pinkie Pies! The Pinkies all cheered, jeered, and hollered, the sounds mixing together into an orchestra of frightful howls. The main Pinkie Pie’s face split with an inhumanly wide grin as she flipped off the tightrope and landed before Hydia, and the giant knives around her began to shudder as if coming to life, rising into the air around them.
“Hehehe, Laughter of Madness is a funny Fullbring, with me and Mena being the chocolate and strawberry swirl that makes up its delicious ice-creamy goodness. Buuuuut what you see isn’t always what you get! I bring the ha-ha, but now that me and Mena are on the same wavelength...”
She snapped her fingers, and the floating forest of giant knives all sprouted hideous pink eyes and their sharp ends split with thick toothed, metal mouths that all laughed and howled in horrid chorus as one. There was a sudden discordant string of maniacal circus music that piped through the air as bursts of fireworks in crimson colors exploded along the edge of the circus ring, revealing in their flashes of light that the crowd of Pinkie Pies were crawling forward on elongated limbs like hungry spiders, heads twisted at countless odd angles as mouths salivated off sharp teeth.
“We can bring the frights as much as the funnies! Welcome to my Fullbring’s other half; Circus of Terror.”
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An incredulous stillness followed Hard Nail’s simple yet violently blunt declaration. Catrina made a soft snorting sound, as if she could hardly believe the audacity of the threat, and she cast a glance back and forth between Hard Nail and Grogar as if trying to gauge the veracity of the danger based on Grogar’s own reaction. For Grogar’s part, his withered features contorted into a smile as frightfully wide to remind one of Pinkamena on a bad day.
“Ah, Hard Nail, being as melodramatic as ever I see-” Grogar had not gotten through half his sentence before there was a savage blur of motion that tore the space between him and Hard Nail, with Grogar’s eyes widening as he threw himself sideways from the cutting wrath that ripped a foot wide and deep hole that tore not only the ground, but the ceiling in one serving line that trailed all the way out the door. Despite his evasion, a ragged line tore down Grogar’s right shoulder and arm, dripping dark blood to the stone as he clutched the wound and looked around for Hard Nail, for the man had vanished from sight during the attack.
Catrina had been the only one who had fully followed Hard Nail’s motions, seeing the pale Espada slice and move a one, cutting with both blade and razor sharp pressure wave that probably would’ve taken Grogar’s arm off if he hadn’t at least instinctually sensed the danger.
“I’m not inclined to repeat myself,” Hard Nail’s voice came from behind Grogar, his body wreathed in a growing aura of noble darkness that was rimmed with a raw edge of rageful green, “I am here solely to protect my daughter and my friend. I don’t care what else is happening here or why you’re fighting. It ends now, either by your choice, or your death.”
Adagio had barely been able to track Hard Nail’s motions too, and more than that she felt that his reiatsu was filled with a pressure that felt at once strangely reminiscent of when she first met “the Lament”, yet resonating on a different level than what she’d known. Hard Nail had always been powerful and felt different from other Hollows, and after the incident with the Seed Adagio had largely chalked that up to Grogar’s blasted experiment, yet now she could sense that something was welling up inside Hard Nail. A Hollow power no less potent or dark, yet somehow purer, cleaner, more natural, like the strength of a river being let loose after the dam has been torn down.
Grogar was eyeing Hard Nail with a hand idly touching his wound, then, smiling with more of an angered edge, he said, “Idiot boy. You think embracing your Hollow nature will give you the strength to close the gap? You were only special because of me and my work! Now you’re nothing more than a nascent Espada pretending to power. Catrina, we’ve no more time to indulge this farce; end it.”
Catrina, however, was studying Hard Nail with interest, her war fan snapping open and shut several times as she toyed with the weapon, eyes locked on him, “Grogar claimed you lost your bite, Lament, but it seems to me you’ve found your teeth. Enough to warrant consideration... but what should I do with you? Lord Tirek might actually value you if you gain some strength back, but I’d benefit just as much from consuming you before you become a larger threat. I doubt you’d accept submission, would you? Just as stubborn as little Adagio, here.”
If Lament was concerned at all about facing the Third Espada, he showed none of it on his ice cold features, nor in his equally unbending voice, “I know your power, Catrina, and I also know that, stronger than me or not, I can cut that flesh of yours. You’re a creature of vanity and caution. So understand this; even if you defeat me, you won’t be able to do so without my blade finding your face and rendering it unrecognizable.”
Catrina’s lips curled back in a flash of a snarl, but much as she was clearly enraged, there was a flicker of unease and fear in her eyes. Adagio was impressed. Hard Nail, she couldn’t tell if he was bluffing or serious, but he’d succeeded in planting doubt in Catrina as to the wisdom of fighting, which played to Adagio’s favor. Even with Hard Nail’s help, that only evened the odds against Grogar and Catrina, rather than flip them firmly in her favor.
“That is a daring threat for a man with a family he can’t always be around to protect,” Catrina pointed out with acid in her voice.
Hard Nail’s reiatsu only grew more dense and potent as Adagio felt the chamber shake with it. He wasn’t holding back, and the growing surge of darkness around him only flowed with purer intensity as he raised the long, elegant blade of his Zanpaktou.
“That has always been the truth, but unlike before I am no longer afraid of it. I no longer regret what I can’t always be there to protect. My wife, the woman who owns my heart, was a Fullbringer who charged headlong into death to save our children, and now she is a Soul Reaper who’s very title denotes her relentless strength. Death itself didn’t stop her. My eldest daughter follows in her mother’s footsteps, and her honest heart shakes the earth where she walks. I’ve adopted a host of Hollow children into my loving care, each of them as precious to me as life itself, yet I know they’ll walk their own paths in due time. One is capable of compassion and wisdom beyond any I’ve known, beyond any Hollow I’ve seen capable of, while the one who stands in this very chamber has learned to embrace the Hollow blood that runs through her soul without fear. My whole life has been witnessing those I long to protect show me exactly how to do so, not by fearing what may happen or regretting what has already happened... but by embracing exactly who and what I am in the present.”
