Hunters and Hollows

by thatguyvex

Chapter 11: Against the Storm

Chapter 11: Against the Storm

The sands of Hueco Mundo trembled from the impacts of monumental forces clashing. For many miles around the hidden canyon that contained the Storm King’s fortress, sand dunes rumbled from tremors and had their sands blown away by concussive wind force stemming from the canyon’s walls. Whatever stray, animalistic Hollows might have been wandering near the region would have raised their heads in fear, then swiftly scurried away, running headlong from the harrowing sensation of conflicting spiritual pressure filling the air.

Tempest Shadow took her massive Bankai in fast and low, the titanic suit of headless armor obeying her will and mimicking her motions as she charged in at the Storm King’s right side and made a potent two-handed slash in an upward curving arc. The Bankai’s tremendous blade howled through the air, it’s shape morphing to extend it’s length hundreds of yards in a flash. An attack meant to impale the Storm King was intercepted by a writhing forest of white tendrils that grew from his back, each one tipped with a wolf-like fang. The tendrils snapped around the extending blade of Tempest’s Bankai and twisted upward, sending the attack harmlessly overhead. Tempest quickly compensated, adjusting the blade’s shape to grow a series of serrated barbs that then cut through the tendrils as she retracted the blade itself, but even as the tendrils were severed, more grew in their place, and the Storm King laughed.

“Got to say, Tempest, today has not been your day for smart decision making.”

Despite his mountainous bulk, the Storm King moved with a swift, shuffling gait that sent his wolfish main body forward to rear up, managing to appear even taller than Tempest’s already hundred meter tall Bankai. His front paws extended savagely curved claws that raked down hard on the armored chest of the Bankai, tearing gouges in the thick metal plates. Tempest bit back a grunt of pain as similar, if shallower, wounds were duplicated across her actual body, but she didn’t lose her focus even for an instant. In her mind, every second bought was a second for X and his allies to get away safely. She could already tell that her chances of beating the Storm King were negligible; his regenerative powers were simply too much for her to deal enough damage unless she got a clear shot at a weak point like his Hollow hole. However, she could drag this out for a while yet. Enough time that those whose lives she’d endangered could escape.

Not that she’d entirely given up on victory. She wanted to take her former liege down, if she could. She owed those who had followed her under his leadership, all those he’d betrayed so callously, that much. The wound of that betrayal was so very raw it nearly drowned out any physical pain she might have felt. It still seemed insane to her that the Storm King would do this. How could he have thrown away everything they’d worked together towards!? What had her loyalty even meant to him? Nothing? Less than nothing?

It was all incomprehensible to her, who had built her whole life around the ideal of loyalty, especially that held among comrades. It was why she’d become so focused upon X and his team. It was impossible for her not to admire the bond they had, because it was the very ideal she’d tried so hard to live by as well and instill in the Hollows she’d chosen to lead. And it was a loyalty that apparently the Storm King had never once genuinely reciprocated, and yet she’d never realized the truth until it was too late to do more than offer this final stand of resistance.

With a furious shout on her lips she didn’t retreat from the blow he’d given her and instead stepped in, smashing the left shoulder of her Bankai into the Storm King, while growing a set of sharp spikes upon that portion of the Bankai’s armor for good measure. The spikes ripped into him, gouging flesh, while blow’s momentum shoved him back a step., She hefted her sword around for a sideways blow, converting the blade into a heavy cleaver shape for maximum damage potential.

The Storm King halted her blow by literally biting her sword with his massive maw, a shock wave of force blasting outward from the collision of forces. His mouth then ignited with a deep red glow and Tempest had to yank her sword free in time to keep it from getting blasted point-blank by a humongous Cero beam that shot forth from the Storm King’s mouth. The beam burrowed through the center of the remaining pyramid of his fortress, the other one having already been smashed to pieces earlier. The stone melted like wax and the fortress’ top half crumbled away as the red beam continued onward and smashed into the canyon wall many hundreds of meters behind it. The resulting detonation sent a cloud of smashed rock and sand mushrooming skyward and buffeted the entire canyon with gale-force winds.

“Grr! You owe me a new fortress, dammit!” the Storm King accused, and behind him the mass of half a dozen thick tendril-like tails with the eyeless skulls of wolves mounted upon them all rose and howled as one before coming at Tempest in a wild pack of gnashing teeth.

She managed to bat away several with a swing of her sword, and backhand another with her Bankai’s gauntleted first, but the others all got past her guard, moving at such speed that the wolf-head tendrils all but became dark blurs of motion. They buried fangs into her Bankai’s arms and legs, ripping into the armor while Tempest staggered from the wounds appearing on her own limbs. The Storm King used the leverage of the tendrils biting into her Bankai to yank her forward, his jaws opening to go for the gorget where Tempest stood. She managed to haul her left arm in the way, jamming his jaw with it. His teeth still bore into her Bankai’s armor, ripping similar wounds upon her flesh as she held him off. His voice echoed like a peal of thunder.

“You brought this on yourself, Tempest. You could have played ball with me, and I’d have let you come along to kill Tirek and the rest. Even if I don’t need you to do that, it would’ve been fun to raze Las Noches to the ground with you. But noooo, you had to get all sentimental on me. Ruin a perfectly good thing we had going!”

“No,” she spat past clenched teeth, “You brought this on yourself the moment you betrayed our trust.”

She’d kept her sword held back as the Storm King’s tendrils and teeth had ravaged her Bankai’s armor, and now she used her Zanpaktou’s power to convert it’s metal shape so that the blade’s length shot forward through the hilt, re-emerging and extending upon the other side so that the sword effectively switched which side of the hilt it was extending from. This move sent it skewering into the Storm King’s shoulder, biting deep and drawing a shower of blood. Tempest tried to tear the sword upward, but as she did so she found the Storm King gurgling a laugh as his wound actively closed around the sword, all but locking it in place. Then the tendrils with the skull heads all pulled back and gained the tell-tale red glow within their gullets, giving Tempest only a second to try and side step before a cascade of Cero beams hammered her Bankai and drove it backwards like a person being blasted back by a set of fire hoses.

To her credit she kept her grip on her sword, hauling it out of the Storm King’s body as her Bankai was sent skidding backwards until it slammed into the opposite canyon wall. She nearly dropped, but stubbornly forced herself and her Bankai to remain standing, albeit nearly fallen to one knee from the damage sustained from that attack. As for the Storm King, her impaling of his body left an open wound, but she could see it closing up already. Within seconds it was if she’d never wounded him, while her own condition was battered and bloody, if not quite down for the count. She was about as bad off as Irys had gotten her, right before the exchange of final blows, in fact, and it made Tempest smirk a bit at the memory. She really had enjoyed that fight. No malice, she just liked a good brawl, and Irys had been a hell of a good fighter.

There was no enjoyment in this battle. It was just necessary. And it was clear she only had one card left to play. She forced herself to straighten up, her Bankai echoing her move as she placed her Zanpaktou at her side. It converted shape once again, half of its mass becoming a large sheath belted to her Bankai’s side, while the rest became a slender katana she set within said sheath as she took up an iaijutsu stance.

Across from her the Storm King flicked his many, writhing tails, the wolf-skull heads upon them howling to Hueco Mundo’s pale moon above.

“Really? Going for your finishing move? You realize I could blitz you right now before you got the shot off, right? You know what though, just for old times’ sake, I’ll play along. I’ll let you die with a final hurrah, Tempest. Maybe that will satisfy your idiotic sentimentality."

He lowered his tails to the ground behind him and planted his feet wide, while the smaller tendrils across his back gathered forward forming a circle around his head. Crackling arcs of red energy sprang between the tendrils, forming a encircling pulsation of energy just ahead of his open maw, which in turn was also gathering motes of crimson power to form the beginnings of a heightened Cero, one that Tempest recognized as the same kind of empowered Cero beam the Espada of Las Noches were well-known for; Gran Rey Cero. With the Storm King’s level of reiatsu, even his regular Ceros had been striking with shocking force. A Gran Rey Cero might well erase everything in front of it for who could guess how many miles?

Yet Tempest was not about to flee or abort from her challenge. If she could fire off her attack, and aimed it properly, she may well still be able to strike him across the forehead, right in the center where his Hollow hole was located. All of her focus centered upon this target, her mind recalling the words Grubber had mouthed to her just before he and the twins had been absorbed into the Storm King.

”Remember Captain, you’re a Soul Reaper.”

Yes, she was a Soul Reaper, but Grubber wasn’t merely saying that as some fond farewell. No, for all his silly faults, he was often smarter than he let on, and it struck Tempest that as a Soul Reaper, she was the only one who could possibly save the souls of her dear comrades, the family she had forged. If she slew the Storm King herself, her Zanpaktou would perform one of its most basic functions and purify his soul. While she might not have cared much about that directly, it was reasonable to believe that, by proxy, she’d purify all the souls of every Hollow he’d absorbed. It was even possible, if only a faint hope in her heart, that doing this might free those absorbed by the Storm King, undoing whatever terrible bond had allowed him to consume so many. And if not... at least their souls would be sent on to Soul Society, devoid of the memories of their lives as Hollows, but continuing through the cycle of reincarnation.

