Episode 207: Mirror Dance
Episode 207: Mirror Dance
“Bankai”
”Sen no Kudaketa Shinjitsu.” (One Thousand Fractured Truths)
Chrysalis, Second Espada, made a show of idly stretching her long, onyx skinned arms over her head in a languid pose, watching with smiling eyes at the unfolding of the Reigai of Zecora’s Bankai. Chrysalis was always tickled in the vast, dark pit of her soul the way Soul Reapers treated the release of their full power like some kind of strip tease. Always flirting with their Shikai for however long before getting to the raw event of exposing their precious Bankai.
Not that she had any space to judge. Arrancar were just as much battle-teases, and she was hardly an exception, only ever breaking out her Resurreccion on rare occasions she felt she’d found a worthy moment to indulge in the wanton violence and destruction of going all out.
Maybe that was why the war with the Quincy and Soul Reapers had taken forever? Too much time spent playing the combat equivalent of footsies instead of just getting down to business.
Yet, even knowing that, and finding it infinitely amusing, she didn’t feel the need to release the power of her own Zanpaktou. It wasn’t that Zecora’s Reigai wasn’t powerful. Apparently Starlight Glimmer had tried to make this one have a higher amount of reiatsu than the original. Chrysalis couldn’t tell the difference, given the last time she dealt with the real Zecora the woman was the victim of an ambush and didn’t get a chance to fight back in any meaningful fashion. So for all Chrysalis knew, this Reigai could have been magnitudes stronger, or even weaker than the real thing, given Starlight had probably been guessing on Zecora’s power in the first place.
None of that changed the fact that the spiritual pressure she felt now, while impressive, didn’t make Chrysalis feel the need to respond to this Bankai with a Resurreccion. Certainly not until she saw what it could do.
Upon activation the Bankai had generated a truly expansive, spherical field of mirror shards that vastly ranged in size and shape, leaving Chrysalis looking at thousands of different reflections of herself. The mirror shards floated about and slowly spun with a certain lethargic speed that had the deceptive stillness of a spider ready to skitter in any direction.
“Well, I do love looking at my perfect features and figure,” Chrysalis noted with a shrug, “But unless the idea was to distract me with my own narcissism, I’m waiting to see something else impressive, doll.”
The Reigai’s purple glowing eyes narrowed, her voice as sharp as the edges of the countless floating mirror shards, “Your wish will be granted, Hollow. To see everything you are not.”
These words were spoken as one of the larger mirror shards passed between Zecora and Chrysalis, and as the shard spun away, Zecora was suddenly nowhere to be seen. However, Chrysalis did not sense the tell-tale flicker of reiatsu that would indicate a Flash Step. It was as if Zecora had simply vanished. A stealth power, perhaps? Chrysalis chuckled dryly, walking forward across the desert as the mirrors kept floating around for hundreds of meters in all directions. She kept expecting the shards to come at her, or for Zecora to appear out of one of them at any moment, but... no, nothing.
“Alright, if something doesn’t happen soon, I’m going to obliterate everything in a several mile radius,” Chrysalis said, raising her left palm and gathering the beginnings of a gleaming, emerald Cero orb there.
“Always so impatient.”
Chrysalis grinned and spun as she felt the attack coming by the air pressure alone. Her Zanpaktou sang a clamorous note of steel against another Zanpaktou, but not the shimmering non-blade that Zecora’s had become upon activating Bankai. Instead this was an elegant khopesh of curved steel, one that spun a rapid series of curving arcs like a dance of smooth, rolling waves. Chrysalis parried them, impressed she had to actually work for it as the strikes got close to scoring her flesh as her foe spun around her in a swift, dancing twirl.
When her foe spun away and squared off against her, Chrysalis’ grin twitched slightly as she found herself looking not at Zecora, but at a mirror image of herself. Another Chrysalis stood before her, with the same perfect, onyx black skin, and voluptuous body of a sinful goddess of lust. Yet instead of the Arrancar dress of snow white that Chrysalis wore to huge her body and gracefully display her sensual assets, the mirror Chrysalis that now faced her was wearing the all-too familiar black robes of a Soul Reaper, modestly concealing her figure. She lacked the white horn of Chrysalis’ Hollow mask fragment, and had no Hollow hole to be seen anywhere on her body.
And also a short cut, long sleeve Captain’s haori with the kanji symbol for “5” written on the back of it.
“Oh...?” Chrysalis raised an eyebrow, “Is that this Bankai’s game? Creating duplicates of me with a cute outfit change?”
“Hah,” her double let out a musical laugh that was matched by a pleasantly familiar smirk that seemed as mocking as it was genuinely warm and inviting, “Think of me as a ‘mirror’ if it suits you, my ugly true self. What I am is an echo of what you could have been. Personally a better self, far as I’m concerned. I’m Chrysalis, Captain of the Fifth Division, Gotei 13. And it’ll be my duty, and pleasure, to put you down like the rabid dog you are.”
Chrysalis gave off a full throated laugh of her own, licking her lips with anticipation, “So you’re telling me I get to kill a version of me who’s even more annoying than my Equestrian counterpart? What a happy day this is! My heart is fit to burst from pure delight! Let’s see if you can handle me by your lonesome.”
She was about to tear a path towards her Soul Reaper mirror image with gleeful abandon, only at that very moment there was another burst of reiatsu from above her and she instead threw herself back with slip of Sonido. She vanished out of the way just in time to avoid a humongous hail of brilliant blue reishi arrows that looked more like bullets, which continued to tear after Chrysalis as the shooter adjusted their aim with monstrously swift skill and precision.
Chrysalis had to cross her arms in front of her as the last of the barrage truck her in mid-Sonido, piercing flesh and hurtling through a mirror shard. She grunted and adjusted herself in the air to land on the sand, injuries already healing as another figure landed next to her Soul Reaper duplicate.
“Sorry, babe, but this isn’t a one-woman show! Hahaha! Good on you for almost dodging all of my shots! Blasting you to little bitty Hollow chunks is going to get me hot and bothered like nobody's business!”
The Soul Reaper Chrysalis sighed, “Try to stay focused. I don’t need you hitting me, mid-fight.”
The newcomer also looked just like Chrysalis, dark of skin, glorious of body, and sporting even more of it for show than the real Chrysalis was. White short-shorts and a similar halter-top showed off more skin and cleavage than common sense would normally call for, even for someone looking to show off. It was as if the real Chrysalis’ manner of dress, draping her body with lavish yet perfectly accentuated flows of silk that framed and enticed with the body beneath, was now being starkly contrasted with an outfit that shattered any sense of subtly and placed all on display with brazen audacity. Thigh-high white combat boots and a white cap with the Quincy cross marked in silver on it completed the outfit as this Chrysalis flipped her long, braided green hair and hefted her silver Quincy weapon, a multi-barreled gatling gun, and leveled it at the real Chrysalis.
“Heya, bitch! I’m Chrysalis! Sternritter R of the Quincy Vandenriech! Hope you’re ready to be shredded!”
The Soul Reaper Chrysalis looked at the Quincy with a side-eyed frown, “Okay, just ignore me, apparently.”
Pure, distilled cockiness burned with open challenge on the Quincy Chrysalis' dark lips, curled up into a flashing smile, “Did you say something, Reaper?”
“Little of import. Let us focus upon dispatching our Hollow reflection, before she gets bored,” replied the Soul Reaper duplicate, running a slim finger across the inner edge of her khopesh’s blade.
“Give the gift of penance; Yugana Batsu.” (Elegant Punishment)
The Zanpaktou emitted a sanguine glow that enveloped the sword in streamers of spirit energy that grew the sword’s size by nearly double in length. Along its crescent edge, nail-like sharp protrusions of steel emerged, turning it into the image of a deadly, needle pointed maw that glinted faintly red.
Chrysalis herself watched this with the arrogant air of someone observing a film or play they fully intended to give a scathing review to. If this was Zecora’s Bankai, she was a little underwhelmed by the gimmick. What could these duplicates in cosplay costumes of the other factions really hope to accomplish? Could her Soul Reaper counterpart even use Bankai herself? And while her Quincy counterpart’s reishi bullets had stung a little, it was nothing her regeneration couldn’t handle. What was her Schrift supposed to be, anyway? R? Another “regenerator” perhaps?
“Well, as faintly amusing as it is to see how I’d look dressed up as a humorless Soul Reaper or one of Sombra’s Quincy bimbo groupies, I’m afraid I literally have thousands of better places to be and people to be killing right now. So, Zecora’s pathetic puppet imitation, wherever you’re hiding to watch this farce, enjoy the show. I’m going to splatter these two imitator's innards all over your mirrors, then drag you out of the hole you’re secreted away in before doing the same to you.”