The rivers of dark reiatsu coursing over his body coalesced around his skeletal arm, granting not flesh, but hardened, black bone that moved now with the strength and ease beyond what his flesh and blood arm had once been. He now gripped his Zanpaktou with both hands, and it was as if this sharpened his spiritual pressure into a killing edge beyond killing edges, the phantom image of a black wolf skull forming around his body amid the dark aura that howled with challenging menace and power.
“I am Hard Nail, Fourth Espada, aspect of Wrath itself. To harm what I love is to court a screaming death.”
Grogar made a small ‘tch’ sound under his breath and tensed, making the simplest of small gestures with his own Zanpaktou. His two bio-engineered and cybernetically enhanced servitor Arrancar leaped into motion, bursting through the air on high-speed Sonidos to rush Hard Nail from the left and right with weapons barred; one expelling a briar of lethal scalpels from their hands while the other’s throat bulged as its mouth opened to shoot out a metallic, drilling tongue.
Hard Nail didn’t even seem to move. There was simply a black, crescent shadow of motion and the two enhanced Arrancar bio-weapons were shredded into multiple pieces as if bisected half a dozen times by the same stroke.
“Holy shit...” Fenice breathed, to which Hard Nail, without any irony, glanced at her.
“Fenice, language."
Grogar let out a seething sigh, “I’m going to need to fine tune the next batch of models for both the Phase Ones and Phase Twos, it seems. They shouldn’t be that easy to dismantle, even for an Espada of moderate caliber.”
Adagio took that moment to loudly clear her throat, gaining the attention of the room in general. “Considering the shift in the present power dynamic, perhaps you’d like to revisit the notion of pushing this fight, Grogar? Even if you and Catrina win, which is no longer so certain for you, there can be no doubt you won’t come out of it unscathed.”
“Your calculations lack data,” Grogar stated bluntly, “Lament is demonstrating an... ample power increase beyond my own projections, but that doesn’t change the simple fact that Catrina and I are here to prevent your interference with the function of this Cross Gate. You’ve already damaged some of its power conduits, which I’ll have to repair. I am going nowhere as long as you remain to potentially cause further irritating mischief due to your misguided desire to rebel against Tirek, which I might add is still so unbelievably far beyond your capacity I am shocked you are still even considering it.”
“My business with Tirek is my own, and I happen to believe your calculations concerning my chances of dethroning him are what lack data. Far as I can tell Tirek wants me, or anyone with a backbone, to aim for his throne. May as well be me,” Adagio stated with a cheeky smirk, “As for this Cross Gate... I’m assuming you need it to invade Equestria in full. If we manage to destroy it, that strands Chrysalis on the other side, and prevents any larger force from going there.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Catrina said with a growl, “Tirek may have some asinine patience for your plans to overthrow him, but even he wouldn’t forgive you for so directly interfering with the invasion of Equestria. He’ll kill you himself if you destroyed the gateway.”
Adagio felt Thorax’s surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder, and looked over to see him giving her a knowing and annoyingly appeasing look, “My mother placed me in ‘time out’ because she knew I’d come to you to warn you about her attack, and might use the Cross Gate myself to aid you or others to go after her.”
By others he meant Sunset Shimmer and the Coalition, which Adagio had to admit probably would have been her first thought to do, had Thorax managed to warn her in advance about Chrysalis’ attack. It would’ve been almost too easy to Garganta Sunset and her friends into this space and have them pop over to Equestria like they’d been so badly wanting to do for so long. Now it almost seemed like the better option to blow this replica Cross Gate up in the hopes it’d at least stop Tirek from sending in the rest of Hueco Mundo’s forces, even if in doing so she’d be damning herself and her followers to facing Tirek and the other Espada’s retribution.
She might be able to use her expanded Garganta powers to evacuate her people, but could she also do the same for those who supported her, like Torch and his horde? Even in the best case scenario it seemed likely she’d lose too many of those who’d placed faith in her if she took things down that route, but none of the alternatives were ideal either. Grogar wanted her dead or on a leash at this point, and Catrina was still backing him up. The only ways out of this were either by beating them both, or retreating. She wouldn’t use the Cross Gate to do that, because she wasn’t about to abandon her people. If Catrina and Grogar could be kept at bay, she could have everyone fall back to her territory via Garganta. At least then if Grogar wanted to push this, he’d have to come to her on her own turf.
The only question was whether she’d also destroy this Cross Gate in the process, and Thorax had made a good point that as long as it was intact, she might be able to use it herself at some point. That was the implication of what he’d said. She’d damaged it already, which should delay Tirek’s full scale invasion by at least a small margin. If Adagio could use that time to get ahold of Sunset Shimmer and arrange a way to get her and her friends here... but would Tirek’s patience run out by then? No doubt Grogar would inform Tirek of Adagio’s Garganta ability, now, and with the Cross Gate damaged, Tirek may well no longer consider Adagio’s interference worthy of ignoring.
Too many variables. She was getting lost in the mire of weighing options, and she couldn’t afford that. Time to be decisive.
“Hard Nail, can you keep Catrina off our backs while we deal with Grogar and open up some portals?” Adagio said, “We’re falling back to my territory.”
He simply nodded, the vast well of his awakened spiritual pressure sharpening to a killing focus. Hard Nail didn’t even waste words with a verbal response, he simply vanished in a sonic burst of speed and went right for Catrina. She hissed, and responded with blinding god-speed of her own, and Adagio could barely follow the rattling string of thunderous clashes that occurred as the pair exchanged strikes across the air of the expansive chamber, sword and warfan sparking off of each other.
Adagio wasted no time in snapping her fingers and opening a fresh set of Garganta portals, four of them in an arc behind her and twice as many in a vertical circle formation in front of her. Water poured down her right arm in tightly pressurized coils as she aimed her trident forward and proceeded to fire a blazing hail of water-based Bala bullets into the Garganta she’d opened in front of her. At the same instance, smaller Garganta opened around Grogar in a spinning circle, disgorging the water Bala in a staggering line of shots that would rip apart the stone floor in chunks.