A cycle that it was her duty as a Soul Reaper to protect and fulfill. If she could just land a fatal blow upon the Storm King with this last attack.

Her reiatsu poured into the sheath and coated her Bankai’s blade. Her own sword gleamed with the power as well as she stood upon the towering armor’s gorget and held her iaijutsu stance, hand upon the hilt of her sword, ready to draw it forth the moment her power reached its peak. The earth shook with the gathering might stemming from both herself and the Storm King, his own mouth a blazing inferno of crimson energy that reached a feverish pitch at the same moment Tempest’s sword hummed with it’s own peaking energy.

She started to draw the blade, blinding white reiatsu starting to flash out.

“Akiyama Mika-”

Pain exploded through her back, arms, and legs. Blood shot from her mouth as she coughed and staggered. Her hand upon her sword fell away from the hilt, the nerves in her wrist cut from a wound that had appeared there, along with numerous others that sprang across her legs, and through her back. None struck her heart, but the blows were sufficient to leave her blind with pain as she nearly toppled forward... but couldn’t because her Bankai was held fast by six massive barbs of bone that had impaled the Bankai from behind.

Glancing back, Tempest saw that the wall of the canyon she’d been forced up against earlier had six burrowed holes in it now, with the tendrils’ of the Storm King’s tails emerging from them. The wolf skull heads had grown pointed barbs upon their eyeless faces and had stabbed her in the back and limbs, and were now keeping her pinned to the wall. She saw, now, that when the Storm King had lowered his tails before, he’d used the bulk of his body to hide what they were doing. Burrowing beneath the ground. The rumble of charging energies from his Gran Rey Cero and her own attack had masked any tremors the tendrils would have made, burrowing beneath her and getting behind her to strike.

“Cowardly...bastard...” she managed to say, and the Storm King shrugged with an unapologetic grin.

“Like I said, sentimentality is stupid. Gets people killed. Gets them betrayed. You betrayed me. I betrayed you. It’s just what we do. All that ‘bonds’ and ‘camaraderie’ bullcrap you believed in? It got your friends killed, too, both Soul Reaper and Hollow alike. Wasn’t worth anything, in the end. Not against power, treachery, and whoever’s just flat out willing to be the nastier sonuvabitch. Speaking of which, guess it’s time I fire this Cero off, eh? Be smarter in your next life, Tempest.”

The tail barbs in her back were holding her Bankai still, but that didn’t mean they were actually holding Tempest herself still. As a last ditch effort, just before the Storm King unleashed his Gran Rey Cero, she propelled her injured body off the top of her Bankai with the fastest Flash Step she could muster. At the same time, she deactivated her Bankai, causing the gigantic suit of armor to start to vanish into a wash of pure white mist-like energy and flow back into the katana in her hands.

This all happened in the eyeblink it took for the Storm King to fire. The ground around him indented from the force of the shot as a devastatingly huge Cero beam, one wide enough to encompass a near fourth of the canyon’s width, shot out and utterly consumed the portion of the canyon wall that Tempest and her Bankai had occupied. Countless tens of thousands of tons of sand, rock, and general desert landscape were obliterated as the leviathan sized beam of red drilled it’s way across Hueco Mundo’s topography. It was impossible to gauge at a casual glance, but no doubt that at least several dozen kilometers of land had just been turned into a molten, glassed ravine that was itself nearly half a kilometer wide.

The Storm King’s huge jaws were left open, panting in effort after that as he wiped his drooling chin with a white paw.

“Whew... now that’s what I’m talking about. Should’ve eaten the army sooner. This power boost is tasty. Going to sooooo enjoy the look on Tirek’s face when I come strolling up to Las Noches gates like ‘What up bitch? Remember me?’ Eh, I’ll workshop that. Need to get the words just right and... wait a second...”

His nose twitched as he still sensed Tempest’s reiatsu nearby. With incredulousness filling his wolven features, he turned and stomped a distance towards the smashed fortress, and to his shock found Tempest Shadow there. She’d evaded his Cero, although the shear force of the blast had knocked her into the top portion of the now rubble pile that had once been his fortress. She was struggling to stand, bleeding from head to toe, Zanpaktou still in her hands and in it’s cleaver shaped Shikai state.

“Okay this is getting sad. Like, Old Yeller levels,” the Storm King grumbled, “Here I am, trying to give you a nice, quick, still sorta painful death, but you just keep refusing to drop. Tempest, bae, it’s over. One hundred percent done. You. Can’t. Kill. Me.”

“Perhaps not... but... still going to keep trying,” she said, trembling top to bottom from pain and blood loss, but still managing to take on a fighting stance, despite facing down a titanic foe who didn’t have a lasting wound on him, and whose power hardly seemed to have flagged.

“Let me know how that works out for you,” he said dryly, raising a paw in preparation to smash it down on her... only to pause as his nose twitched again. He sensed something else now. Another set of reiatsu nearby.

“Huh?”

He turned away from Tempest and looked over his shoulder behind him. He sensed the reiatsu of three Arrancar; the same three prisoners that Tempest had captured along with those interdimensional freakshows. While he wasn’t surprised to sense them, he had expected them to be fleeing the area. What he wasn’t expecting was to sense them still in the canyon.

“What in the cinnamon-toast hell is this?” he said, just as both he and Tempest saw that not only had Di Roy, Roka, and Gaw not fled, but X and his team were also there.

The four Dark Hunters stood in rough diamond formation around the three Arrancar, with a good thirty to forty meters of space between them. Roka was standing between Di Roy and Gaw, and strands of her reishi were wrapped around herself, her two Arrancar companions, and the Dark Hunters. Pulses of faint blue reishi were flowing between the strands, and all three Arrancar were slowly raising their reiatsu, pushing up their spiritual pressure as they held out their Zanpaktou.

The Storm King had no idea what was going on. Tempest, having seen with her own eyes Irys’ transformation during her battle with the Dark Hunters, had an inclination of what was coming, and her bloodied lips quirked up in a smile.

----------

“Roka, I don’t mean to alarm you, but the gigantic asshole who just glassed a national park’s worth of desert appears to have noticed we’re up to something,” Di Roy said with clear alarm of his own as the Storm King started to turn towards them.

Roka’s eyes were closed, the half of her face not covered by her skull mask still as marble with focus. The pulsations of reishi flowing through her threads, connecting her, Di Roy, and Gaw to the four Dark Hunters had reached a steady pitch that matched all of their heartbeats. Suddenly her eyes snapped open, “It’s done. Our souls are synchronized to theirs. Di Roy, Gaw, your Zanpaktou!”

“Showtime,” Di Roy said, casting a sidelong look at Gaw, “You ready for this?”

“Dumb question,” she growled, raising her Zanpaktou, bloody light emenating from her body, “I always ready. You make sure you not get hurt like last time!”

“Tch, says the nutjob who keeps shoving her head into the grinder before anyone else,” he smirked, his eyes flicking towards the Dark Hunters around them, “But something tells me we might actually pull this off.”

X, Gigan, Megalon, and Irys all stood at the ready. Roka’s threads had worked their way into the four, harmlessly wrapping around parts of each kaiju’s spiritual makeup that contained the vast portion of their untapped power and true forms while contained within the more limiting human bodies they occupied. In essence, this was no different than attaching jumper cables to a car battery, if the jumper cables were spiritual threads, and the car batteries were in fact the true powers and forms of four kaiju from another dimension.

For the past few minutes X had forced himself, both physically and mentally to stillness. He’d watched, unblinking, as Tempest Shadow had done battle against the Storm King, placing herself in harm’s way all the while thinking that she was doing it so he and his allies could escape. She hadn’t considered the possibility of being saved, nor had she needed to be asked to put herself in mortal peril for their sake. In X’s mind, all previous transgressions were officially buried between them. Now he only saw an ally to rescue, and in the Storm King’s case, an enemy to be removed.

While no true judge of spiritual powers yet, he had enough experience to recognize that if Tempest Shadow, who’d been an even match for a fully transformed Irys, was reduced to such a wounded state while leaving no lasting injury on her foe... than he and his crew had one hell of a fight on their hands. He was undaunted by the fact. This still wasn’t power on the level he’d witnessed from his master. He and his team would see this through to the end, and then go home.

Aria, I’ll be with you soon. Just have a job to finish up, he thought, holding an image of his siren love in his mind.