“Nice shit talk for someone who’s little more than Tirek’s self-absorbed bed warmer,” chortled the Quincy duplicate, and before Chrysalis could so much as get a breath drawn to spout a rebuttal, the wild Quincy woman was howling with glee as she moved with a cyclone of blinding white speed. Chrysalis found herself having to move with equal speed, a dark bolt of lightning to head not away from her aggressive Quincy counterpart, but directly at her.
The Quincy unleashed a fury of thousands of shots from her rotary weapon, the barrels a piercing torrent of blinding blue that tore the air apart between herself and Chrysalis. There was no dodging such a thickly virulent wall of firepower, so Chrysalis instead turned her own sword into a twirling blur in front of her that braved the river of reishi bullets like a swimmer tearing across a lake. It was impossible for her body not to take a number of stray shots, smearing passing mirrors red with her blood. Chrysalis kept confidence in her regeneration as she burst through the hail of fire and cut at the Quincy mirror with a blazing overhand swing that followed through into a spinning roulette of body blows with both her blade and lashing kicks.
Her Quincy duplicate demonstrated that hefty gatling cannon of silver metal was as adept a shield as it was a weapon, twirling the massive weapon as if it weighed no more than a sheet of paper. Sparks flew as Chrysalis blade scored against the hunk of reishi-forged metal, but one of her kicks still launched past the weapon and caught the Quincy in the stomach, knocking her back.
But before Chrysalis could capitalize on that and streak forward to skewer the off balance Quincy, the shadow of the Soul Reaper flickered over her and Chrysalis had to leap away to avoid the deadly bite of the nails sprouting from the Reaper counterpart’s khopesh. Without so much as letting a millisecond pass, the Soul Reaper smiled, twisting her blade in her two-handed grip and rolled into a flowing sea of strikes that left Chrysalis no room to breath. Parrying such an ungainly weapon was more difficult than it looked, the nails along the blade’s edge leaving a hundred places Chrysalis’ sword could get caught. As such she focused on moving her body out of the way, which left several close calls that tore at her dress.
Then one of the nails broke off, by no clear accident or other means, giving Chrysalis little time to react as a red wave of pressure suddenly emitted from the nail as it seemed to plant itself in the air and give off a howl.
Pain sizzled through Chrysalis’ senses, as if that howl was wracking every nerve ending in her body with a grinding set of razor blades. She was both sadist and masochist at heart, so pain was usually no great issue for her. Yet the overwhelming intensity of this sensation, while perhaps it would have been pleasant in differing circumstances, was utterly distracting and it took Chrysalis a moment to get her mind oriented. This was time her Soul Reaper duplicate used well to slam a palm into Chrysalis’ chest and chant an invocation, apparently completely unaffected by the nail’s howling pain shockwave.
“Hado Number Fifty Three: Kongobaku!” (Adamantine Blast)
Boiling lava flame intermixed with the sparking yellow arcs of electricity formed together into a pulsing sphere that burned into Chrysalis’ chest as it was fired into her, practically inserted into her chest at point blank range. She was thrown back as skin and internal organs heated up and nearly burst from the explosive discharge of lightning and fire combined. Fortunately the blast also sent her out of the radius of that nail, still affixed to the same point in the air and giving off a buzzing howl of sound.
Near instantly her charred flesh regrew, organs twitching with new growth as Chrysalis flipped in the air and retaliated with a swipe of her left hand that emitted a flash of raw emerald. The wide Cero carved forward more like a scything blade than a beam, forcing the Soul Reaper duplicate to leap upwards to avoid getting bisected, and destroying the affixed nail in an instant. Hundreds of mirrors were also caught in the Cero’s swiping motion, and Chrysalis hoped she might catch Zecora out there, somewhere.
Her injury was gone in a second, and she dusted off her now holed dress front, sighing, “Neat trick with the nail. Good to see even my Soul Reaper self has an appreciation for pain.”
“It’s a tool for growth, in the right hands, for the right reasons. In the wrong ones? Just a pointless self-indulgence, which is all that defines you,” the Reaper said, disdain clear in every acid-dripped note as she hovered a few dozen meters up from where she’d been a moment ago.
Chrysalis spat out a derisive chuckle, “Indulgence is one of life’s only genuine points for existing. Self-restriction breeds misery for all. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t give the slightest care for if others are miserable, but there’s nothing more despicable than the notion that we’re obligated to do anything other than what we fucking want to in life.”
Maybe it was because these duplicates were wearing her face, but she was feeling more incensed than usual by this kind of banal, mid-battle chatter. Usually she liked a little banter in a fight, and enjoyed teasing her foes and throwing taunts and ideologies back and forth. Made things more fun. But for some reason doing it with herself, in the guise of supposed alternate versions, was... pissing her off. This wasn’t fun. This was annoying, and she wanted to rip that smug Reaper Chrysalis' face off and make a toilet seat out of it.
Rather than fire back a comment on Chrysalis’ words, the Reaper simply swept her blade in front of her, despite still being a fair distance away. Chrysalis saw a fan of ten or so of the needles along the Zanapktou’s edge break off of the blade and fly out like miniaturized, projectile stingers. They didn’t come straight for Chrysalis, but rather juked around at several different, high-speed trajectories, which may have looked random until Chrysalis also saw her Quincy counterpart.
The Quincy was flitting across the air in sound breaking bursts of speed, and was now holding her gatling cannon with one hand. The reason for this became immediately evident as blue reishi surged from the woman, flowing from her left hand in an ice blue tide of light that then formed into a second gatling cannon. Laughing like a madwoman, Quincy Chrysalis leveled both weapons at Chrysalis’ back and unleashed a wall of reishi bullets so thick that it was less a cloud of projectiles and more a solid avalanche of pure devastation.
Throwing caution aside, Chrysalis threw herself backwards away from the flood of potent reishi bullets. She knew damn well the intent was to box her in, to make it so the Reaper’s needles could surround her in a semi-circle of pain inducing fields. As she expected, the ten or so needles all planted themselves in the air around her, creating overlapping vibrations of agony inducing energy as the metal nails howled.
Chances were her Reaper duplicate expected the pain to be enough to temporarily cripple Chrysalis’ movements, allowing the Quincy’s overwhelming barrage to then rip into her.
Chrysalis was only somewhat disappointed that the Reaper bore no look of surprise when she let all of that magnified anguish flow over her and rushed her headlong anyway. Sure, her blood felt as if it had been replaced with scathing acid. Her brain felt like it was bursting a thousand blood vessels at once, blood dribbling from her nose and eyes. But she just let the pain fuel her as she took her Zanpaktou in both hands and carved through the needles and kept going, her form vanishing with such speed it left a trail of after images as light struggled to keep up with her.
She drove her sword at the Reaper’s gut, not wanting to kill her fast, but rather see guts spill. Irritatingly, her duplicate braced and spun with equal speed, turning a gutting wound into a violent but non-fatal tear across her side as she forced Chrysalis into a spinning motion and twirled aside. Blood still flowed, red staining black robes and the torn white of the Reaper’s haori, but Chrysalis wanted to carve deeper into her foe than that!
There was no time to turn and attack again, as by now the flood of reishi bullets cascaded over the area, forcing both Chrysalis and her Reaper mirror to part by flying in opposite directions.
Even after the destructive flood passed by, Chrysalis heard the Quincy duplicate’s high pitched laughter. The woman was flying in right behind her barrage, and both gatling cannons now gathered streams of blue light around their barrels. Instead of a waterfall of bullets, this time each barrel fired off an individual spear of reishi like a combined cannon fusillade. Chrysalis had barely enough time to shield herself with a warding gesture of her Zanpaktou and arm, hardening her Hierro as the lances of reishi detonated around her in brilliantly explosive azure waves.
Again her skin was scorched and ripped, and again when the smoldering smoke faded, she was regenerating.
“You’d think if you were paying attention, you’d notice how little either of you are actually doing to me,” Chrysalis huffed.
The Quincy, the barrels of her twin gatling guns gleaming blue, split her face with a disturbingly gleeful grin that Chrysalis found reminded her just a tad of Ocellus.
“Think so? Wanna guess what my Schrift is, you inglorious Hollow hag?”