Grogar heaved a vastly annoyed sigh and stomped a foot upon the ground so hard it cracked it upwards into a series of thick rock chunks that acted as shields against the barrage. He then rushed forward through the hail of Bala that tore through the rock slabs, and went right for Adagio with his blade extended and glowing hot at its tip with the tell-tale azure sphere of a Gran Rey Cero being charged up.
Before Adagio could respond, both Fenice and Thorax were in front of her, the pair seeming to act on the same instinctive thoughts as they appeared in flickers of Sonido to standing between her and Grogar. Fenice swung her Fullbring sword forward, crimson Hollow energy rolling up the blade alongside the sizzling stream of lava that flowed from its edge. Thorax meanwhile cupped his hands in front of him, and lowered his head at the same time. Twin green spheres of Cero energy appeared, one between his hands, and one between the mandibles of the betel skull helmet that was the fragment of his Hollow mask.
Grogar discharged his Gran Rey Cero at the same moment that Thorax unleashed two identical green Cero beams, and Fenice joined him with her sword swing blasting forth a thick and melting pillar of lava that was interlaced with the core of a deep red Cero of her own. The entire chamber shook and cracked at the collision of the beams, resulting in a gloriously loud and rumbling detonation that would have probably started to collapse the place had Grogar not held back at the last second, clearly realizing the danger this clash posed to the Cross Gate.
“Now!” Adagio told Thorax and Fenice, all but using strands of nearly solidly physical water to grab the two and move them towards the Garganta portals she’d opened behind her.
With the dust still settling from the clash of Ceros, Fenice and Thorax had ample time to rush the portals. Even Catrina’s Bushwoolies no longer seemed interested in intercepting them, instead entranced as they tried to watch their mistress overwhelm Hard Nail. The clash between Third and Fourth Espada was at this point little more than a staggering series of stone rending shockwaves as both moved at full speed around the chamber, barely more than wafting streaks of light and darkness that sharply clashed with earth shaking thunder with each pass of their blades.
Adagio had no idea if Hard Nail was keeping up or if either him or Catrina were even able to wound each other. All she could feel was their conflicting reiatsu, with Catrina’s monstrously high and sharp spiritual pressure still edging out Hard Nails' freshly revived dark ocean of power, but not by enough of a margin that it felt like Hard Nail was going to get overwhelmed. There was still time to mar Grogar’s plans, and finally get a proper swipe at him, as she’d been boiling inside to take since the moment he’d dragged her to his laboratory all those months ago.
“Hard Nail, keep Catrina pinned down while I handle Grogar! Don’t miss your exit when the time is right!” she shouted, and then came for Grogar with a fresh vengeance taking root in her limbs. Her blood was singing and her siren gem was pulsing red with her rising emotions. She knew she probably couldn't kill Grogar here without Tirek coming down on her like an anvil, but Grogar had started this fight and far as she was concerned that was all the excuse she needed to finally, finally vent some of her long held rage.
He was still dusting himself off on the other side of the crater the clash of Ceros had created, and Adagio slipped through a Gargnata to blur with Sonido right behind him, driving her trident at his back, its triple prongs glittering red. He jerked sideways like a twitching spider, lashing with his blade. It caught between the prongs of her trident, but Adagio pushed in anyway, screaming with potent fury as she put her back into the thrust.
Sparks flew, first from Grogar’s Zanpaktou, then from the skin of his Heirro as the tips of her trident pushed in. Adagio smelled the blood she drew as her trident sunk deeper, but Grogar twisted his sword and rolling to the side he led her off balance and with his right hand he let go of his Zanpaktou to strike with an air shattering backhand that was swifter than Adagio expected.
She felt the blow on her jaw, blood spiting from her lips, but she didn’t relent, planting her feet and drawing upon her Hollow power to unleash a slicing torrent of multiple water streams from around her, seeking to dice Grogar to ribbons. He leaped backwards, form flickering with multiple Sonidos to avoid the cutting lines of water. This kept him on the defensive, however, which Adagio used to slip through another Garganta, this one opening up inside the lager chamber with the stairwell leading up and the cages for the many imprisoned Adjuchas.
While slapping around Grogar was cathartic, her true goal was to cripple the use of the Cross Gate without destroying it, so she might be able to use it for her own ends later. She hadn’t forgotten about these unfortunate Hollows trapped by Chrysalis for this ghoulish use, and now that she had proper line of sight on the cages, including the ones she’d damaged earlier, she began to open up dozens of Garganta portals. She positioned each one to surround a different Adjuchas Hollow prisoner, the edges of the portals slicing through chain bindings. She then gestured and had the portals swallow up the prisoners, each portal opening to locations she was familiar with around the lake she’d created outside Las Noches.
“Blasted, meddling mad woman!” Grogar hissed, appearing in the chamber. As he did so there was a thick gust and burst of multiple shockwaves as Catrina and Hard Nails' blinding high-speed conflict landed them inside the larger prison chamber as well. Adagio could slightly make out the details now, unfortunately because Hard Nail was slowing down a little. His power remained immense in its freshly reawakened state, but he was going up against the Third Espada, and Catrina was not at all playing footsies at the moment.
Adagio had never truly seen Catrina go all out. She’d barely felt glimpses of Catrina’s real ability during the raid on the Quincy’s Silburn castle, or the retaliatory battle the Quincy launched on Las Noches. Now she was seeing Catrina in action up close, and as frightful as the likes of Tirek and Chrysalis rightfully were, Catrina’s speed was a breathtakingly terrifying thing to behold in its own right.
When Catrina could be seen, she was never just in one space or form, she was seemingly a living typhoon of savage, sweeping strikes of her Zanpaktou that appeared everyone at once. Her red hair was an endless flicker of a hundred firelights, her warfan a constant blizzard of steel. Hard Nail was keeping pace as best he could, a dancer in the storm, a darkly outlined shade of ghostly pale power weathering the hail of thunderous blows coming his way with the steady relentlessness of pure, focused wrath.