The Storm King looked more confused than alarmed by the sight of the group standing at the other side of the ruined, circular canyon. High on his own power, he didn’t feel threatened. A mistake he was seconds from learning the magnitude of as Roka, Di Roy, and Gaw all let their spiritual energy pour out of them and spoke the release phrases for their Zanpaktou.

”Dance in ecstasy; Telerana!” (Cobweb)

”Laugh at death; Picaro!” (Rogue)

”Go for the throat; Cazadora!” (Huntress)

As each phrase was shouted, further spiritual power erupted from the three Arrancar as they assumed their Resurreccion forms. A column of pale yellow light rose from Roka, her body covered by the light for several moments before revealing her with four white, cloth draped spider legs growing from her back. Her body was now covered in a new, white silk gown, and her skull mask upon the right side of her face was replaced with a similar cloth veil. Di Roy’s body glowed with a burst of blue energy, his hammer-head shark shaped helmet of bone splitting in half and growing in size as it slid down in two pieces to stand upon his back like a pair of large fins. His upper body became bare chested, ribs of bone growing over his chest like a light armoring. His shark-tooth sword grew in size in his right hand, nearly doubling in length, while upon his left hand a large mound of bone took the shape of a shielded gauntlet, ending with the mouth of a shark. A torrent of near liquid blood red energy rose over Gaw, her size growing as she assumed the shape of a bipedal theropod dinosaur covered in plates of spiked bone armor and bearing two curved blades extending from her forearms, while a long tails as spiked as her armor grew behind her.

While these changes took place, they were hardly what drew the Storm King’s attention, for a trio of Arrancar, even if they were all above average in power, remained no threat to him in his mind.

What did draw his notice, and his sudden concern, was that as the three transformed, the spirit threads that Roka had attacked to X and his team all blazed with sudden, prismatic light! Pulses of power flowed down the threads like livewires, hitting the Dark Hunters and lighting up their bodies with individual auras that shone brightly like tiny stars; X’s a burnished gold, Irys’ a vibrant violet, Gigan’s a deep cobalt blue, and Megalon’s an energetic orange. Then the very land itself shook, and the sands of Hueco Mundo rose up like a squall around the group. Sand transmuted into raw, red Hollow energy as the reishi of Hueco Mundo poured into the awakening vessels that beckoned to it. Vessels that absorbed spiritual power as readily and greedily as they would have drunk in magic if this had been a different world, and with very similar results.

Before the Storm King’s eyes, four deluges of unfettered energy expelled skyward in a quartet of multi-colored light, each cyclonic pillar of power spearing the air for kilometers. The roaring pillars of golden, violet, blue, and orange energies were teaming with Hollow spiritual pressure, but there were other powers at work, finally and properly unleashed, as four titanic forms emerged from within the pillars. As the energies burst outward in a final explosion of power, the dust settled, and Hueco Mundo’s sky was split by four distinctly different but no less air rending war cries from titanic throats.

The Storm King’s hulking form took an involuntary step back, confidence in his own power shaken by the sight before him.

Irys was as she’d been before, when she’d transformed and done battle with Tempest Shadow. Her already naturally pale, ablino hide seemed to carry an even brighter white sheen as she spread her massive wings, edged with bladed bone. From the Gyaos’ triangular, flat topped head filled with sharpened teeth down to her clawed feet her bone white body was covered with sharply angled, glowing red markings. Eyes with black sclera and burning yellow pupils narrowed in hungry fury at the target that was in front of her.

To Irys’ left, Gigan raised his bladed arms and examined himself. His internal computer systems were providing detailed diagnostics of his full-kaiju form, and the changes temporarily wrought by Hueco Mundo’s spirit energies. For reasons he decided it was best not to think too hard about, his systems seemed momentarily calibrated to the local energies, the usual interference much cleared up. Sure, some of the symbols on his systems readouts looked annoyingly...arcane now, but he was detecting no malfunctions or glitches with his new “equipment”. Specifically while he still had his large arm blades, underneath those blades now were mounted what appeared to be revolver styled cannons whose barrels and chambers looked to be forged out of stark white bone, with red tubing connecting the cylindrical chambers to the sides of his chest. Both his chest and limbs appeared to have additional armoring, making his appearance of a bipedal, cybernetic death parrot even more imposing. His head, now largely white instead of its usual dark blue, still bore a large ruby eye and it’s usual sharpened beak. His back frills remained in place, although the spurs were all white now, while leaving the membranes red. Checking his systems there were some internal modifications as well, including additional thrusters in his legs.

Opposite Irys from Gigan, Megalon was less focused on checking his own internal systems and more with stretching himself out to his own full and impressive height while giving himself more of a visual once over. His kaiju form was in many respects similar to his brother cyborg’s, in that he was upright and bipedal, but rather than avian he had a distinctly insectile appearance not unlike a stag beetle's. Well, if a stag beetle had giant drill arms. Not unchanged from his typical look as well, Megalon sported additional drill-like protrusions rising from his shoulders, and white bone armoring across his head and chest area, the armoring around his mandibles especially having an intimidating look with what appeared to be additional sharpened teeth. His drill arms had gained a set of more pronounced spikes upon them as well, mirror by similar spikes upon his legs and feet.

Of the Dark Hunters, X may have appeared the least physically changed, but that was largely because his natural form had already shared traits with Hollow-kind. A dark, humanoid draconic being with charcoal black hide encased in thick, irregularly shaped plates of bone white armor, one could have been easily forgiven for mistaking X for a Vasto Lorde class Hollow of titanic size. His face was covered in a bone-like mask in the visage of a demonic dragon, and he had a pair of long, bone plated tails ending in barbed blades. Upon his shoulders were pauldrons of pale white that bore the resemblance of two halves to a single dragon’s skull, although those familiar with the secrets of X’s origins would know those additional heads were no mere decoration of symbolism. However there were changes from his usual form. His eyes, usually the red of spilled blood, were now golden yellow, and this before he had yet to draw upon any of his Kaizer energies. From his back now sprouted twin wings of skeletal bone, lacking membranes but seeming no less formidable for it. And, perhaps most noteworthy of the changes, in his humanoid hands he now held twin blades, each one a long, curved, semi-jagged scimitar forged of the same bleached bone as his armoring. The weapons may have been unfamiliar to X’s grip, but his combat knowledge did extend to armed melee, so he flexed his arms and gave each weapon a brief flourish to test their balance. He may never have held a weapon in his natural form before, but the blades felt absolutely right in his hands, as if he’d been wielding them his whole life.

The Storm King, slowly regaining his sense of superiority, his ego demanding that he not show the growing cold of fear in his gut, stomped forward and drew himself up to his full height as his back tendrils writhed and his six tails rose behind him, each crackling with red lines of energy charging Cero’s at their bladed tips.

“So the four of you got a little big? So what!? Power is what matters, not size! I’m still stronger than any of you!”

X simply looked at him. Kaiju such as himself and his compatriots generally didn’t speak in their natural forms, at least not in a manner readily understood by non-kaiju, but he communicated well enough by raising one of his blades and pointing it at the Storm King. He roared, a powerful cacophony of noise that said what was on his mind clearly enough; ‘Stronger than any of us? Maybe. But not stronger than all of us!’

And then, the battle was on.

One kaiju charging on the warpath was enough to shake the earth. Four of them propelling themselves headlong at the same foe was like a living, breathing apocalypse.

Irys took to the air, first thing, soaring upwards with powerful flaps of her wings as her throat glowed deep colors of red and purple with a charge of sonic and mixed Hollow energies. Below her, X, Gigan, and Megalon stampeded forward, Gigan going right while Megalon broke left, and X went straight up the middle. X didn’t have to issue any commands to his team. They all knew what to do. How to read each other’s movements. This fight they would function practically as a single entity, adapting tactics on the fly as needed, and already were working to flank and surround their opponent.

Irys’ sonic beam fired in a cutting arc across the Storm King’s back, the Cero-like qualities added to the beam causing a wider destructive range than her usual, thin beams. The hit scorched the Storm King’s hide, drawing blood, although his regenerative properties kicked in instantly, as did his retaliation as he roared in challenge and fired the already charged Cero beams from his tails.

With four equally threatening targets to choose between the Storm King split his firepower, perhaps not the wisest of tactical decisions but he didn’t have time to think things through, and was still overconfident that even these transformed titans couldn’t possibly be that powerful. Crimson beams raked the Dark Hunters, although Irys was swift enough on the wing to bank aside the beam that shot past her. Megalon tanked the twin blasts that struck him, his thickly armored body readily surviving the blows, although some plated scales did still get blown off by the hefty explosions. Gigan used his left arm blade to block the beam that came his way, the Cero beam heating up the metal but not destroying it as a fair chunk of the beam was deflected to the ground to detonate harmlessly behind Gigan. X crossed his swords in front of him, similarly blocking the two beams that came his way as he kept charging forward, although some of the beams did splash upon his body, inflicting some damage but hardly anything to slow the massive dragonoid down.