A new sensation rippled through Chrysalis' body as her skin warped and roiled in various places. Blood and flesh burst and then turned to a sour, grayed shade of decay. The wounds weren’t massive, but there were dozens where she’d been struck earlier by reishi bullets, and it was as if both on the surface on the inside that her flesh was gouging itself apart and actively rotting. It was a whole different kind of pain from the needles the Reaper used, and the Quincy Chrysalis cackled at the look of surprise on the real Chrysalis’ face.
“Sternritter R, the Ruin. Anything my reishi touches, decays, flenses itself, and dies. Regenerate all you want, bitch, but eventually the Ruin will just destroy that flesh over and over again. Who knows? Maybe it won’t kill you, but if I pump you full of enough reishi, then at best you’ll end up a ruined lump of flesh, eternally decaying and regenerating in agony.”
Her moment of surprise faded into a bubbling sea of invigorated interest. Chrysalis couldn’t help but smile, which caused her Quincy double to blink and go silent as Chrysalis then laughed, “Okay, you get a pass. The Reaper is annoying, but you’re not bad. Should have known at least my Quincy version would have some bite to her.”
“Not fishing for compliments, but yeah, Soul Reapers suck.”
“I can hear both of you.”
“We know!” said both real and Quincy Chrysalis at the same time. Even with parts of her flesh actively trying to rot and tear itself apart as she regenerated, Chrysalis mind had not ceased to consider the tactical situation.
In terms of speed, strength, and skill these mirror images of her were unsurprisingly equal to her measure. Mostly. There were minor differences that Chrysalis suspected was owed to the nature of the counterpart’s origins. The Quincy was more aggressive, less skilled, owing to living as a human of at most thirty years or so experience. The Reaper was actually a bit faster, but not as strong or durable, if only by a margin, due to Soul Reapers lacking Arrancar raw physicality. Even with the Quincy’s Schrift, Chrysalis had the advantage in attrition. The Ruin couldn’t halt her regeneration entirely, not yet anyway. She’d have to avoid taking too many more hits, otherwise the Quincy’s reishi might start to overcome her...
Which struck her as odd.
Fundamentally this was still just a battle against the Zecora Reigai’s Bankai. The Bankai had to have a limit on how much reiryoku it could output. It couldn’t be energy efficient to fuel the powers of two alternate duplicates of her.
Was that why these two mirrors hadn’t used a Bankai or Volstandig themselves? And why just two duplicates? Why not overwhelm Chrysalis with a dozen? Or a hundred? Fundamentally this Bankai had to be limited by the amount of reiatsu Zecora had access to. Which meant her counterparts were similarly limited in what powers they could use. The mere fact that they could keep up with her physically meant that the lion’s share of the Bankai’s power had to be going into fueling that, otherwise Chrysalis should have easily been able to overwhelm these two replicas.
With a small smirk, she understood what she needed to do.
Moving with the harsh speed and fluid lethality of a striking serpent, she put her Zanpaktou’s edge to her own throat, and opened it, allowing a arterial spray of blood to darken the air.
----------
The horde Arrancar of Chrysalis’ spawned children were simple beings at heart. Lacking the true independence of Chrysalis’ three trueborn, but not mindless as the drones formed purely of Chrysalis’ blood, the regular Arrancar of the horde had straightforward desires and interests born from the nature of their mother. When not engaging in bloodsport and other excesses amongst themselves, they hungered.
Hueco Mundo was filled with an excess of lesser Hollows for packs of Chrysalis’ brood to pursue and feed upon, roaming the endless dunes of lunar white in howling warbands. They made games of it, competitions, with ever shifting rules and rewards to pass the time. Then there was the world of the living, the human realm. Packs needed Chrysalis’ permission to hunt there, and often she’d grant it for specific regions, either for the sake of pissing off the local Soul Reapers of a given area, or to rile up the Quincy. The danger was greater due to that resistance, but the taste of whole human souls was far better than fellow Hollows, so it was considered a joyous day a pack was allowed to hunt in the living world.
But today, of all days, was beyond joyous. It was rapturous. A rare few packs had been given the honor to join their glorious dark mother in this promised land of plenty, this endless buffet of delight, this... Equestria. Those left behind had waited with baited breath and whining pleas for word of their returned brothers and sisters to hear any crumb of a tale about the world of candy colored ponies whose souls glowed with such rich taste.
After so much waiting, the time had finally come. Chrysalis, their generous and loving parent for whom any and all in the horde would die for in an instant, had brought the whole family this time! They were to be the vanguard of Lord Tirek’s soon to be arriving invasion, and every single Hollow born from Chrysalis’ blood intended to gorge themselves fully before the other Espada and hordes arrived to provide competition.
Mother had given permission to go hog wild, after all.
There was no hesitation or fear for Chrysalis among her horde, even as they all sensed the raw power of the fake Soul Reaper’s Bankai. All eyes could plainly see the glittering, thick cloud of mirror shards marking a several hundred meter radius in the golden desert sands. They heard the thunders of battle from within, felt the violent surging of their mother’s towering reiatsu clashing with others within that deadly field of mirrors. With darkness falling, the mirror shards reflected moon and starlight in sparkling rivers that might have been found beautiful had the eyes of the Arrancar horde cared to waste time looking.
All they knew was that their progenitor fought, and all sane members of the horde knew to remain well out of Chrysalis' way in such circumstances. It wasn’t as if, in their minds, she was even capable of being killed. So, for them, it was playtime, with all of the innocent, carefree glee of children released upon a playground.
Of course, some packs argued over who would get to go where. Klugetown was nearby, the nearest source of souls, and so a brief, violent contest ensued in which the strongest packs fought for position. This only lasted a few minutes. Everyone was too hungry and excited to spent too much time on arguing over who’d get to go to the nearby town. Besides, by all the stories they’d heard, much larger cities existed elsewhere in the world, perhaps days or weeks away by conventional means but not nearly so far as an Arrancar moves.
And so the packs scattered their separate ways, each one consisting of a few dozen to even a few hundred Arrancar. The designated few that Chrysalis had handpicked had to stay behind to keep order in the Soul Reaper fortress of Hitsuyo-Aku, which they’d grumbled about, but their mother had promised them that for their service and restraint she’d treat them to a special outing herself, later.
As it was, two packs had tied over rights to Klugetown, numbering about fifty or so Arrancar between them. With grinning faces and casual boasting over how many souls each would get to gorge upon, they crossed the darkened desert like super-sonic bullet trains in miniature. They ran together loosely, kicking up a vast wall of sand dust in their wake, one that swiftly reached a soaring height.
In distant Klugetown, the some ten thousand resident and travelers passing through of a dozen or more of Equestrias varied species all were busy about the process of engaging in the towns highly active night life. Klugetown was not a place of rest, but constant drinking, gambling, trading, skullduggery, and general debauchery. Far from any other nation of “civilized” rules, those who either dwelled in the mish-mash of clay and stone buildings build up into a patchwork mesas followed only their own rules and passions, most of which might make a passing Equestrian pony double-take.
But there was some small notion of authority in the form of the organized merchant guilds and borderline criminal groups that kept things mostly in line, ensuring Klugetown didn’t descend into complete anarchy. This also meant that there were, kinda sorta, “town guards''. In truth, this title was barely recognized by either the local populace or the guards themselves, who were mostly either very bored volunteers with nothing better to do, or some poor schmuck on punishment duty as a result of ticking off one of their merchant bosses. Almost one and all the guards of Klugetown spent as much time drinking and gambling over the course of the night as any of the tavern goers, even if they did sit on the walls or watchtowers while doing it.
But even a drunk, distracted guard would not have missed the nearly mile high wall of sand being kicked up to the point that it stained the moon, still low on the night horizon.
“Oi, Heckta, ya see that, mate?” said one lizard-like fellow with a long crocodilian snout, flopping tail, and a tin can on his head that more or less constituted a helmet, while the spiked length of wood he carried served as his truncheon.
His companion, a bleary eyed, red faced drunk of a turtle-shaped individual barely looked up from their cards with faint irritation, “See wot?”
“That there looks like a sand storm brewin’ our way, but it’s funny lookin’,” said the lizard man, gesturing with his truncheon, “Lookin’ loik its comin’ right at us in a’ line.”
With a great, heaving sigh of someone who very much did not want to get up, the turtle person, who was wearing what at best could be described as stitched together pot armor over his already thick shelled body, stood and joined his fellow guard. The pair were on one of the tallest watchtowers on Klugetown’s northern wall, and the night desert could be seen like a silver sea for many miles around. Blinking the blur from his eyes, the turtle squinted at the fast approaching cloud of sand.