That was likely why Catrina had not yet overwhelmed him. She was landing blows, cutting his form, which failed to bleed even as his porcelain flesh parted in shallow wounds. For every dozen strikes Catrina landed, Hard Nail was only able to retaliate with one or two; but those one or two were brutally precise and potent, each swing of his long Zanpaktou leaving crescents of darkness in their wake that ripped rock floor and ceiling apart like tissue paper and shook the whole underground. Hard Nail could afford to take Catrina’s thousand cuts. She couldn’t afford to let him land more than a single blow.
This fact forced her to fight with caution, despite her speed. Each thrust and slice was probing, trying to open up his defenses. Yet all Hard Nail did was patiently evade and parry, shift to make deep cuts lesser, his eyes never blinking as he looked for the slightest hint of an opening to take advantage of.
Adagio would have watched that deadly dance longer, entrancing as it was, but Grogar occupied her attention as he stalked towards her. By now her Garganta had already finished whisking away the prisoners, so he couldn’t stop her on that count, but he seemed focused just on her now as he used his free hand to reach into the folds of his white vest and withdrew an object. It looked like a small metal card about five inches long and three wide. Upon it was printed unusually curving lines of what might have been circuitry if not for the semi-organic way the red lines pulsated like veins.
“Time and again you or those associated with you have delayed project after project, costing me far more research than you were worth in the first place. A part of me almost wishes to claim a certain pride in that audacious level of persistence, Adagio, for I know you wouldn’t be what you are without me. Yet I have grown utterly weary of you at the same time. Curious as I am to have another go at examining you after displaying such an interesting capacity to consume other Hollow’s powers, I am also at a juncture where I am nearing the cusp of true evolutionary greatness and I just cannot afford you mucking things up.”
He flung the card at her, “Besides, stealing power is hardly a method restricted solely to yourself, even if my technique differs.”
Adagio didn’t know what to expect from the flung card, so simply erected a spherical barrier of water around herself as it came flying in. Of the many potential surprises she expected, what she never would have counted on was her own power erupting from the card. It was an empty echo of her own water techniques fueled by Grogar’s own reiatsu, seemingly stored in the card itself. A burst of sickly green water, like the fetid waters of a swamp, exploded out of the card and formed a conical burst of concentrated and highly pressurized force upon the shield of her own, pure blue water.
She was taken off guard by the strength of this spear of water as it pierced her shield and struck her. Her Heirro was hard enough to take most of the blow but she felt the air knocked from her lungs as she was flung back and nearly slammed into the pillar containing the stairs back up.
Grogar had already manifested a trio of additional metal cards in his hand and flung them at her, creating more flying drills of pressurized and reiatsu enhanced swamp water. The water even smelled fouler than her own, and Adagio wrinkled her nose as she stood. No longer off guard, she gripped her trident and spun it forward, pouring forth her own Hollow power in a focused wave as she created a tidal wave of powerful water that crashed forward in a thick wall. Grogar’s own water lances were absorbed in the tide, and Adagio leaped over the wave to ride it down towards him, trident poised to impale him as the wave crashed upon him.
Yet he responded with another card, this one tossed up and bursting with a thick disc of spinning, horrid green water that held such pressure and potency it actually took her trident blow head on as the wave crashed down. She sensed Grogar speed up and over her, another card in hand, held between the fingers of his left hand as he slashed with it. Water spun forth, forming an intensely focused blade of filthy green liquid. Adagio formed her own blade of water, slicing with her left hand while thrusting low with her trident in her right hand.
Both she and Grogar were struck simultaneously, her trident catching his side in a bloody gouge, and his blade of water managing to cut through her own and land a crimson blow upon her arm, almost deep enough to disable it.
“Ugh...” Adagio skidded back from the blow, eyes glowering. How had Grogar’s foul green water so easily penetrated her own, and more than once?
He chuckled at her angered look, but he also winced at the wound on his side, “Don’t look so surprised. As if I’d copy any element of your power without also ensuring the reishi contained within was calibrated to counter your own ability. I’ve known for a long time your intent to kill me, Adagio. Did you think I’d cease making preparations to best you when the time came?”
“Hmph, there has to be a limit to how many of those cards you have,” Adagio said, “And how much power you can invest in them.”
He nodded, almost looking pleased, “I despise your interference but do admire your sharp mind. These cards are a new invention, but have great potential once I work out all the kinks. This was an ideal opportunity to test them out, but I only had so many prototypes on hand. I shall make more, and with abilities beyond yours besides. I’ve had ample time to collect data on other subjects, after all.”
As they trade words, the battle between Catrina and Hard Nail reached a violent crescendo. Their forms appeared in a dozen places at once as the speed of their exchange hit its feverish final pitch. Adagio caught the moment where Hard Nail drew Catrina in, perhaps taking advantage of her growing frustration painted clearly on her otherwise beautiful features. He lowered his blade, feigning a lack of guard that she leaped on like a hungry tigress. Her Zanpaktou blazed and blurred, slicing towards his Hollow hole. However Hard Nail raised his blackened, skeletal left hand and let the sharp prongs of her warfan sink into the bones... then he twisted and bent his arm with viscous power and managed to actually wrench the weapon free of her grasp, causing the Zanpaktou to skitter across the chamber and plant itself in the stone wall.
With not even a microsecond of hesitation, Hard Nail slashed up with his lowered blade, the long curving arc of steel leaving a black wave in its wake. Catrina used all her speed to dodge despite being off balance, and it was a true testament to that speed that what should have been a perfect counterblow that would have likely killed many other opponents via bisecting only managed to graze her face.
Catrina’s howl of pain was shrill and air rending, regardless, for even that graze took her right eye clean out of its socket in a gout of red.
Adagio actually flinched. Ouch. That had to hurt.