Now thoroughly surrounding their target, the four kaiju unloaded their own firepower upon the Storm King.

Erratic golden gravity beams exploded from X’s eyes and the eyes of the dragon skulls upon his shoulders, the gold beams of lightning-like energy now tinged with the red of Hollow spirit power. Megalon powered up his own destructive beam of energy, one that normally fired from the stag beetle shaped horn protrusion from his head. Now, however, that horn shot beams to the drills on his shoulders, which then acted like lightning towers and glowed bright yellow and red and fired amplified streams of energy out in wide torrents.

Meanwhile Gigan, while tempted to stick with his reliable standby in his eye laser, figured he might as well see what these cannons now mounted under his arm blades could do. Normally his professional mind would balk at using untested weapons in live combat, but he figured if these things were going to malfunction it was better to find out right off the bat rather than wait for a critical moment. He took aim with both barrels and cut loose. The revolver cannons gave off volcanic retorts as they belched forth crimson muzzle flashes. With Gigan’s enhanced scanners and senses he could see the bullets being fired, each as large as a double-decker bus. The rounds were as bleached white as the other Hollow additions to his body, and were shaped with pointed tips and barbed sides. Upon impact with the Storm King’s flesh the rounds tore in deep, and then flashed red before exploding in gouts of crimson energy. Even as he shot, Gigan’s systems informed him new rounds were being regenerated into the cylinders, ensuring he’d have a fresh reload in moments.

The giant cyborg couldn’t really move his beak in a smile, but inwardly he grinned a bit. Oh... I like.

Irys had flown behind the Storm King and now dove low, flying over him while strafing with another sonic Cero, this time cutting through one of the Storm King’s tails and severing it clean off. The Storm King didn’t fare well under X’s and Megalon’s energy assault either, the combined streams sparking explosions all over the Storm King’s body and causing him to stumble back.

“Arrrgh! Freakin’ dogpiling assholes!”

X rushed towards the Storm King’s front, mindful of the fact that Tempest was still on the ruined fortress behind the Storm King. He moved with dexterity well beyond what one might expect for a being his size, leaping into a spinning dual cut with his blades, aiming for the Storm King’s head. Despite the injuries that had just been inflicted on him, the Storm King was still quite mobile and to X’s surprise jumped into X’s strike. This caused X’s swords to strike lower than intended, cutting into the Storm King’s chest, but not stopping the Storm King from bodily colliding with X in mid-air.

The impact was explosive, causing a wind burst for hundreds of meters as the two colossal forms smashed into one another and crashed to the ground in a pile of limbs. X was a highly experienced soldier and knew to guard his vitals, which allowed him to avoid it when the Storm King’s wolven maw snapped towards his throat. Instead the Storm King’s jaws bite deep into X’s shoulder, causing golden blood to spurt forth and pain to lance his senses. X didn’t lose focus, however, and quickly raised one knee to block the Storm King’s raking back claws and then rapidly adjusted his weight to roll and throw the Storm King sideways, using a generous amount of gravity manipulation to make the Storm King’s bulk lighter and easier to toss.

The Storm King went flying, but righted himself in the air and landed on his paws, sliding across the ground while the tendrils on his back all rose and became rigidly focused. Red power rushed across his back in a crackling array, and in a split second the scores of tendrils began to fire massive but swift firing Bala bullets in their hundreds. Because there were so many reishi bullets being fired at once, the Storm King barely had to aim, and just flung the energy balls in the rough direction of the Dark Hunters in an onslaught.

For the kaiju, this was not an unfamiliar feeling, being bombarded by a massive storm of small but unrelenting attacks. Unlike the usual combination of tank shells and missiles that the kaiju were used to being able to shrug off with little to no harm, the Storm King’s Bala bullets were a different matter. His Ceros were more powerful, true, but the Bala still contained enough power to sting, to dent, to blow off small bits of hide in a way conventional military firepower couldn't. And the Storm King was expelling hundreds if not thousands of these bullets in a bloody, ruby tempest.

For a few seconds the landbound Dark Hunters could only endure the storm, and even Irys, who had some capacity to evade while airborne, found herself being painfully pelted by the crimson reishi bullets that filled the sky.

The spread of Bala was so wide that plenty were also detonating across the vast canyon, a few exploding no more than a few meters from where Adagio’s vassals still stood. Roka, Di Roy, and Gaw remained in their Resurreccion forms, the energy they’d used to jump start the Dark Hunters’ transformations having not actually taken much from the three Arrancar themselves, as they’d only needed to start the process, while the rest of the power for the formation of the kaiju’s true bodies had come from within the Dark Hunters themselves and the ambient Hollow spirit energy of Hueco Mundo.

This meant that the three were at full power and more than battle ready, although just what they could do in this situation was something Di Roy in particular decided to voice as they watched the fight unfold.

“Right, so I get that we’re jumping in, but we all basically know we’re majorly outgunned here, right?”

At Di Roy’s words Roka just twitched her lips into a quirked half-smile, “A trend I feel will remain common for us. It hasn’t stopped us yet.”

“Yeah, not gonna lie, I’m worried about the ‘yet’ part, but we’re in do or die territory now, so how do we want to tackle this asshole?” Di Roy said, ducking his head as another set of stray Balas flew overhead and destroyed a chunk of terrain behind them, “Because not seeing a lot of openings.”

Gaw’s eyes remained narrowly fixed upon the battle, her tail lashing the air behind her as she let out a predatory, hunter’s growl, “All prey have weaknesses. Throat. Eyes. Belly. When tribe hunts in pack, even small wounds help bring down big prey.”

“Go for the weak spots... got it,” Di Roy said, hefting his sword, “Those tendrils aren’t too thick. We cut those down to size, we free up our big badass buddies to go for the kill.”

“Yes,” said Roka, flexing her arms and the spider legs on her back, threads weaving through the air from all six limbs, “And I shall see to mitigating damage to our friends.”

Their own tactics set, the three flew into motion, vanishing with the super speed movement of Sonido. With the Storm King so single mindedly focused upon the Dark Hunters, this meant he was less likely to take notice of the three far weaker powers on the move. His flood of Balas hadn’t let up, but the Dark Hunters weren’t just taking the punishment. X flexed his arms and wings outward, golden currents snapping between both blades and wings as he warped gravity and caused a funnel in front of him that sent the Bala bullets spinning off to either side, which in turn created an opening for him to fire a direct stream of gravitons from his eyes at the Storm King.

Gigan had broken into a faster gait, circling around to the Storm King’s rear while using his arm blades to slash side as many of the crimson spheres splashing towards him as possible. He saw Megalon doing the same on the Storm King’s other side, and the two cyborgs both barreled in from opposite sides, Megalon revving up his drills, while Gigan checked to see if his chain-saws were still functional in this altered form. As it turned out, they were, but in a way he didn’t expect as the revolver cannons adjusted their shape and flipped down and backwards, connecting to Gigan’s elbows while the red tubes that connected them to Gigan’s arms started to pump some mysterious liquid into his blades. The blades shifted into chainsaws, although single blades rather than his usual doubles, but then ignited with a wash of thick ruby flames as the saw teeth spun up with a high pitched whine and flaming roar.

Flaming chainsaws? Little over the top, but I’ll roll with it, Gigan thought as he and Megalon struck simultaneously as X’s graviton beam lashed the Storm King from the front.

The Storm King moved exceptionally fast, turning in place and rearing up to rake with his claws to try and bat aside Gigan’s attacks, while his rear tails coiled together into a singular mass that whipped at Megalon. Gigan twisted his left chainsaw blade into a downward swipe that crunched into one of the Storm King’s claws, the flaming blade chewing through flesh and knocking the limb aside while Gigan swiped across the Storm King’s chest with the other chainsaw. The strike drew blood, but the Storm King’s other claw that was still free smashed across Gigan’s face, drawing sparks as leaving gouges in the armor. Meanwhile Megalon took the blow from the Storm King’s tail without ceasing his own attack, the blow crunching into his side with a burst of sparks and fragments of armor, but his drills went to work on the Storm King’s right flank, the spinning weapons ripping huge chunks from the Storm King’s side.

Then an albino anvil slammed down from above as Irys, seeing an opening with their enemy distracted by her companions, dove straight down and then reversed her body’s orientation so she slammed feet first onto the Storm King’s back. She took a number of shots from the Storm King’s Balas that were still firing from his tendrils, but she readily accepted that pain and damage to get in her dive bomb slam.