“Well oi’ll be... that is kinda funny lookin’ fer a sand storm-”
“GET EVERYONE OUT OF TOWN RIGHT NOW!”’
Both guards screamed in high pitched tenors, clutching each other and dropping their respective weapons as a pink, female pegasus wearing what looked to be some ridiculously expensive, advanced, form fitting purple armor that jetted purple energy from its metallic wings suddenly appeared right in front of their watchtower and shouted in their faces at the top of her lungs.
The pegasus blinked at them as they kept screaming, and looked at the giant, hexagon shaped cannon cradled in her right hoof, “Uh, guys, chill, I’m not going to shoot you. But this town is in serious trouble, so could you please stop screaming and, I don’t know, sound an alarm?”
The guards almost did stop screaming, but then the shadows grew around them like a pool of thick oil, and both went from screaming to more a terrified, heavy panting as the shadows grew and resolved into the shape of a unicorn pony, black as soot, with piercing green eyes. The unicorn stallion regarded the pegasus coolly, his expression flat as granite.
“I don’t think that’s going to reassure them. We’re also not going to get an alarm raised fast enough, Firefly. The enemy will be here in minutes.”
“You think I don’t know that!? Still, we got to get this place evacuated somehow,” the pegasus said, fear and worry plain on her face as she looked behind her. The guards, barely able to think straight, couldn’t help but notice she looked right at the approaching storm cloud of sand, and touched the odd visor of purple glass across her eyes, which suddenly beeped and flashed with symbols.
“We’ve got fifty two Arrancar coming our way, each one around Fourth or Fifth seat officer level. A couple of them are more on par with Lieutenants.”
“I don’t know what that means in terms of power,” said the dark unicorn, “How strong are you and that Zecora woman, comparatively?”
“Stronger. More like Captains, but Zecora was rocking more raw reiatsu than me. I can take... I don’t know, maybe a third of the guys coming at us?”
With a pursing of his lips the unicorn flicked his tail and the shadows at his hooves grew up around his legs like black vines, “I could account for another third, then, under ideal circumstances. With night fallen, the darkness serves me better, but I drained a good deal of my magic reserves fighting you.”
The pegasus spared the unicorn a shamed glance without truly taking her eyes off of the approaching storm, “Hindsight sucks. I’m sorry about what’s happening. Rake me over the coals all you want later, if we survive the next half hour. We still need to figure out how to save these people.”
“W-w-wait a tik, luv,” managed to stammer the lizard man, “Wots all this about, eh? Who’re you tossers?”
He flinched, eyes wide as the unicorn, so coated in shadows now that he all but blended into the night background, put a hoof on his shoulder, “There is no time for explanations beyond the fact that monsters beyond your worst nightmares approach Klugetown, intent on devouring every soul within these walls. Me and this pegasus will do our utmost to stave off their assault, but you two must spread the warning and evacuate.”
The unicorn gestured towards a series of taller towers clustered near the center of Klugetown’s mesas, where half a dozen airships of various sizes and shapes were docked. His tone carried the leaden weight of command mixed with earnest sincerity. “Fleeing on foot will be too slow. Wait until we engage the foe, then pile whom you can on those vessels and flee to the sky. Pack the decks shoulder to shoulder, if you have to.”
“W-won’t be ‘nough room, even if we git all them captains ta agree,” stammered the turtle. The stallions’ eyes of emerald light narrowed, his voice hardening.
“Then make them agree, and load the females and young first. Every able bodied other creature is to then flee on foot, or if your conscience dictates, take up arms. There is no more time to argue or plan. Go. Now!”
“But who’s gonna believe us?” cried the turtle, but just then a crimson light bathed the air, and the unicorn looked outward towards the desert with a grim curl of his lips illuminated past his curling shadows.
“They all will, soon.”
The first Cero beam, little wider than a few meters but still packing a stone shattering punch, hit the northern wall of Klugetown with a deafening detonation. A good ten meter span of hard stone and packed earth that had kept the town safe from storms and invaders alike for decades came crumbling down in an instant as the crimson beam of otherworldly spirit energy carved up the tall edifice. A couple of distant shouts of alarm and fear could be heard from guards unfortunate enough to be close to the point of impact.
“Crap, they’re in range,” said the pegasus, “More will be coming in. Clear the damn walls! Sombra, I’m hitting them on the left. You take the right. We delay the bastards as long as we can and try to keep their firepower focused on us!”
She didn’t even await a reply. Jets of pure purple light flared with beautiful life in the silvery night as her metal wings spread wider and the pegasus jetted off with speeds neither Klugetown guard could see to even believe. In an instant she was just a violet comet of light heading right for the approaching storm, and the very next instant a barrage of brilliant purple beams fired into the distance, exploding in fiery blossoms amid whatever force was coming to reave their town.
The unicorn, Sombra, blew a harsh, intense breath from his nostrils, frosting the night air as shadows embraced him from the ground up. He didn’t even spare the guards another glance before the darkness took him wholly and he moved with the speed of shadow itself to join Firefly in the fray.
----------
Firefly didn’t have time to think, and barely time to aim. More than fifty Arrancar was a tall order for anyone, even if none of them were near Espada strength. Chrysalis hordlings were dangerous because of their viciousness and numbers, and before Firefly had even gotten off her fifth shot from Ace of Sky’s potent cannon she was having to corkscrew, dive, and climb like a mad sparrow to avoid a disco-ball stitching of crimson Cero beams that tore up at her from the approaching Hollows.
Which was all well and good. Dodging she could do, and that meant that these were Ceros not being aimed at Klugetown.
The Arrancar host had slowed their headlong run towards the town, but only a little, enough for them to throw hands skyward to unleash their blood-stain blasts of spirit energy, while around ten of them leaped skyward to engage her. They cackling black forms kicked off the air in rapid thrusts of Sonido that rapidly saw her getting blindsided by their swift motions and slashing blades.
Firefly was no slouch in the speed department, and twisted her body even more, her form darting in blindingly swift curving motions as she let blades miss her by centimeters. One did clip her left wing, leaving a gouge in the metal armor, but not enough to slow her down. She spun over onto her back, flying backwards as she looked upon the cluster of enemies that had tried to surround her. Her visor flashed with a smear of targeting circles as each Arrancar was individually locked on.
“Dinner isn’t in town, kiddos, it’s right here with mamma!”
Hatches on her Fullbring’s thigh plates opened up, and a swarm of energy charged missiles were spat out in the volume of several dozen warheads.
“Now eat it!”
The Arrancar re-enacted her evasive maneuvers from moments ago, most leaping or spiraling away with the bursting twitches of Sonidos. Her missiles tracked their individual reiatsu, coursing after their targets with the dogged determination of pissed off hornets. The star strewn night sky became alight with fresh stars of light, purple detonations as missiles either found their marks or were just barely evaded and exploded in near misses. Firefly didn’t even have time to check if any of the hits resulted in deaths or injuries among her foes, because she had to hurl herself into a sharp dive as a trio of Ceros nearly caught her in a crossfire. She felt a sting of pain in her left side as the close miss still left the destructive energies brushing against her armor and melting plates away.
Heading for the ground, she saw that about another five or six of the bastards had halted and were now wholly focused on tracking her with their palms, the ruby glint of more Ceros forming. The rest were still making a straight charge for Klugetown, and to Firefly’s dismay she saw that a whole line of Cero beams were being charged up and fired into the town’s north wall. Explosions rocked that side of the town, and Firefly’s heart and mind clenched in anger and fresh shame.
We should have killed Chrysalis the second we got here and didn’t need her damn help anymore...
Or perhaps it went further back than that. Should she and Starlight had followed this course at all? But the Zero Division... they needed to be stopped, no matter what. In Firefly’s mind she could see with crystal clarity the moment she held her little Dashie in her arms, seeing all the potential and life in that little blue miracle. What price wasn’t worth it, to ensure the Zero Division couldn’t steal her daughter’s future?
And how many futures were being stolen right now, because of the path she and Starlight had stubbornly pursued, believing themselves to be the only ones who could solve the problem?
She cast the thoughts deep down. No time. Not now. Fight first. Rumination and recompense could come after.
For a mercy, not every Cero struck Klugetown. A wall of purest black rose to meet the barrage, an aegis of shadow born of ancient magic. Sombra may have been tired and drained, but that was not the same as weak. The towering bastion of darkness absorbed a dozen or more Ceros, reducing the impact on Klugetown to a handful of explosions in the outskirts and walls. Then the unicorn himself stepped from his roiling tide wall of night born darkness, green eyes ablaze like damming torches.