“ARRGH! You BASTARD!” Catrina’s roar of pain and utter ire was only matched by the insane speed at which she instantly had her Zanpaktou back in hand and cut down with an explosion of raw, radiant red Hollow power. The resulting Cero was less a beam and more an eviscerating vertical line of red, one which ripped apart all in its path.
Hard Nail countered by raising his damaged skeletal hand and from its thin finger tip he generated a sparking and crackling line of dark edged emerald green that exploded forth in a focused Cero of his own. His beam impacted with Catrina’s red line, and while his power was enough to blunt the force of her fury, Catrina’s Cero was the stronger and cut through his beam as a knife through cake.
But it did slow the Cero enough that Adagio had time to open a Garganta beneath Hard Nail and drop him through it, leading him out of the chamber and having him follow where she’d sent Fenice and Thorax.
Before Catrina could react, as the woman was still clutching her ruined right eye, Adagio turned and rushed for another Garganta she opened up right behind herself.
“This is not over, Adagio Dazzle,” she heard Grogar say as he watched her go, “Run all you like. I will have you brought to heel, one way or another, before we walk Equestrian soil. I’ll not tolerate anyone, least of all my own experiment, stand between me and my evolution.”
Keep telling yourself that, old goat. I’ll be the death of you yet.
Adagio was through the Garganta in an eyeblink. All in all the battle had only really lasted a minute or two, but it had felt like a short eternity. But at least they’d done it. She’d rescued Thorax, sabotaged the replica Cross Gate enough to hopefully buy a few more days, and even bloodied Grogar with her own hands. There would surely be consequences to come, and depending on how capricious Tirek was feeling she might have to flee Las Noches or Hueco Mundo itself, but for the moment she and those she cared for were still alive, and in Adagio’s book that was a win.
The portals opened up into her own personal chambers, including the ones she’d sent Hard Nail, Thorax, and Fenice through. So when Adagio emerged, she saw all three, with Fenice sitting on her bed, hands on her knees as she looked up at Adagio, and let out a deep breath of relief, “Whew... you made it. Thank God.”
Thorax, a bit more composed, brushed himself off and gave Adagio a grateful look as looked her over, noting her bloodied arm, “A little worse for wear, but looks like we’re all intact. Thank you again for coming for me, Adagio. Hopefully I can return the favor momentarily, once I catch my breath. A double Cero to match a Gran Rey Cero is a strain, even for me.”
“Hey, I helped,” Fenice said, to which Thorax smiled broadly and made an exaggerated bow.
“My humble thanks, daughter of the Lament. Or should I say Hard Nail, now?” Thorax queried to the Espada in question, who silently sheathed his Zanpaktou. Hard Nail barely looked in Thorax’s direction, instead going to Fenice’s side. He raised his right hand to her shoulder and held her.
“Are you unhurt, daughter?”
“No, but most of what I got are flesh wounds. Pharynx hit me way harder, overall... but thanks for asking, father,” she replied with a weak smile. Adagio could tell she was a lot more strained and weakened by the ordeal than she was letting on, but all things considered it had been a rather rough day.
And it wasn’t over. She didn’t know what Grogar would do next, but it probably wouldn’t be good. Worse, now that she was catching her own breath and had a second to let her senses settle in, she felt spiritual pressures out in Las Noches, and knew that Twilight’s rescue mission had gone from stealth to conflict. There was a mess of conflicting reiatsu out there, and she could pick out Fluttershy’s, Pinkie Pie’s, Hydia’s, and Grogar’s all going at it.
“Feels like there’s quite a party going on out there,” Thorax commented, “I must have missed a lot during my brief incarceration.”
Adagio just shook her head and looked at him with a sardonic snort, “You have, but there’s nothing we can do about that particular ‘party’. That’s in the hands of others, and we have our own issues to deal with in the meantime.”
She knew she was making quite the understatement. It was difficult to predict precisely what would come next. Catrina no doubt now had a grudge against Hard Nail for the loss of her eye. Grogar had made it clear he intended to push for her to be shackled in some way before Tirek launched the full invasion of Equestria that Chrysalis was currently establishing a foothold for. She’d, at best, probably only bought a couple of days worth of time for Grogar to repair the damage she’d inflicted and capture more Hollows to use to power his replica Cross Gate.
She had to use that time wisely and hopefully avoid Tirek himself deciding she’d overstepped her bounds. And of course all of this was assuming that Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight could pull off their rescue without getting themselves killed.
----------
Chrysalis’ laughter echoed like derisive thunder off of the sand dunes of the Bone Dry Desert, the Second Espada’s eyes all but sparkling with gleeful interest as Sombra appeared, taking a stand alongside Firefly and Zecora’s Regai to face her. Chrysalis’ left hand was placed with sass upon her hip as she twirled her Zanpaktou in her other hand with playful but menacing speed and smooth ease.
“So that’s what the Quincy King looks like as a pony? Oh, I know you’re not him, but his counterpart, because you are far and way weaker than your other half is, little pony. Still, handsome, for a short equine. You actually pull off the hair better. Or mane, as it were. And did I hear that right? You plan on helping these two try to take me on? How odd. From the dynamics of the situation I would have thought these two would be your enemies and you’d take this opportunity to leave them in the dust and escape, as you were clearly trying to...” Chrysalis gestured with her blade at the handful of shimmering wards and the clusters of Kido lanterns Zecora had created, “I mean, obviously they were trying to pen you in. So why help them, instead of using this as your chance to get away?”
“Not that I’m complaining about the decision,” Firefly said, glancing sidelong at Sombra through the purple glass of her visor, “But the monster has a point. You should’ve booked it the moment we were distracted.”
Sombra let out a humorless, dark chuckle, “I have never been accused of being a stallion who thinks his actions through. Whether in my less than glorious past or questionable present, I have always followed my gut. It’s telling me now that leaving the two of you to face this... creature alone wouldn’t be right. We can concern ourselves with our own status as enemies after the larger and far worse threat is dealt with.”