The Storm King was knocked prone by the hefty avian’s attack, and the other Dark Hunters prepared to start hammering him while he was down, but unfortunately there would be no swift and easy victory to be found. A dark red aura, rimmed with a tinge of shadowy black, rose from the Storm King and his still coiled tails rose up. The bladed tips of the tails were all aligned together, like a singular pointed spear, and a typhoon of blinding red energy flowed around those tips for a moment with a roar of wind force. Then it discharged a wide Cero beam, not as strong as the Gran Rey Cero but still carrying more force than the individual beams the tails could make alone. The Storm King swung his tail while still firing this powerful beam continuously, sweeping it around and above his prone body in a fast arc that caught the Dark Hunters off guard.

Each was splashed by the Cero beam, the stream of energy striking with enough force to send them reeling in different directions. Irys was knocked flat, almost skidding to a stop at X’s feet, who had moved forward to guard her from the beam as it swept around again, crossing his arms and blades to blunt the beam as much as possible, but even then feeling chunks of his bone-like armor being blasted off. Gigan was knocked back into the canyon wall, although he still kept his feet under him, while Megalon teetered sideways from where the beam swept over his side and chest, blackening his armor and leaving him off balance.

Striking at what he saw as the most vulnerable target, the Storm King wheeled about and directed a concentrated barrage of Balas from his tendrils right at the teetering Megalon, but just as he started to fire upon the cyborg he noticed stinging pain on his back.

“The hell?” he looked over his shoulder to see that his back tendrils were being severed, one by one, by two flickering forms that danced across his back like high-speed gnats.

Di Roy and Gaw moved as a team, as used to each other in combat as the Dark Hunters were to each other, and they moved in a blurring zig-zag line. Di Roy’s sword had split in half, with it’s tip connected to it’s hilt by a set of chains that let him wing it around in a wide, whipping arc to cut down multiple tendrils at once. Meanwhile Gaw used every part of her body, arm blades, clawed feet, and even her now sharp saurian teeth to savage tendrils half a dozen at a time as she rushed by them.

This didn’t stop the full barrage from striking Megalon, but it reduced the amount of Balas being fired considerably and distracted the Storm King’s aim as he had to mentally redirect tendrils to take aim at the irritating flies buzzing around him.

Meanwhile Roka had appeared on Megalon’s head, landing there and looking down at one of his big, orange eyes. “I’ll try to repair what I can. Don’t stop fighting. HIs regeneration can’t keep up forever.”

She started to send hundreds of threads out from her limbs, wrapping Megalon’s wounds in coatings like spider silk, pulling together damaged components while layering up places where armor had been blasted away. Megalon let out a cherry, confirming screech and saluted with one drill before pushing himself back up and warded off the slackening Bala barrage with his other drill as he opened his mandibles and expelled a series of explosive grenades at the Storm King.

Gigan also cut loose with his eye laser, his cyclopean eye flaring with a wreath of red spirit energy as his eye laser fired with an extra burst of Hollow power behind it.

Both his and Megalon’s attacks struck home, the grenades exploding in blossoms of fire across the Storm King’s head and front, while Gigan’s beam lashed his side. And all the while Di Roy and Gaw made their way down his back towards his tails, leaving a trail of trimmed tendrils in their wake.

Roka’s words about his regeneration, however, were not quite coming to pass, as it seemed whatever damage was racked up on the Storm King didn’t remain for more than a matter of seconds. Whether it be from the physical beating of flaming chainsaws and powerful drills, or from the barrages of energy attacks slamming into him, it seemed like the Storm King’s wounds kept vanishing almost as fast as they could be inflicted. Even the scores of tendrils that Di Roy and Gaw had cut off were already starting to regrow.

X felt this Kaizer in his mind desiring to be let out, and he was tempted to do just that, but was concerned that a lack of tactical thinking might be too detrimental even for having such a raw boost of power. He helped Irys up, who gave a squawk of thanks before she flew up into the air again, and X prepared to charge in at the Storm King, wondering if this beast could survive something as simple and usually final as decapitation, but then he felt a presence on his right shoulder. His eyes flicked to the side, and he saw Tempest Shadow standing there on his shoulder, still bleeding from her wounds but managing to stay steady on her tenuous perch while keeping a grip on her Zanpaktou.

“X!” she shouted, “Listen to me! He has a weak point. All Holllows do! The hole, that empty spot they all have, if I can hit it with my blade, it will finish things.”

X, unable to speak in this form, could only give a brief tilt of his head to question her with. Could a single sword blow to a vulnerable point really do that much? Tempest’s expression was more than just earnest, it was desperate. She had neither reason to lie nor reason to exaggerate.

“It might not work if he’s still at full strength, but if you and your team can wear him down enough, then get me close, a Zanpaktou is designed to purify Hollows by slaying them. Please, trust me. I have to do this!”

She didn’t have time to explain the full reason she wanted to do this, besides just seeing to the Storm King’s defeat and ensuring they all had a chance to survive this. As the battle had been going on she’d thought to what she’d seen Grubber mouth at her before he and the twins had been swallowed. ‘Remember you’re a Soul Reaper’.

It hadn’t just been some final message of good luck or random words. He’d been trying to tell her something important. That her Zanpaktou might be the key to saving the souls of her comrades. A Zanpaktou was a tool for slaying Hollows, but the striking of a final blow from a Zanapktou did more than just ‘kill’ the Hollow, it purified it’s spirit and sent that spirit on to the Soul Society. If the Storm King had absorbed her entire army, then if she was able to strike the final blow on him with her Zanpaktou, there was a chance it’d purify all of the souls bound to him. For all she knew it might free them entirely, or undo the absorption. It was a long shot, but it was the only one she had. Besides, it really was the best option for finishing the Storm King off.

It was possible the Dark Hunters, if they were able to hammer on the Storm King long enough, might wear out his regeneration. It did take spirit energy to fuel that regeneration, so it couldn’t keep going forever, but whether it’d give out first or the Dark Hunters would was an altogether other matter. Both Tempest and X recalled that Irys reverted to a human form after taking too many wounds and using up too much power. The Dark Hunters’ transformations weren’t permanent. They could run out at any time. This battle was one of attrition, and it was entirely possible the Storm King had the advantage in that regard unless a means to take him out in one shot was found.

X understood this within a moment’s thought, too. Another reason to not use Kaizer form would be the way that would burn up more energy and possibly end his transformation sooner. From his standpoint there were two possible routes to victory.

One; get his team to fire their strongest attacks all at once, together, and hope to annihilate the Storm King’s body completely with the combined attack. The drawback here was that if this failed, they’d have likely used up far too much power to hold their transformations for long afterward, so it would really be a final gamble that they’d take him out.

Or, two; weaken the Storm King enough that they could create an opening for Tempest to get at the Hollow hole on his head for a hopefully fatal blow.

X didn’t take more than a second to consider the two before looking at Tempest and giving a nod and a low growl of approval that he hoped communicated his words; ‘Hold tight and be ready, we’ll get you your opening’.

She gave back a grateful nod and knelt down, gripping his shoulder with one hand to keep herself steady there for the tough fight ahead, while her other, bloodied hand clenched tight on her Zanpaktou. X didn’t hear her whispered, “Thank you.” before he charged at the Storm King.

The Storm King easily saw X coming, and given Gigan and Megalon were still flanking him, with Irys getting back into the sky with a sandstorm of wind billowing out from her wing flaps, the Storm King decided remaining in his present precarious position was not ideal. As X closed in, the Storm King crouched low, then with immense strength sprang up and backwards in a manner few kaiju sized creatures could pull off. Soaring in an arc that would take him out of the crater, the Storm King cupped his forward claws around spheres of blood red power, and fired dual beams down at X’s position.

X, quite incredibly agile for his size as well, leaped above the beams, using his gravity control to allow his massive bulk to jump right after the Storm King. The beams detonated below him, creating a towering pillar of destructive red fire that scorched at X’s back, but he ignored it and focused ahead, his eyes flaring with gravitons, unleashing crackling gold beams at the Storm King while both of them were still in the air.

The beams lashed the Storm King, who upon the apex of his leap retaliated with a swift Cero from his mouth that blasted X’s chest. Both landed outside the canyon just a few hundred meters from the edge, the vast Hueco Mundo desert stretching out behind the pair. Both bled from their injuries, but the Storm King’s were sealing up quickly. X didn’t wait or slow down, springing into a dead run the moment he’d landed, and crossed the distance to the Storm King in seconds.

His curved blades flashed down, golden graviton energy snaking along their edges. Sparks and blood flew as the Storm King was struck, and he roared and struck back with fierce claws that ripped along X’s side as he sidestepped.

A powerful screech filled the air as Irys came flying in now, moving well past the speed of sound yet controlling the very essence of sound as she used her sonic vibrations to create something akin to her sonic barrier. However this “barrier” was concentrated around the bladed edge of her right wing as she turned sideways, and turned up the vibrations so the barrier became more like a blade sheathed around her wing, a blade of sound that she used to slide across the Storm King’s back as she flew by with enough speed to kick up a mountain of sand in her wake.