Even Firefly, flying so fast that the wind was a howling shriek in her ears, heard Sombra’s voice bellow with magically induced intensity that would put thunder itself to shame.
“I am Sombra Umbra, He Who Walks in Shadow, and the souls of this land are not yours to reap, invaders from another world! Come forth, and die in darkness, cretinous spirits!”
It was not meant to make the Arrancar run. Nor was it a jest. Sombra knew precisely what he was doing, and it was working. With howls of glee at the challenge, almost every Arrancar not currently trying to shoot Firefly out of the sky instead altered course and went right for the former villain, unable to resist either the brazen challenge itself or the delicious smell of the magic within his potent soul.
For now, at least, the residents Klugetown would have precious time to save themselves and escape.
Assuming its two defenders lasted long enough to buy it for them.
----------
A soft sigh of pleasure gurgled from Chrysalis’ slit throat as she let her blood jet forth in an unmitigated spray. Rather than simply splatter about at random, droplets of blood congealed into scores of ruby spheres that floated before her. Her gaping throat wound closed with the wet squelch of mending flesh, and Chrysalis spat out a last globule of blood as she grinned with reddened teeth.
Her counterparts both clearly understood the nature of what Chrysalis was doing, the Quincy Chrysalis clashing together her rotary canons with the barrels already spinning up to a humming haze in preparation to unload a fresh salvo. In the same instant the Reaper Chrysalis began to invoke another Kido, waving her left hand forward with a familiar spark of golden light.
“Bakudo Number Sixty-”
Chrysalis didn’t let her finish the invocation, moving with a sonic crack of speed that sent her hurtling into her Reaper mirror’s midriff with a shoulder charge that nearly bent the other woman double-over and caused blood and spittle to fly from the Reaper’s mouth as she was thrown back. Chrysalis, before she’d even moved, had let a trail of sparking green energy flow from her own hand to spread among the blood droplets, and she charged at her Quincy duplicate as she intoned her power into her soon to be brood.
“Nacimiento Sanguinario.” (Sanguine Birth)
The Quincy Chrysalis was forced to choose between firing upon the array of blood droplets which at that very moment began to undulate and grow, sprouting spindly limbs and horrible, clawed hands and insectile faces of bearing razor mawed teeth, or taking aim at Chrysalis herself who was bearing down on her even faster than she had against the Reaper.
With no more than a microsecond to choose, the Quincy went with her instinct and choose the progenitor instead of the progeny. The twin barrels snapped towards Chrysalis with a flash of silver speed, and a hellstorm of reishi bullets greeted the Second Espada. With even slicker speed, Chrysalis spun her course to the side, evading the torrent of destruction as she came in upon the Quincy with a straight thrust of her blade at the woman’s neck. Flipping faster than Chrysalis could have imagined, the Quincy contorted over the thrust and with shocking strength she used the gatling canons as bludgeons. The pure red of veins glowing bright showed the potency of Blut Arterie in the Quincy Chrysalis’ veins as both massive guns became whirling instruments of physical punishment. Chrysalis managed to twist aside one, only to find her body crumbled over the barrel of the other, and all but mimicking what had been down to her Reaper doppelganger, she was doubled over and sent flying by a shockwave of impact force.
It hurt, sure, but what did it matter? Her drone children had finished forming, even if it was just a small army of the blood born, mindless variety.
With howls of pure instinctual fury and hunger, nearly a hundred of the sanguine born Hollow drones rushed across the field of mirror shards, splitting in halves to go after Reaper and Quincy both.
As Chrysalis bounced off of one mirror and landed atop another, she shook herself and took a second to let her spin realign and some of her internal organs to grow back from being nearly pulped. She watched as the Quincy turned her attention to the attacking horde of drones, and heard the duplicate all but roar with delighted laughter.
“Giving me more targets to splatter? At least you know how to throw a party!”
The blazing thunder of reishi bullets echoed as blue lines of hammering fire tore a hole through the horde. Yet howling still the drones came on, ignoring the bursting gore of their fallen comrades as they surrounded the Quincy with a maelstrom of slashing claws and gnashing teeth. None of it seemed to bother the Quincy Chrysalis, who just kept laughing like a kid on a sugar high, wielding her stupidly massive cannons with the deft ease someone else might wield a pair of light daggers. Drones that weren’t caught in the constant stream of unending reishi bullets flying out of either weapon were being smacked aside by the twirling of the huge weapons. This only got worse when, with a swift click, a rod extended from the back housing of each cannon and suddenly the pair were connected into the most ridiculous looking double-gatling-cannon-staff that must have come from the mind of a very inebriated individual.
Chrysalis surmised her Quincy counterpart must have designed the weapon herself.
As questionable as it’s physical form was, the double cannon staff... thing, was put to immediately effective use as the Quincy spun the whole thing like a tornado and unleashed what could only be described as a stupid amount of reishi blasts in all directions, all while screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Kugel Holle!” (Bullet Hell)
There was so much ludicrous levels of swift azure reishi rounds flying in all directions, so dense and thick, yet bizarrely intricate in their patterns, that Chrysalis had little choice but to back off and try to evade. Mirrors were shattering in multitudes under the hailstorm, and Chrysalis even saw her Reaper double flickering away with a Flash Step to try to get space from the center of the hurricane bullet storm taking place.
Chrysalis’ body, despite her best efforts to Sonido from point to point in a dizzying streak of speed, still got punctured over and over again. There was just too many to be dodged entirely. The Reaper got away with minimal injury through the swift and efficient use of a Kido, one Chrysalis recognized as the classic and potent defense spell, “Danku”, which formed a glassy field of pure force from which the bullets bounced off like rain on a windshield.
What should have been injuries that closed nearly as fast as they appeared upon Chrysalis’ flesh now writhed and seeped with the war between her regenerative powers and the strength of the Quincy’s Schrift, the Ruin. Every sharp projectile of Quincy reishi that penetrated her infused Chrysalis with a bit more of the Schrift’s infectious power. By comparison her own reiatsu still soared higher, but the Schrift was gaining ground, the injuries remaining flesh wounds that refused to fully mend.
No matter, Chrysalis thought. As soon as the Quincy was dead, the Schrift’s power would fade.
Despite the monstrous rain of bullets, her blood born drones remained laser focused upon the Quincy’s death. Even as their bodies were torn apart, the spindly Hollows hurled their carcasses upon the Quincy Chrysalis, bodies distending as energies built up within them to a crimson glow. The Quincy’s eyes glared as explosions ripped across her, nearly half of the drones Chrysalis had made self-destructing around the Quincy in their violent death throes. The flowering field of crimson blossoms flashed bright, and the Quincy fell in a smoking trail to the desert below. She was intact, her bare skin covered now in lines of azure blue from Blut Vene, but one of her gatling cannons was shattered upon the staff, and she hit the ground in a stunned heap.
Not dead, but she would be down for a moment, and even when she stood would still have the surviving pack of drones to deal with. This was Chrysalis’ moment to focus all her fury upon the Reaper, just as planned!
With a grin of glee she greeted her Soul Reaper mirror with an outstretched palm that cracked around its fingers with intense emerald light. She bracketed the Reaper with a swarm of Bala, the small and condensed bolts of reishi green around their edges, but containing smeared globs of Chrysalis’ blood that turned each bullet into a spiked menace that would rip and flense flesh.
Despite the intensity of the focused barrage, the Reaper Chrysalis was as graceful and precise as ever, stepping back with one Flash Step after another and sweeping her curved Zanpaktou in wide, elegant arcs that slashed down the Bala four or five at a time. Still, Chrysalis came on, knowing she’d catch up and overwhelm her counterpart in just a moment!
She almost didn’t see the mirrors move. The countless hundreds of mirror shards consisting of Zecora’s Bankai had done little more than lazily and randomly float around this entire time. So much so that Chrysalis had not immediately noticed when a batch of the mirrors now moved with genuine intent and formed a cordon around an area her headlong charge was taking her through.
Instinct more than anything else kept Chrysalis from being struck when the first needle of steel shot from one of the mirrors in a flash of glinting light. She even managed to dodge the next dozen or so that stabbed through the air at her, extending like liquid metal to fill the space around her in a dense field of piercing metal nails.
But one got her in the ankle, slowing her just a fraction of an instant enough for more to strike her, sinking into her arms, her torso, and even her neck. Even so Chrysalis twisted and slashed with her Zanpaktou, annihilating a dozen or more of the extending needles that failed to connect with her as they fell to pieces under her assault. She bent and twisted others with raw strength and nearly wrenched free fully before...