“Well hot damn, welcome aboard, frenemy,” Firefly said, shaking her head and grinning, “But seriously though, Chrysalis turning on us pretty much flash fries my whole earlier plan of keeping you from escaping to report where our base is. Right now, we could really use a pair of nuclear-grade magical pony princesses showing up to save our asses.”
“What do donkeys have to do with this?” Sombra asked, to which Firefly, Zecora, and even Chrysalis gave him flat looks. Sombra rolled his eyes, “I jest. We have swear words in Equestria too. Merely seeking a moment of levity before we all get to killing one another.”
“Are you now?” Chrysalis said, and in a dark snap of shattering speed she vanished and slid past Sombra faster than any eye could hope to blink. He didn’t have time to react with normal senses, only saved from the worst edge of her blade by the fact that his body was still connected to the lengthening shadows of dusk and hence he’d already been partially translucent and made of shadowstuff as her Zanpaktou sliced through his neck.
Sombra felt that bite of steel, fortunately not deep enough to be a grievous blow, but he was all too aware he could have easily been decapitated by that had he not already been partially melded with shadows to begin with. Chrysalis snickered, seeing him stagger and lose focus, following up her strike with a sweep of her sword that generated an immense pressure wave. Sombra had to tuck further into his shadows, but even then the blast of raw force from Chrysalis’ strike stirred the ground into a sand storm, disrupting his shadows and causing him to go tumbling.
Firefly and Zecora barely fended any better, Firefly’s metallic wings wrenching under the windforce as she tried to stabilize herself, and Zecora having to ground herself with her own Zanpaktou, and even then she was pushed back.
“I figure you were already casting a spell to try and communicate back with the Princesses in Canterlot,” Chrysalis said as Sombra managed to land on his hooves and retaliate with a black lance of shadow magic that flew from his horn and tore through the sandstorm towards her. Her right foot rose and she kicked the focused spear of shadow away, “And much as I wouldn’t mind testing out this world’s Celestia and Luna, I’d rather save that for after the invasion begins proper.”
Finally managing to right herself in the air, Firefly swore under her breath and on a thick blast of energy from her wings, she rocketed up and to the right of Chrysalis’ position. Hatches opened on her leg armor even as she aimed her hexagon shaped main cannon, while her Dragoon’s danced a spiral pattern around her, “Won’t be an invasion if we stop you here and now!”
Clusters of miniature missiles rocketed out of the hatches on her leg armor, while all of the Dragoons spat forth a storm of focused purple lasers of spirit energy. The cannon held between Firefly’s hands glowed bright with its own charge of violet light, and joined the barrage of attacks with a single, large gout of power, firing its thick beam as the centerpiece of the destructive tempest Firefly was unloading on Chrysalis.
“Tch, please.”
Chrysalis tilted her chin up as the missiles exploded all over her in bursts of raw purple flame, and the lasers criss-crossed around her, ripping apart the desert where Chrysalis stood. Then the central beam fired by Firefly’s cannon hammered Chrysalis’ position in one huge blast that melted through sand, then exploded outward in a wide flash of violet light that shook the desert.
Zecora did not remain idle while this was happening, holding her Zanpaktou off to one side while flinging her left hand forward, palm out, as she swiftly chanted.
“Dominate the earth with sodden disdain,
Foul the mud with fallen viscera
Pierce, Slacken, and Erupt!
Hado Number Eighty Two: Ueta Mushinoiki!” (Hungering Worm’s Breath)
The desert sand in front of Zecora trembled, then from below the sands burst upward as a massive form as wide across as a shipping trailer rose with a roar. It was a giant worm forged from swirling and scintillating veins of jade spirit energy. It opened its mouth and showed rows of spinning, thick teeth forged of crackling power as it dived forward like a hungry titan at the dust cloud kicked up by Firefly’s attack and where Chrysalis still stood. The huge Kido summoned worm of power smashed into Chrysalis, teeth bared, maw crunching, and drove onward like a freight train with immense strength that tore across the desert.
It was possible to see Chrysalis now, having been caught up in the worm’s mouth, her body actually bloody from its spinning energy teeth. But she was grinning wide like a madwoman who was actually enjoying herself, her wounds from both Firefly’s barrage and this Kido already closing even as she gleamed with her own intense and sickly pale emerald light. Laughing, she opened her mouth and fired a dense Cero beam of pulsating green destruction right into the worm’s maw. Its body bloated and burst, the Kido unable to withstand the Second Espada’s Cero rippling through it. Zecora vanished with the speed of a Flash Step to avoid the Cero’s path tearing right towards her.
Chrysalis halted amid the falling bits of energy dust from the destroyed Kido, wiping her mouth, “Well, at least it feels like you’re trying. Still, be a dear, fake Zecora, and why not try out that Bankai you were boasting to me about in the Crystal Empire? Think I’m in the mood to see it, now.”
The area around her suddenly grew darker than the dusk sky above, and Chrysalis raised and eyebrow as she glanced upward. A huge sword of shadow, larger than some castle towers, had taken shape above her. She glanced across the sands to see Sombra, horn wrapped in thick pillars of shadow magic, as his eyes burned green and his face focused with fierce intensity. With a gesture of his horn, the giant shadow blade fell with air rending force. Chrysalis, face more curious than intimidated, swung her Zanpaktou up to meet it.
There was a tremendous impact that indented the sands of the desert beneath Chrysalis’ feet as her Zanpaktou held against the immense blade of shadow, but the clash kept her rooted in place for a few moments, which was Sombra’s sole intent as he cut a sharp glance towards Zecora, “Drop all your wards and get rid of those blasted lanterns! I need all the darkness around me that’s possible!”
Zecora didn’t hesitate, the Reigai’s eyes flaring with the artificial purple light of her reiatsu as she cut a quick gesture with her Zanpaktou and all of the wards she’d placed to try to box Sombra in earlier fell away like dust. The hundreds of Kido lanterns all went up in flame, self-destructing at her mental command, flooding the desert in further shade.