The Storm King roared in pain, blood spurting from a massive gash on his back. His tails moved like snakes, three pointing at X, and three aiming at Irys, before discharging triple Ceros that lance into both kaiju. X was driven back several steps, his blades catching some of the beams, but his body having to soak the rest of the damage.

Irys had deftly avoided two of the beams, but her wing was hit dead center by the third. As luck had it, it was the right wing, still sheathed in sonic energies, so the Cero’s power was mitigated somewhat and she didn’t outright lose the wing, but instead was just left with a nasty char mark on the wing’s surface. She still lagged in the air as she started to circle around for another pass.

The Storm King had rushed forward after X, rearing up and slashing with his claws in a surprisingly fast flurry of blows. X didn’t relent from them, adjusting his stance to duck and juke from each strike, softening the damage and waiting for an opening. He thought he saw one and went for it, stabbing up from a low stance with his left handed blade and sinking it into the Storm King’s shoulder. Only a fraction of a second later did he realize he’d essentially made the same kind of error that Tempest had when the Storm King’s healing factor regrew tissue around the blade, momentarily trapping it and leaving X slightly off balance.

With a flash of jaws the Storm King clamped his teeth around X’s arm, gigantic teeth cracking through boney armor and dark skin. X pulled back with his right leg and kicked forward, slamming the Storm King’s side to try and jostle him loose, but those wolven jaws held tight and X felt his whole arm wrench as the Storm King hauled him around and bodily threw him through the air.

X, not losing his concentration for a second, rolled with the toss and with a burst of gravity control managed to land relatively easily, slamming into the sands and skidding backwards for a distance as his titanic form rent new ravines into the desert.

With fresh red energy pooling into his mouth, the Storm King looked ready to follow up with another, charged up Cero, but then the ground beneath him shook and the sands exploded upwards.

Megalon burst from the ground, having tunneled right through the canyon wall and the sands beneath the Storm King. One spinning drill upper cut the Storm King in the jaw with enough force to snap the Arrancar’s wolf shaped head back, the Cero discharging randomly into the ground and leaving glassed sand in its wake.

Then there was a flash of light and Gigan popped into view above the Storm King, having teleported there with his revolver cannons now flipped forward again and readily aimed. Gigan’s red eye flashed and he let out a satisfied screech as both his eye laser and revolver cannons opened fire with a downpour of energy and explosive rounds into the Storm King.

More was poured onto the beleaguered Storm King as Di Roy and Gaw, who’d jumped off his back prior to him leaping out of the canyon, now appeared on Megalon’s head alongside Roka, who’d finished covering Megalon’s wounds. All three Arrancar stood together, Di Roy taking aim with his shark tooth sword, Roka with her spider legs, and Gaw with her saurian jaws, and all three opened fire with their own Ceros; beams of blue, gold, and red respectively.

Although those Cero beams did comparatively little damage, they just added to the torrent of blasts converging on the Storm King as Megalon opened up with both his mouth spat grenades and electrical energy discharges from his beetle-like horn. Irys strafed with another sonic ray, while Gigan landed on the ground next to X and after sharing a brief nod to each other, the pair opened fire with eye lasers and gravity beams.

Whole chunks were being blown off of the Storm King’s body now, two of his tails sailing away in bloody, severed bits, and one of his back legs crumpling as half a foot paw was torn clean away. Blood was raining onto the sands beneath his body in rivers, even a heavily hardened spiritual body like his just not able to withstand the full force of four powerful kaiju unloading everything that had at him.

And yet he didn’t fall. The regenerative prowess of his unnaturally acquired new body surged, and his spiritual pressure hammered out in a dome shaped wave as he howled, “Enough of this bullet hell BS! You want to see spammed energy attacks? I’ll show you some goddam energy spam!”

Even though his high speed regeneration wasn’t done regrowing the tissue around his limbs, as fast as it was indeed healing his wounds, the Storm King reared up so his bloodied chest and head actually stood taller than any of the Dark Hunters in front of him. He spread his claws out to either side, and then sucked in a deep breath as a seething darkness radiated out of his body. There was a bone cracking noise and wet squelching as his chest cavity bulged and what appeared to be the ends of his rib cage extended out of his chest, each pointed bone now glowing with a growing crimson sphere. His tails joined in, spreading out around his sides and generating swirling spheres of blood red energy at their tips.

Rapid fire Cero beams started discharging from both the tails and the rib bones, scores of them per second. The shots weren’t as fast as the thousands of Balas he’d used before, but were magnitudes more powerful and still rapid enough that they blanketed the desert in front of the Storm King in a cone shaped maelstrom of ruby detonations each large enough to flatten multiple city blocks. The unrelenting stream of destructive beams and explosions washed over the Dark Hunters in a red tide, smoke and fire obscuring their forms. As if in response to this massive unleashing of spiritual energy and the rise of his reiatsu, the sky above the battle grew clouded. The normally blank, endless dark of Hueco Mundo’s sky became filled with billowing storm clouds that thundered with red lightning. Even the air grew strangely distorted, space itself wavering from the conflicting energies of the battle.

The Storm King kept up his withering volley of Ceros until he realized doing so was taking up so much of his spiritual energy that it was slowing down his regeneration. With a hacking cough that sputtered up blood from his jaws he reluctantly slacked off firing the Ceros until they petered out, allowing his body to start regenerating it’s now innumerable wounds while feeling confident he must have put down these tenacious creatures. He couldn’t confirm that visible due to the massive sheet of dust that had been kicked up by the dozens of massive explosions his barrage had created, and his spiritual senses were diluted by the distortions of energy the battle had caused.

He was sorely mistaken in his confidence as a lance of graviton energy blasted out of the massive dust cloud and smashed into the bone sword that X had left buried in the Storm King’s shoulder. The blade conducted the gravitons straight into the Storm King’s body and blasted off large chunks. Then through gravity control X yanked the sword straight back out of the Storm King and caused it to fly back to his waiting hand as the dust cleared, revealing not only X still standing, but his three companions as well. Not one of them was unscathed by the barrage they had endured. Gigan’s visor-covered eye was cracked and the cyborg was sporting trailing sparks from several holes in his chest. Megalon’s right arm hung limply and fluid leaked from half a dozen cracks in his armored carapace. Irys breathed heavily as burn marks turned patches of her white chest black. X’s bone armor was missing in numerous places, blown clean off by the potent Cero blasts, and one of his bone wings had been bent nearly in half to hang at his side. Yet all four still stood, and they were not alone.

Roka, Di Roy, Gaw, and Tempest Shadow had all managed to weather the storm, albeit largely thanks to the bulk of their kaiju allies taking the brunt of the destructive energies. They now stood upon the shoulders or heads of those allies, battered as well, but still ready to fight, with Tempest still riding on X, while Di Roy stood with Gigan, Gaw with Megalon, and Roka shifting over to Irys.

“Come the frack ON!” the Storm King roared, “What does it take to kill you people!?”

He coughed again, his jaws hacking up a small torrent of blood as he fell down from his reared up stance. His body quivered, still regenerating it’s wounds, but it was clear now that the rate his flesh was growing back together was slowed from before. Still, if left alone, he’d recover within minutes. If there was ever a moment to finish things, this was it, because X and his team could all feel that their own energies were running low and that their transformations wouldn’t last much longer, especially with the beating they’d already taken. This had to end now, with one last push...

X gave a call, his team all returning cries of their own in understanding. This was it; all in. He felt Tempest tense on his shoulder, the Soul Reaper clutching her Zanpaktou so tightly that blood seeped between her fingers.

“We get through this, I’m going to be having a word with Adago about hazard pay,” Di Roy muttered with a mad cap grin, while Gigan would have rolled his eyes at the Arrancar perched on his head. Not that Gigan disagreed with the notion. Not that he’d ever admit that to Di Roy.

Gaw gave an encouraging growl to Megalon, her tail slightly wagging as she tapped the side of his head with a claw and nodded at the enemy in front of him with salivating jaws. She didn’t really need words to communicate to Megalon that she was eager to see the end of this, and wanted to tear into their mutual foe together. Megalon assented to the notion with a merry chirp, forcing his injured arm up and setting his drills to spinning.

“Are you ready Irys?” Roka asked, using the top of Irys’ flat head as a platform. One of Irys’ eyes glanced up at her and Roka nodded, “This time, we protect both our families.”

Irys gave a screech of agreement at that, wings spreading in preparation to take flight.

The Storm King looked at those arrayed in front of him and coughed up a bloodied laugh, “Oh this is rich! You hurt me a little bit and think that’s something to get all excited about!? I’ll heal all of these wounds before your bodies even have time to cool off! If there’s even a scrap of bodies left, that is.”

He leaped again, straight up into the air. It was a more sluggish move than before, his mangled, still healing body not as spry, but he still gained hundreds of meters of height. He raised both clawed hands above his head and the storm in the sky appeared to respond to the gesture. A billowing black tornado descended from the storm clouds, boiling and flashing with arcs of red energy. The energy storm cloud gathered between the Storm King’s claws like a pulsating bomb.