Pain.
Not pain in the previous sense she was so familiar with. No sensation of sharp, cutting flesh she knew so intimately. Not the raw, bruising strength of pain from being smashed through walls. Not even the intense, fiery sensation of burning skin and muscle she’d experienced against foes who so loved fire or acid as their elements of choice.
This pain was nearly beyond the word itself. It didn’t have an easy, lyrical metaphor to give it shape for the mind. There was no point of comparison, even for a creature like Chrysalis who had spent centuries of her existence indulging and exploring both the delivery and receiving of pain. This was a sensation that ripped into her core and spread with the immediate rush of a nuclear blast wave through every pore of her being.
For the first time in uncounted centuries, Chrysalis, the Second Espada, screamed. She was barely even aware that the sound was her own, but like an echo through a dull roar of thunder, she did hear a voice speaking. It was her own, but it wasn’t hers. The Soul Reaper had approached her, impaled upon something like twenty of the needles extending from the surrounding mirrors, and sensually touched her Zanpaktou like a lover might.
“I’m glad of your arrogance. A wiser woman might have wondered if the mirrors could do more than make duplicates. Well, now that you’re in my blade’s caring embrace, perhaps I can educate you, my poor, deluded ‘real self’.”
Chrysalis heard the words, and even had enough willpower to focus on them, anger starting to rise in her insides as the Reaper strode around her in a circle, like a professor looking upon a dullard of a student at their desk. Before Chrysalis could do more than open her mouth to spit a retort, she was immersed in the wordless, indescribable ocean of pain, and words became another choked scream, this time barely bit back into a barely more dignified grunt.
“Ah ah, no speaking. Only listening. You really have so little experience with real pain, don’t you? You’ve only crudely administered it with your Hollow orgies of brutality. In battle you’re so reliant on your regeneration, which wipes away physical pain quickly, that you don’t even appreciate the pain of a wound. Little wonder you’re such a inelegant creature.”
“Fu...fuc...” Chrysalis tried to breath, before she felt the pain roll across her in entirely new, bone shattering ways, as if she was being dragged across an unseen spectrum of colors, and each color a new flavor of agony.
“I usually don’t go this overboard on someone, but I feel you’re a special case. One needle from my Zanpaktou is enough to bring most people to their breaking point. I can’t remember the last time I used so many on one person. Oh, and if you think this is painful, be grateful I’m stuck with only my Shikai in this duplicated state. Just imagine what I could show you with my Bankai?”
Chrysalis had ceased paying the Reaper much mind. The pain was what she focused on. With each new wave of it, she felt like she was reaching just a little closer to adjusting to it. Her Reaper replica was right, she’d never experienced pain on this level before. Her regenerative powers usually took care of injuries so quickly tha she didn’t have time to really appreciate the sensations. She’d never imagined it was possible for pain to burn this brightly in ones senses. Like jumping into a frozen lake for the first time, its a shock to the system.
And just like such a shocking immersion into cold water, one adjusts to it.
The Reaper was still talking, but Chrysalis was not hearing the words. Her body coiled, tensed, and strained as she focused upon the sensations of her flesh. The pain interfered still, near overwhelming, but now that she was getting used to it she could sense beyond it to the feeling of the metal nails digging into muscle and bone. She gradually built tension and power in her arms, her legs, and chest as she flexed and readied herself.
Her Soul Reaper double had circled back to stand in front of her, still holding her Zanpaktou like a teacher holding a pointer for a blackboard, “While I hope this has been informative, I’m afraid its time for the lesson to end.”
She raised her Zanpaktou in preparation to strike Chrysalis’ head off.
That was when Chrysalis made her move. Like a butterfly bursting from its cocoon, Chrysalis’ body heaved and split. In a shower of red gore that splattered everywhere, Chrysalis divested herself of her outer shell of wounded skin and muscle and as a drenched red skeleton of still beating organs, she struck with all the sudden savagery and fury of a horror movie slasher. Free of the needles and their special pain, Chrysalis’ first strike took the Reaper’s legs off above the knee, toppling her backwards as Chrysalis rammed into her with her other free hand, now balled into a meaty fist of bone.
Already her flesh was regenerating. Tearing free of her skin and outer layer of muscle had also gotten her free of the wounds infected by the Quicy’s Schrift. As her fist rammed into the Reaper’s stomach and tore through it out of the shocked woman’s back, Chrysalis’ hand had already regrown a shell of perfect, onyx skin. Her skeletal face of muscle and bone swiftly grew new flesh, her hair bursting from her scalp like a waterfall of dark green. Before she was even done flinging the Reaper’s body off of her bloody fist to the ground, Chrysalis was whole again, naked and covered in her and her foe’s blood.
Her natural state.
“Thanks,” she spat at the twitching Reaper bleeding out into the sands, “Neat lesson. Kinda liked it. Now then...”
She raised her palm and gathered the baleful jade glow of a Cero, “Kindly piss the hell off and die.”
The blinding green beam blasted forth with a sonic boom, and engulfed the fallen Reaper in a pillar of disintegrating power. The resulting explosion shook the desert and cored an immensely deep hole in the ground several dozen meters wide. Chrysalis saw her Soul Reaper mirror’s body flake away in the light of destruction, cracking and turning into small, broken mirrors shards before vanishing.
With that taken care of, she took a second to collect herself, looking at her palm for a second. To her annoyance, her hand shook a little. She was drained.
A glance showed her the Quincy Chrysalis was finishing off the last of the drones she’d created, so Chrysalis took an extra moment to retrieve was was left of her tattered, blood-stained clothes. Even she didn’t feel like fighting butt naked for no reason. Especially without anyone worth showing off to. Tearing her dress in half, given its present state wasn’t any good to her, she wrapped the two halves around herself, one over the waist, the other over the chest. Good enough, she figured. Kind of gave her a bloody, tattered barbarian princess look. It’d do for now.
By the time she was done getting dressed, the last of her drones fell, crushed to paste by the Quincy wielding the remaining end of her gatling cannon staff like a massive club and creating a shockwave through the sands for several football fields of distance. Chrysalis walked up as the Quincy shouldered the weapon. Her counterpart scoffed, looking over at the still smoking hole the Cero had made.
“Aw, so the Soul Reaper bites it first? No shocker, there. Woman had her head waaaaay up her ass if you ask me.”
Chrysalis nodded, “Preaching to the choir. Makes my skin crawl to think I could have turned out like that.”
“Hah, yeah, because being a soul sucking, homicidal Hollow is so much better?” asked the Quincy Chrysalis, giving off a lyrical chortle as she took aim with her gatling cannon, “Let’s face it, Chryssy, all versions of us have got problems. Just a question of which among us learned to make those problems work for us better.”
Chrysalis responded with a cheeky grin, not even bothering to wipe some of her own blood and viscera that remained on her face after she’d torn her own flesh off to escape the Reaper’s Zanpaktou. “You say ‘problems’. I say ‘charming natural instincts’. To each their own. My Soul Reaper self loved hearing herself talk-”
“Gee, imagine that,” quipped the Quincy, and Chrysalis continued to speak, knowing full well her own hypocrisy and rather enjoying the sass.
“-and that’s about all we had in common. I get the feeling she lived an entirely too uptight lifestyle. A little like poor Starlight Glimmer.”
“Oh, that how Glimmy is here?” said the Quincy, pursing her lips and tapping them with a finger, “She’s rather wild where I come from.”
That did make Chrysalis’ head tilt in abject curiosity she couldn’t fully rein in, “You speak as if you and that Reaper aren’t just reflections created by this Bankai.”
To this the Quincy Chrysalis giggled and shrugged, leveling her gatling cannon again, “We are. But what do you think we’re reflecting, exactly? Zecora’s Zanpaktou’s power is to see into the complete, utter truth of something. The Shikai just reveals, while the Bankai reflects. I’m as true as you are, even if I’m just a reflection. That means complete memories, babe, not just power or personality. Hell, you want to get all multiversal about it we might even be snippets of a genuine alternate reality that the Bankai can peer into. Who knows, right?”
Chrysalis made a face alongside a dispassionate grunt, “Nope, not entertaining that level of nonsense. Let’s just get back to killing each other. Much simpler and more fun. And now that I’ve got you alone, I think I can take my time with you, ‘Ruin’ or not.”
“Aww,” said the Quicy with the snarling grin of a person who knew a nasty joke about to be played, “But who said you had me alone?”