Sombra’s horn flickered with motes of further darkness, and he strained to concentrate both on the giant shadow blade he continue to press down on Chrysalis while conjuring another spell, this one another long distance communication spell that he hoped would swiftly reach Celestia.
“Princess, things have taken an even more dire turn! The Bone Dry Desert! Almost midway to Klugetown! Bring your sister! Tartarus is being unleashed here-”
That was about as far as he got before a bullet of jade reishi impacted with his chest and sent him skidding across the desert like a black pinball. Chrysalis was still holding her Zanpaktou with one hand while the finger of her other hand pointed at him, still sparking with the energy of the Bala, “I hope that didn’t kill you, Pony Sombra. I want to get at least a day’s worth of fun out of you.”
Sombra grunted as he rolled up to his hooves, chest smoking a little from the Bala impact, but his flesh otherwise intact. Still, he felt a sharp pain in his chest that suggested that, protective shadow magic or not, he’d probably lost a rib to that blow. Despite the painful hit, he hadn’t lost concentration on his shadow blade, and with a lip curling growl, his horn wrapped itself in darkness and he detonated the magic inside the shadow blade, causing it to explode on top of Chrysalis.
“That’s right, keep hitting her!” Firefly shouted from the air, still curling Chrysalis position as she kept her cannon trained on where the Espada was, “Her regeneration might make her damn near impossible to kill, but it still costs her energy. Make her keep using it up, and maybe we can wear her out!”
“Nice plan,” said Chrysalis herself from inside the detonation of destructive shadow magic Sombra had just exploded on her. She burst out of it at sicking speed, some of her flesh burned but closing up almost instantly as she flashed by Firefly.
Firefly dove sideways in the air, firing a blast from her cannon that Chrysalis sliced through with her Zanpaktou on the way to streak right into Firefly with a punishing knee to the chest. Firefly felt the armor of her Fullbring crack, but still hold firm as the air was knocked from her lungs and she staggered in the air. She reached to her side and withdrew the hilt of her energy blade, igniting the thick purple sword of light as Chrysalis came at her again with a hammering downward swing.
The two swords clashed, and Firefly felt herself being outmatched, driven off balance by Chrysalis’ raw power.
“Let me know how it works out for you,” Chrysalis finished, all but pirouetting in the air with a side slash that drove Firefly’s guard upward and then kicking out again, this time her heel smashing into Firefly’s right hoof as she tried to get her cannon aimed to blast Chrysalis. Firefly let out a gasp of pain as she felt the bones of her hoof and leg crunch, and her cannon went flying from her grasp.
Her Dragoons swooped in around her, filling the air around her with a patchwork of thin laser beams, all stitching into Chrysalis like threads of a spider’s web catching a fly. Yet Chrysalis took the blows with aplomb, her Heirro resisting most of the burning beams of purple light while what beams did penetrate only caused wounds that swiftly closed as Chrysalis laughed and wove her blade in a swift X pattern that Firefly barely avoided the full brunt of as her armor was further damaged and she took a bleeding gash on her lower left chest.
Firefly continued to have her Dragoons dance around Chrysalis, piercing the air with ever more beams, and mostly just trying to distract Chrysalis for even a moment as she flew down towards the ground to try and retrieve her cannon.
Chrysalis’ continued laughter chased her as Chrysalis aimed a palm at Firefly’s retreating back and charged a ludicrously large and potent Cero of pale jade light that was dozens of feet wide. The massive Cero blasted downward with a loud whine of power, the sheer shockwave of its descent causing Firefly’s Dragoons to get knocked about like twigs in a storm. Even as Firefly grasped her cannon in her hooves again she realized she had no more room to dodge the destructive beam of energy, sensing the explosion it would make would be far too wide for her to hope to evade.
“Bakudo Number Number Eighty Six: Dai Shugoshin-Sha!” (Grand Protective Shrine)
In an instant a quartet of cherry red wooden pillars rose up from the sand around Firefly, growing wide connecting branches of wood and then deep gold tiling to encase her in a giant roofed Japanese temple shrine whose walls and pillars were covered in burning symbols of protection kanji. This happened just in time for Chrysalis’ Cero to impact with the defensive Kido, which caused a bright green flash to engulf the desert.
Even for miles around the strike of green light and the resulting explosive pillar of roaring power could be seen, the tremors of the explosion reaching even further still.
Sombra melded with the shadows to avoid the brunt of the destructive pressure wave that would have toppled buildings had any been present.
Zecora, whom had cast the Kido to try and protect Firefly, had little choice but to use Flash Step to avoid to edge of the explosion, and even then the wave of force drove her into a painful roll across the desert to impact with a dune at the far edge of the crater Chrysalis’ Cero left behind.
Amid the crater which was roughly two hundred meters wide, Chrysalis stood on the air and looked down with a curious smile on her face that suggested a woman simply enjoying a casual evening of entertainment, rather than someone in a life or death battle. “Still breathing down there, Firefly? I actually don’t mind if you croak, really, as I’ve already seen all of your tricks. You’re kind of the least interesting opponent on the field right now.”
“Ugh... screw you too...” Firefly said as she wavered up to her hooves, shaking off her wings, both pegasus and Fullbring alike. The shrine of Kido that had protected her was a broken ruin under the impact of Chrysalis Cero, but its destruction had blunt the force of the Cero enough that Firefly had gotten off with only light singing, by comparison. Spreading her wings, she took to the air again, rising with cannon in her right hoof and her pulsing purple energy blade in her left, ready to resume the fight.
“Wait,” she heard Zecora say as the Reigai Flash Stepped into view, “This is getting us nowhere. It is clear you don’t have the strength to do serious damage to her, and her regeneration is not draining her enough for us to have a hope of outlasting her.”
“Ohoho! The Regai isn’t braindead after all! Which is hilarious considering there isn’t actually a brain in that doll-like body of yours,” Chrysalis cooed. She then glanced to the side towards the shadows Sombra had melded with, “Haven’t run yet, Pony Sombra? You can, if you want. I’d enjoy a chase, after I’m one with these two...”