Sensing the spirit energy building up there, X barked a command to his team and then generated multiple rings of lightened gravity above him to boost his own leap into the sky. He soared up, swung his bone blades above his head, crossing them together as he charged up twin streams of gravitons.

Kaizer, now.

The Kaizer personality readily responded to X’s call, rising up from within like a leviathan breaching the surface from the depths. X didn’t know how long he could afford to use this power,, but he’d need every shred of it he could. One way or another, this was going to be over soon.

Golden rivers of power flowed over X’s kaiju form. White bone turned dark while black skin burned gold. Muscles bulged out and new gold and black striped horns grew from his head. The bone wings upon his back flared brightly, the broken one repairing itself, while both wings gained flares of pure gold energy between the spurs of bone, filling out the wings fully. The bone swords he carried also became metallic gold, and the energy pouring from them flared to thicker bands of raw power that gathered up at the blade’s tips into a pulsating gleam of golden might.

The Storm King saw this golden, draconic god-beast flying at him, and decided that this served as the ideal target for the chaotic swirl of black and red storm energy and Hollow power he’d gathered between his claws. Most Espada had not merely Ceros, or even the vaunted Gran Rey Cero at their disposal, but unique signature Ceros that was theirs and theirs alone. It was this that the Storm King now released as he threw his clawed hands forward.

”Cero Devestador!” (Cero Ravager)

What came flying down from the Storm King’s claws was a spinning cyclone of matter rending energies as wide as several combined tornados, creating multiple shockwaves as it descended in a dark mass of swirling destruction interlaced with forking arcs of red light. The energies tore in a circular motion, turning the Cero into the equivalent of a gigantic blender meant to tear apart anything it touched, be it city, mountain, people, or even kaiju.

With the Kaizer energy flowing through him and the raw aggression of that aspect of his mind inflaming his mind, Kaizer X gladly roared into the depths of the storm and slammed forward his twin golden blades. From the blades shot forth a twisting stream of gold gravitons, a cyclone to match a cyclone. Kaizer X twisted gravity in the opposite direction to the swirling energies of the Storm King’s Cero Devestador, so that when the tornado of golden gravity beams smashed into the descending hurricane of destruction, gold and darkness twisted together in an apocalyptic clash. Rivers of gold broke upon a surging wave of black, the air screaming as distortions in space tore across the sky. Kaizer X had done everything he could to ensure the twisting cyclone of gravitons he’d fired would break up the Cero Devestator, spinning gravity around to such an extent and in so many differing directions that the energies couldn’t remain effectively concentrated.

The plan worked, as the Cero Devestador wasn’t so much stalemated or stopped as it was pulled apart like a tapestry being unwoven by the threads. Streams of black energy broke off from the storm’s main body and curved off to slam into and carve up the desert for dozens of miles around. Scores of smaller rivers of dark destruction were bled away from the central body of the beam, sent raining down all across the landscape. Each strike destroyed kilometers of white, sandy desert. Thick beams ate up miles in wild, dancing funnels. But the center of the Cero couldn’t fully descend, it’s power divided into too many different directions by the gravity cyclone that Kaizer X had thrown into its path.

The Cero Devestador might have had over half of its force dissipated by gravity, but this in turn bled off power from the gravity cyclone until it couldn’t hold the main body of the Cero back any longer, and the remaining weakened, but still quite potent storm of black and surging red energies broke through and smashed into Kaizer X. He was able to cross his swords in front of him at the last second to absorb the remaining blow, however, and his whole body was covered in rivers of golden power as he rode the Cero Devestador’s remaining destructive energies back to the ground. Kaizer X slammed into the sands feet first and held firm, keeping his blades crossed before him for a moment before slashing out in a final burst of power that caused the last eddies of the Cero Devestador to explode around him. The shockwaves battered his body, but compared to the apocalyptic destruction that had rained down upon Hueco Mundo’s desert just seconds ago, this last explosion was fairly minimal.

Growling away the pain of his wounds, Kaizer X steadied his stance and glanced to check on Tempest on his shoulder. The Soul Reaper had formed her Zanpaktou into a shield to guard herself, but her body was burned and bloodied, with the metal of her sword pitted and scarred even as it morphed back into a sword.

The Storm King landed in a unsteady heap, barely standing as he’d used up a huge portion of power to throw that attack, and he stared dumbfounded not only at Kaizer X still standing, but the fact that the other three Dark Hunters hadn’t even been touched by his most devastating technique.

“...Oh...” he said, glancing at his mangled body still struggling to regenerate now that he’d burned through so much spiritual energy. His ultimate Cero should of struck hard enough to glass a large city and just about anything standing in such a radius, but Kaizer X’s gravity cyclone had diffused enough of the energy that much of that destruction had coated the area around the Dark Hunters, rather than struck them directly. As a result he was drained, with four wounded but still very much alive and pissed of kaiju staring him down. The Storm King gulped, “Uh... time out?”

There would be no time out.

With resolve to finish this, the Dark Hunters charged as one. Irys sped up into the sky, while Megalon and Gigan moved in front of X to charge ahead, providing their leader cover.

Battered and drained but refusing to just drop dead, the Storm King dredged up any and all scraps of his remaining spiritual pressure and opened both his mouth, took aim with his tails, and every little back tendrils. Although weakened, Ceros fired from his mouth and tails, and barrages of Balas fired from his tendrils in a last ditch salvo of Hollow power to try and stop the charging kaiju. It was a scene not unlike many a time kaiju of their type weathered a hail of fire while relentlessly moving forward. The Storm King was weakened enough that his Ceros and Balas weren’t hitting as hard, so Megalon and Gigan could march through them painfully, but not with fear of being stopped.

Di Roy and Gaw both rode along with their respective kaiju allies, Di Roy using his whip-like sword to bat aside Bala bullets that got close to Gigan’s damaged eye, while Gaw jumped around Megalon’s body, firing Ceros of her own to counter beams that would have struck Megalon’s injured areas. Both cyborgs opened up with all of their weapons as they charged, pelting the Storm King in a hail of exploding grenades, explosive revolver shells, eye lasers, and electrical lances.

As they got close, both also switched to melee mode. Gigan busted out his chainsaws, which revved up with crimson fire. He also set his chest mounted buzzsaw to full speed, which filled the air with a demonic whine. Megalon not only spun up his arm drills, but the drills on his shoulders now moved, lowering to point forward as they too started to spin.

The cyborg brothers hit the Storm King in a brutal fury, tearing along either side of the Storm King’s body in twin motions of rending destruction. Gigan’s hacking chainsaws and chest buzzsaw ripped through limbs and tentacles alike, while Megalon’s four drills carved a bloody canyon in the Storm King’s other side, spraying blood upon both cyborgs until their carapaces were coated red.

The Storm King didn’t roar so much as scream, and was thrown back by the double assault like a ragdoll, and sent sailing over the lip of the canyon where his fortress once lay, now in utter ruins. His body slammed into the broken remains of one of the pyramids, and laying on his back he groaned and looked up as he heard a terrifying screech descending from above.

Irys dive bombed at the Storm King, and Roka remained perched upon the Gyaos’ head, holding tight to the bridge of Irys’ snout. Irys’ mouth opened and red and purple light gathered there. Then Roka’s four spider limbs extended out a flurry of threads that formed a conical shape in front of Irys’ mouth. Irys then fired a powerful sonic Cero at the same moment Roka filled her threads with her own golden spirit energy. The threads wrapped around the sonic beam, fusing with the point of the beam like the tip of an arrow. Roka had become familiar enough with Irys’ spirit energy that she’d been able to fuse her own reishi with Irys’ to allow her to combine her threads into a sort of pointed conduit.

This meant that when the sonic Cero beam sliced into the Storm King’s chest, it not only bored right through him, but Roka was able to solidify the reishi particles so that when the beam dissipated, Roka’s threads remained, spreading out and burrowing through the Storm King’s flesh to seize up his muscles. This meant that while he could still thrash around and move, he was slowed down momentarily. More than enough time for Kaizer X to rush the edge of the canyon, ironically at the same location that he and Tempest had shared a conversation not so long ago, and leap off the edge to soar over the center of the canyon and descend right towards the Storm King’s prone body.

With a last moment of desperation the Storm King extended his rib cage again and tried to fire a Cero barrage from them at the descending gold and black dragonoid. The Ceros were fewer and weaker, but still hammered Kaizer X’s body, not that he allowed that to stop him as he brought his swords up. He landed knee first onto the Storm King’s gut and slashed down with both blades in curving, golden arcs. The blades sliced cleanly and thoroughly through the Storm King’s neck, and his head popped off in a soaring arc.