That was the only warning Chrysalis had before the ground beneath her exploded in a shower of sand as a swarm of several hundred voracious scarabs formed of jade shot upwards. The small insects of hard jewel rock struck like munching cuisinarts, mouths digging into flesh as they buzzed around her. Chrysalis let out a burst of raw reiatsu from her body as she slammed her blade around in a straight pressure wave, scattering the swarm as she dodged back. The swarm of scarabs didn’t pursue her, instead coalescing together into one larger scarab who’s body shifted with the mass of beetles it was composed of.
Standing atop the swarm turned singular beetle was a Chrysalis wearing what could be at best described as gothic punk chic. Her green hair was a swept back, short cut affair, dyed black at the tips. Her dark clothing of stockings and leather were metal studded in many places, with boots large and belted enough to make more fashion statement than serve practical purpose. This Chrysalis looked... younger, a teenager, and from her hands dripped blood that with a flash of green Fullbringer Light turned into more scarabs that buzzed around her.
“S’up,” said this Chrysalis, the taste of her reiatsu on the air quite human, “Guessing you’re what I’d look like if I were a stuck up, megalomaniacle Espada? Wonder what Sun and the rest of the girls would make of me like this?”
Chrysalis couldn’t quite help herself as she rubbed the bridge of her nose, “Great... a human me. I think I’ll kill you even quicker than the Reaper.”
“Depends on how fast you can chew through the rest of us,” said the Fullbringer Chrysalis with a sly glint in her eyes, and with a groan of pure aggravation Chrysalis spun as she felt two more reiatsu flare up behind her and she heard two other distinct versions of her voice speaking over one another.
“Inks Spellcode Number Sixty: Dark Scripture!”
“Raubtier, Zeige Dich!”
One darting form used what looked to be a pair of hand held paint guns to spray black paint in the air, the paint clinging in mid-air as if it had been painted onto a flat and solid surface. The black paint formed a complex pentagram with several variants of the numbers ‘66’ within the paint. Then with a burst of spiritual pressure and power the pentagram flared with black light and a torrent of indescribable script wrote itself through the air and into the ground, surrounding Chrysalis and forming a circular barrier. She felt it put pressure on her, like an immense press of gravity. It reminded her of the Soul Reaper’s ‘Kurohitsugi’ Kido, only less focused.
The one who’d created this strange spell was a Chrysalis wearing something akin to a business suit and dress, well tailored and dark green. On her shoulders were wide, stylized patches showing a symbol of a paintbrush etched in brass. She wore thick glasses and her silken green hair was tied back in a conservative bun. This, combined with her rather still voluptuous body hidden behind her suit, but pushing the poor garment to bursting, gave this Chrysalis a distinct ‘librarian fantasy’ look about her. Her high heels hardly seemed to slow her as she held her paint guns towards the ground and emitted more paint from them, the dark spray seeming to reinforce the circle of increased pressure that Chrysalis was inside.
“Get her while she’s held!” shouted the glasses wearing Chrysalis, “My magic isn’t going to hold out for long!”
This was shouted to the other new Chrysalis that had emerged from the many floating mirrors. This Chrysalis was somehow the most plain one yet, almost specifically lacking in any ostentatious clothing. Her hair was mussy, almost unkempt, but still long. She wore a totally nondescript black shirt over her still ample assets, and equally plain black pants and shoes. There were only two things she wore that were remotely distinct about this dour-faced Chrysalis. One was her long, leather trench coat that was oddly split in color, the upper half brown, the lower half black. The other was the oddly ornate, gold finger sheath she wore on her left index finger, like a single golden claw. On the back of the adornment a single crest flashed red, and from which came forth a thick wash of gray light that soon coalesced into a humongous and monstrous claw consisting of six scythe-like blades. The center of this single claw bore a skull face, as if the giant hand was also the face for some kind of demonic construct. The arm of this construct remained attached to the finger sheath on the dour Chrysalis, whom the real Chrysalis now understood was a Bount.
“Suck her dry, Raubtier,” said the Bount Chrysalis, and the demonic face within the metallic claw arm, which had grown to the size of a pine tree, laughed with a screech of metal saws as it slammed down towards Chrysalis.
She raised her Zanpaktou, bracing it with her other arm as the Bount’s doll struck, rattling her body with an admittedly impressive impact as the six scythe fingers tried to slice her. Sparks flew as her blade impeded them, but even so she felt her reiatsu start to flow out of her body as this Bount doll opened the skeletal demon mouth housed within the claw’s palm and began to make a suction noise. She saw flakes of her green reiatsu aura wafting off of her and into the Bount. It was a trickle of draining, normally nothing to be concerned over, but by now the Quincy Chrysalis had stopped watching the spectacle and the barrels of her gatling canon began to spin.
Reiatsu drain, plus the destructive nature of the Ruin Schrift would spell serious trouble if Chrysalis let both take their toll on her. ‘
And amid all of this, that damn Reigai had yet to show her face.
It was enough to make Chrysalis bark a laugh as she decided she was well and truly done with this farce. In a lot of ways she was impressed. She had thought to wipe out the Reigai and her Bankai in short order, but this had proven to be a far larger threat than she’d expected. Under other circumstances Chrysalis would have been elated to find an opponent who had the potential to actually kill her. She just wasn’t fond of seeing so many different versions of her own face. As if each of these replicas was just demonstrating some lesser version of herself. Were any of these fakers even mothers?
Still, credit where it was due... this proved that Starlight Glimmer had had Chrysalis’ number all along. She’d thought the cocky Substitute Soul Reaper had been relying on being able to overwhelm her with the aid of her other allies to keep Chrysalis in check. But no, she’d had Zecora’s Zanpaktou this whole time, and likely knew exactly what it’s Bankai ability was. This told Chrysalis many things. That Starlight had targeted Zecora during the infiltration of Soul Society not merely because Zecora was an ideal person for Chrysalis to take the place of, but because taking Zecora’s Zanpaktou was key beyond just the plan to frame Celestia and Luna. Starlight must have known what Zecora’s Bankai could do. How? Likely through the same archives she’d raided to learn about Zero Division.
She couldn’t have known for sure that any alternate version of Chrysalis created by the Bankai would have abilities that could counter her regeneration, but Starlight’s own Zanpaktou was something of a mystery itself. As far as Chrysalis knew, it was entirely possible she could extrapolate the full powers of any Zanpaktou she’d stolen, and Zecora’s Shikai alone granted incredibly detailed knowledge of what its power scanned.
Chrysalis herself had used it, after all. Yet Starlight’s Shikai didn’t grant the ability to use a stolen Zanpaktou’s Bankai. From this, Chrysalis easily guessed that Starlight’s own long withheld Bankai must remove that restriction. It now also made sense to her why Starlight had empowered the Reigai Zecora so much over her fellow Mod Souls.
“Hah...hahaha! She planned on killing me all along, and even let me play around with the Zanpaktou that she would use to do it to alay my suspicions! Starlight Glimmer, it’s such a shame you lost to Celestia. Reaving Zero Division’s blood with you would have been much more fun than playing second fiddle to Tirek.”
“What’s she babbling about?” asked the Fullbringer Chrysalis.
“Real world affairs. No matter to reflections like us,” said the librarian one, whose origin Chrysalis had no idea of and was only vaguely curious about at the moment.
“What’s taking so long, Quincy?” asked the Bount Chrysalis, frowning as she held her hand out, as if straining ot aid her Doll in pressing down upon Chrysalis body with its massive bladed fingers.
Her Quincy counterpart licked her lips, the barrels of her gatling cannon spinning faster and faster. Rather than shooting its usual barrage of small reishi bullets, it was building up a growing circle of scintillating power that seemed to grow larger and more chaotic with each second. Particles of reishi were flowing from her and the air around her to gather into the ever spinning barrels, the single blinding circle of azure they were creating strobing with potency, “Need another few seconds! The Ruin ain’t enough with the usual rounds! I’m charging up the strongest attack I got without Volstandig! Just hold her still a little longer!”
In response, the Fullbringer Chrysalis nodded and waved her hands, and swarms of her jade scarabs flew from the larger mass she stood upon. As the swarms entered the binding circle the librarian had created, Chrysalis figured the plan was to have the scarabs help pin her down. Or maybe devour her limbs, to make it harder for her to move? Whatever the plan was, it was too late.
Chrysalis had been gathering power herself, letting her reiatsu pulsate louder and harsher inside herself. For all the individual skills these mirror images brought to the table, all of them were limited by the singular restraining fact that they got their power not from themselves but from the Reigai Zecora. Bankai or not, there was only so much spiritual energy to go around, and Chrysalis for all the injuries she’d taken so far, had far from exhausted her own ample supply.