Firefly grit her teeth and said in a lower voice to Zecora, “If you have a plan, say it quick, while she’s monologuing.”
The Regai regarded her with cool, calm eyes, her voice steady, “We tried taking her together, and it clearly is not working. She is too strong. There is no sense in all of us dying, either, when her children must be stopped from harming any nearby settlements, such as Klugetown. I sense that is where my fellow Regai are going...”
True, Firefly had sensed Starswirl’s reiatsu along with some of the surviving Reigai heading towards Klugetown’s location. Perhaps a defense could be mounted there? But...
“If we’re gonna run, we all run, Zecora,” Firefly stated, but Zecora shook her head, an held up her Zanpaktou horizontally in front of her.
“No. She’ll be able to chase us an kill us one by one that way. Someone has to remain to keep her busy while the rest escape. And I am the only one with a chance of doing that.”
“Aww, are you two having a moment down there?” Chrysalis called, “I can totally tell this is going to be a moment of self-sacrifice! Don’t let me stop you, of course! I love this kind of thing. Makes the bloodshed more fun. Go on, Reigai, have your ‘moment’. This better lead to me seeing that Bankaaaaaai!”
A look of disgust, both at Chrysalis and at herself, etched its way across Firefly’s face as she hung her head, “I really hate her... Zecora, are you sure about this? We might still win together if you bust out that Bankai with me and Sombra backing you up.”
“Doubtful,” Zecora replied, not as an admonishment, but just an honest assessment, “Princess Cadence was more powerful than you, Firefly, by a decent margin during her battle with Chrysalis, and still lost. Perhaps if I had used my Bankai then to reign Chrysalis in, me and the Crystal Princess could have won together, but my loyalty remained to Starlight then. Now my only desire is to just... to do what little right I can and perhaps ensure some of my Reigai brethren survive. That’s all. I cannot defeat Chrysalis with my Bankai, but I can keep her occupied for some time. Long enough, perhaps, for good to be done elsewhere.”
“I don’t like this,” Firefly stated bluntly, “This sucks balls, I’ll have you know. Chrysalis is me and Starlight’s mistake to bear. You shouldn't be paying for it.”
Zecora offered only a small smile of pity, “She will still be your sin to bear after this, but just make sure you take that responsibility, when the time comes. Ensure Starlight does as well. And if possible, please look after my fellow Reigai, especially Redheart. I hope for them to find a place for themselves in whatever comes after this.”
“I’ll do what I can, I promise,” Firefly said, then with a deep sigh she shouted loudly, “You hear that, Sombra!? Get your shadowy butt moving!”
With that she gave Zecora one last look, “Good luck.” ‘
And then she flew off at full speed. Chrysalis tapped her sword point under her own chin as she watched the pegasus go, as if considering if it was worth it to pursue, but then she just let out a carefree giggle an descended from the air to land at the opposite side of the crater she’d created, staring at Zecora.
“I’m on a bit of a timetable with those two heading off to get reinforcements, but I figured something like this might happen, so no worries. I really just want to see what you can do, Reigai. Your real self was always so conservative and focused on healing. Even when I impersonated her I never got to see what her Bankai was, and Starlight’s nifty theft powers never let me access that power even when I could use that Zanpaktou. So I’m just dying to see this. Sooooo? Don’t keep me waiting! You’re literally giving up your life to have your big moment, puppet-girl, so come on, say the thing! Say! The! Thing!”
Zecora stared at Chrysalis dispassionately, Zanpaktou still held horizontally in front of her, the rising moonlight now glinting off of the blade’s mirrors.
“Bankai.”
There was a sound that permeated the air like a single, all encompassing crack as the mirrors upon the blade splintered. A hurricane of force an sound then followed as the mirror fragments launched themselves outward in a spinning hail of shards. These shards fragmented again, yet grew, fragmented once more, and grew again as they expanded in a dizzying swirl of reflective shards. In less than a second an area covering several hundred meters was now a kaleidoscope of hundreds upon hundreds of sharp mirror shards, each of various jagged or smooth shapes and sizes, with no two being quite identical. Some were the size of buildings while others no larger than a fingernail, some were pointed as rough fangs or blades, others oblong or rounded. Yet regardless of shape or size, no matter where one looked, there was a mirror, reflecting thousands of other mirrors, casting the reflections of Chrysalis and Zecora into a myriad display of ten thousand other reflections of themselves.
Zecora stood in the vague center of this mass of reflections, the Zanpaktou in her hand now missing its blade save for a few broken shards attached to the remaining hilt. Yet there was a faint shimmer in the air where the blade of mirrors had been, as if some manner of force was still present.
The Regia, eyes nearly a solid purple from her artificial reiatsu being pushed to its fullest limit, took a deep breath and spoke the name of her Bankai, although in her heart she didn't feel it belonged to her. She was just borrowing this Bankai's image an power, a reflection of what belonged to the original user, somewhere across the gap between worlds...
"Sen no Kudaketa Shinjitsu." (One Thousand Fractured Truths)
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I wonder if firefly has had her fullbring modded?
Careful Pinky. Even your 4th Wall powers might not save you from Hydia's indigestion.
Chills...
Honestly, I don't mind. There's plenty going on in the Hollow World. Focusing in one place helps keep the immersion.
Well looks like hard nail is a man of his word
Well that is disturbing. How scary do you gotta be to send chills down the spine of a soul eating monster?
Not to sound like Hollow Chrysallis but I am looking forward to seeing what Zecora's Bankai does.
Honestly, I was expecting Hard Nail to get his full power back this chapter but that doesn't make it any less awesome.
I mean look at this! Badass. With this and the end of the last episode Hard Nail really deserves an award for most chilling lines. The fight between him and Catrina was intense. Vex really knows how to write good fight scenes.
Side note
I think this is supposed to say Guto not Grogar.