And she really didn’t care if she blew herself up a bit, just to make a point.
She raised her head up, mouth opening wide, jaw all but unhinging as she sucked in air and power alike. Her throat and mouth all but radiated a sickly emerald glow as the air itself around her wavered and distorted with the amount of reiatsu she was outputting. All it took was her running her tongue once over sharp teeth to add a bit of extra blood to the mix, turning emerald to a mixture of cerulean blue. Then, she threw her head down and disgorged a point-blank Gran Rey Cero straight into the ground at her feet.
From this, everything exploded into a field of pure blue. She couldn’t see or even sense who among the mirror duplicates she might have destroyed, because the explosion of pure destructive spirit energy was all encompassing and resulted in a blast large enough to sweep away nearly a kilometer of desert. The mushroom cloud that soared into the air could be seen for miles around, even as the ground continued to shake from the blast. Hitsuyo-Aku, nestled in its canyon at the edge of the blast, was still rocked to its foundations.
Chrysalis herself was not particularly insulated from her own blast, but her body could reconstitute itself nearly as fast as her own technique had incinerated parts of it. She really was going to need a new dress after this, though. Even the bloody rags she’d had tied around herself were all but cinders now.
When the dust started to settle there was still a thick cloud of sand kicked up by the explosion that left Chrysalis batting at her hair to clean it off. She was covered in blood, a lot of it her own, and sand was clinging to her like poorly added strokes of paint. She tapped the back of her head and let some sand spill out of her ears, muttering, “I am so tired of fighting in deserts. Need to attack another city. Some nice architecture to destroy, take in the sights while I’m killing.”
Her eyes scanned with predatory focus even as she muttered to herself. She knew it was unlikely she’d ended things with a simple blast like that. Even a Gran Rey Cero shouldn’t be able to one-shot a halfway decent Bankai, and Zecora’s was proving more than adequate to giving Chrysalis trouble. She knew she ought to just use her Resurreccion already, but this was becoming a point of pride. Princess Cadence had earned Chrysalis’ Resurreccion by fighting head on herself. So far, problematic as this Bankai was, the Zecora Reigai was still hiding. Chrysalis wasn’t about to put her all into an opponent who was too lacking in backbone to show their face.
Less a matter of honor, which Chrysalis gave no thought towards, and more simply that she couldn’t be bothered to work up her own bloodlust on someone who couldn’t be asked to do the same.
A casual scan of the area, even with the still vast, settling cloud of dust and sand, Chrysalis could see that her Cero had created a crater a few hundred meters deep, sloping up for most of the kilometer span around her. If she hadn’t held back, it’d have been larger, and likely destroyed Hitsuyo-Aku, which she certainly couldn’t afford to do.
It didn’t surprise Chrysalis when she sensed movement amid the swirling remains of the dust cloud. She’d felt the lingering of Zecora’s reiatsu, and knew the Bankai had not been itself destroyed. With the glint of moonlight off glass, dozens upon dozens of mirror shards emerged from the sands of the crater, or flew down from the sky. Apparently while some of the mirrors had been blown to pieces, as evidenced by the fewer numbers of them left now, there was still about a third of the original hundreds of mirror shards which now formed a rough circle around where Chrysalis stood on the air above the crater.
“I lived, bitch!”
Flying from within the reflection of one mirror, Chrysalis’ Quincy double rushed forward, the glass rippling like water. The woman struck a pose, ignoring that some of her body and clothes were still scorched by what must have been a close call by throwing herself into the mirror before the full force of the Gran Rey Cero hit.
“Don’t act like you’re the only one,” said the Bount Chrysalis, stepping forth from another mirror with a lot less flourish and a downcast, tired expression as her giant, metallic claw-skull Doll followed after her, “I think we all did, didn’t we?”
“Only because Zecora snatched me up,” grumbled the teenaged, Fullbringer Chrysalis as she stumbled out of a mirror halfway lodged in the side of the crater, born forth on a blanket of her scarabs that helped her stand. She had one arm bleeding and broken, torn by the blast force of the explosion, even having escaped into a mirror, “Not sure if glasses-chick made it.”
“I’m fine, thanks for the concern.”
A portion of the sky appeared to run like melting paint, and flaked away as the Chrysalis in a business suit and glasses appeared... the only one who didn’t emerge from a mirror. She was now wearing a small gas mask, and her twin paint guns had a black mist of what looked like living paint flowing from their nozzles, “Fortunately I have more than a few spells suited to escaping attacks like that. Quite sloppy work, Arrancar. I rather detest such messy methods.”
“Says the chick who uses paint to fight?” said the Fullbringer, chuckling.
“Okay, am I just having an off day?” Chrysalis grumbled, “That Cero should have killed at least one of you!”
“Hey, everybody starts to have performance issues after awhile, granny,” said Fullbringer Chrysalis, “What are you pushing now, a thousand?”
“Whatever my true age is, you can rest assured you won’t live to see a fraction of it, my hormonally challenged counterpart,” Chrysalis replied, and cast an eye-twitching glance at the one in glasses, “And, just to satisfy my curiosity before we begin trying to slaughter each other again; what even are you supposed to be?”
“A Witch of Wing Bind. Top of Horns for the Inks Division,” the replica stated, already spraying lines of jet black paint from her paint guns to form twin circles of arcane pentagrams.
Chrysalis just blinked for a moment, then chortled, “A witch. Witches are a thing? That’s... just adorable.”
“Let’s see if you keep thinking it's ‘adorable’ by the end of this,” the Witch Chrysalis said with a grin beneath her gas mask as she finished the twin paint circles, which overlapped one another like an infinity symbol. “Inks Spellcode Number Sixty Six: Abyssal Dragon Twin Summons !”
The conjoined circles grew in size rapidly, and from the now twenty meter length emerged two long, serpentine heads that looked as if their scaled forms were forged of ashen gray flame and black bones. Two long dragon heads with pointed horns, wreathed in ashen fire, gained ruby glowing eyes and roared at Chrysalis with enough force to billow her hair about her head.
She smiled, faintly reminded of Celestia’s Shikai.
“Fine then; round two.”
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Poking a bit of fun at Kubo's outfit designs with Quincy Chrysalis, I see. There's not even a reason for it like with Yoruichi. If anything, I would have figured Quincy uniform regulations should be as strict as Soul Reapers'.
I am really happy to see that Firefly at least is acknowledging her and Glimmers fuck up in (Aside from just attitude of say nothing only they know how to solve the problem) not killing the unstable maniac that is Espada Chrysalis. I am really hoping that she straight up tells Glimmer this when she INEVITABLY gets out of the Oubliette and prolly frees the pillars by accident. Mental ups if that happens when the traveling Human siders get there before then and rendevous with Firefly
That's a really cool power. Zecora is more dangerous than I thought. She represents Unohana quite well. Now we only need a need HellChrysalis, BeastChrysalis, GoddessChrysalis, MirrorChrysalis and we have the full set. Unlessthe Librarian is from Mirrorverse? If not I bet she has healing powers.
So she doesn't know about the Witches? Good for them.
Ok, so those are all power organizations ok earth in the story, Hollows, Soul Reapers, Quincies, Bounts, Fullbringers and Witches, I wonder if Eing Bind can become as powerful as Quincies given the same time to develope and improve, Quincies did have at least a thousand years, and Witches only perhaps 1 hundred?
Thats insanely OP, with enough riatsu she can trap someone indefinitely inside that bankai of hers.
Very fun chapter
I never thought I'll be pondering motivous theory today, either way fun chapter
Was watching a show talking about the makings of Ghost Busters and I had a thought. So Hollows, Soul Reapers, and Beastfolk are are all basically ghosts. So what would happen if the Ghost Busters somehow end up getting involved in their affairs? It seems like an interesting crossover. Especially if crossing the streams was done to an Arrancar.
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Hmm, good question. I imagine the Ghost Busters' proton packs would act a lot like Bakkudo-class Kido, able to bind and immobilize certain spirit entities, including Hollows. Granted strong enough spirits would be hard to control, where one proton pack wouldn't be enough, and you need multiples working together to hold stronger entities. Espada and Soul Reaper Captains might be too strong even for a team of proton pack users, assuming humans with regular reflexes would even be able to hit such opponents (even weaker Soul Reapers and Hollows can move at super human speeds, after all). Still, I imagine all Ghost Buster equipment would work, from PKE meters to the traps. As for crossing the streams, that would certainly be a wild card. Might even take out a higher level Hollow if you could manage to hit one with that method.