Still sensing that this wouldn’t be a final, killing blow, Kaizer X was tempted to just let loose a final storm of gravitons to smash the Storm King’s remains to pieces, but even amid his aggression, X remained in control, and remembered Tempest’s words.

He looked at her, and nodded. A small ring of gravitons formed above her, aimed at the Storm King. X growled once. ‘Go. End it.’

Gratitude in her eyes, she rose and moved in one motion, Flash Stepping through the gravity ring which propelled her skyward after the Storm King’s head.

The Storm King saw her coming and even as a decapitated head he still somehow managed to move in the air, his distorted voice growling, “You damned idiot! You could have had the revenge you wanted!”

His jaws flashed at her, but Tempest flipped in the air, narrowly avoiding the teeth as she landed on the bridge of the Storm King’s snout. She then raised her Zanpaktou and lunged forward, ramming the blade into the center of the Hollow hole in the center of the Storm King’s forehead. She then transmuted the blade's shape into a blossom of six carving blades that spread through the Storm King’s entire head.

“Revenge? Yes, I wanted that,” she admitted as they started to fall back towards the ground, her voice so quiet it could barely be heard over the wind, “But far more important than that, I wanted to have the meaning restored to my life that only comes from bonds shared with comrades who are as family. I would have followed you anywhere, for such a bond, if you hadn’t thrown it away. Now, neither of us have anything. So I guess that means we’re both idiots.”

“Tch...” the Storm King’s head started to flow away in a billow of gray ash and small specs of white light, “So...damned... sentimental...”

With that, the Storm King was no more. His head, and the body on the ground, faded into a billowing cloud of ash that joined the sands of Hueco Mundo, while a cascade of white motes of light floated in the air like shining dust. Tempest was so exhausted she didn’t even have the energy to try and correct her fall, but found herself caught in a giant golden hand as Kaizer X held it out for her. He let go of the Kaiser energy, letting his body shrink and return to its monochrome white and black coloring. Even then, X felt his body starting to change back to a human shape, having expended quite a bit of the energy that had transformed him in the first place.

Within moments X had returned to his human form amid a flurry of countless golden flakes of energy that shed from his body. He was left, wounded but standing in front of an equally wounded Tempest Shadow. The pair shared a brief look at one another, and X saw her lips quirk in a smile of gratitude. Words weren’t needed between the two battered warriors, so instead they looked up at the still fading motes of energy as the Storm King’s body faded, even his bones turning to dust-like bits of floating energy.

There were several earth shaking crashes as X’s kaiju companions all landed within the canyon, still in their true forms for a few moments longer than their leader due to having not quite expended as much energy as X had when he’d gone Kaizer form. Di Roy was all but dancing on top of Gigan’s head.

“Holy shit! We actually won! For a minute there I was thinking we were buttered toast with a side of freakin’ deadsville jam, but damn, we smoked that asshole!”

Atop Irys, Roka coughed politely and said, “Not quite the terms I’d choose, but yes, we all appear to have survived.”

Gaw let out a loud, energetic bark from where she perched on Megalon’s shoulder, and Megalon responded with his own kaiju-cry of victory that echoed across the canyon walls, soon followed by Gigan and Irys’. The three Arrancar all hopped off their respective allies and joined X and Tempest Shadow on the ground, Di Roy in particular looking around at the fading motes of light, which still consisted of thousands of bits that were slowly vanishing into the sky.

“What’s with the lightshow anyway? The sonuvabitch is dead, ain’t he?”

At Di Roy’s question, X glanced at Tempest Shadow, who slowly returned her battered Zanpaktou to it’s sealed, katana form and sheathed it. Her eyes looked upon the floating points of light with eyes reflecting those points of light like teardrops on the ocean.

“This isn’t just the Storm King’s energy. It’s the energy of all the souls he stole from my comrades. All those thousands... Grubber... Yin... Yang... even Patros. When I used my Zanpaktou to deliver the killing blow, it’s purifying effect spread to all of them. Every single soul is now free. I’d hoped...”

Tempest’s voice trailed off, and Roka nodded with a somber look, her voice soft and kind, “You’d hoped some of them might be freed entirely, still intact.”

Tempest nodded quietly, and Roka surprised her, causing Tempest to give a slight start at the Arrancar’s next words.

“It may not have worked for most of your comrades, but I would not give up hope just yet. Don’t you feel it?”

Uncertainty on her face, Tempest felt about with her spiritual senses. It wasn’t easy, with all of the residual spirit energy in the air. The reiatsu of thousands of souls still filled the air, fading away one by one, but amid that mass, Tempest felt something. A coalescence of two distinct, very familiar spiritual pressures. Eyes wide, Tempest turned left and right, searching until she found the spot, and in an awkward, wounded gait, ran towards a place near the base of the broken fortress ruins.

After a second, X followed her, along with the Arrancar. At this point Gigan, Megalon, and Irys’ transformations were also coming to an end, their bodies shrinking down to their human forms as they shed billowing clouds of the energy they’d absorbed to assume their kaiju bodies.

Tempest reached the fortress ruin, and there, in front of the shattered stone wall, a swirl of light motes ceased to rise, and instead descended, and swirled together. The pieces of spirit energy clumped up until they formed bodily shapes, then the white and blue light faded, revealing two pale female figures laying together, side by side, their stark blue and red hair standing out against the white sands.

“Ugg...”

“Umm...”

Yin and Yang were quite naked, although they didn’t seem to notice this much as they both fluttered icy blue eyes awake and sat up in mixed confusion. They had all of a second to breath before both of them had strong, violet arms wrapped around them tightly.

“Urk! C-Captain!?”

“Captain Tempest? What’s going on?”

Tempest, head nestled between the pair as she held the twins close, her eyes shut against tears, managed to say, “Yin. Yang. I’m so sorry. I should have looked after everyone, should have realized...”

The twins' confusion slowly cleared up as the pair looked at the injured, weeping Soul Reaper holding them, then at X, the other gathered Arrancar, and the approaching forms of Gigan, Irys, and Megalon. Understanding started to form on their faces, Yin holding Tempest back, while Yang blushed a fiery red to match her hair and awkwardly let herself be hugged.

“Thought I saw those two get chomped,” noted Gigan nonchalantly, not seeming to pay the naked twins much mind as he started checking his own body for damage and running internal diagnostics. “Man, this is going to take at least a week to fix once I’m back in my repair bay.”

“You have a repair bay?” asked Di Roy, shooting up an eyebrow, “You see, Roka, this is why we keep getting outpaced by the Quincy and Soul Reapers. We don’t got funding like these dudes get. But Metal Death Chicken has a point, didn’t those two get eaten?”

“I believe it’s a factor of their origins,” Roka said, “Those two were experiments of Grogar’s, if you recall? There is a strong chance that, due to the alterations to their souls from said experiments, the Storm King’s ability couldn’t fully absorb them.”

“It wasn’t just that,” said Yin as she and her sister were able to finally stand, if a bit wobbly, as neither seemed to have much strength left in them after their ordeal. Tempest Shadow took what remained of her Captain’s coat, tearing it in half to give to the wins to wear over themselves, to at least partially provide some modesty.

“What do you mean?” Tempest asked, her voice still rough with emotion.

“It was Grubber,” Yang said, looking away with downcast eyes, “Me and Yin... we were in there. Inside the Storm K... inside that bastard, and we could feel our souls getting drawn into him with everyone else.”

“We could hear everyone inside him, struggling against him,” Yin said, voice haunted, “Everyone fought to try to break free, to do anything to weaken him while he fought you all. And when you killed him, we all felt it, like a hook in our souls got yanked free. Everyone else started fading away, but Grubber, he... he stubbornly held on, and he grabbed onto us.”

Yang’s voice broke a bit, “H-he used his own spirit energy to help pull ours together. We weren’t as far gone, I guess, and he, that hard headed guy, used what he had left of his own energy to get us the rest of the way out. I heard him. He... he said, ‘Tell that idiot Captain of ours to take better care of herself, because I won’t be there to watch her back anymore.’”

Tempest closed her eyes, then slowly nodded, “Yes... that’s Grubber.”

Silence descended for a moment, only to be broken a second later by Megalon scratching his head and saying, “Sooooo, mission accomplished?”

“If the mission was ‘Don’t die’, then yes, mission very much accomplished,” said Gigan, who’s voice remained deadpan as he turned towards X, “Of course I think we were sub-contracted for some kind of scouting mission by this reality’s Adagio, which seems to be pretty tits up, all things considered. We don’t even have a ride back to that Las Noches place, because someone blew up our car.”

Tempest looked at him and actually offered an apologetic bow, “My own fault entirely.”

“Yeah, I know,” stated Gigan flatly, and Irys was right beside him with her own heated look, her arms crossed over her chest.

“You started all of this,” Irys said, “You hurt my flock, captured and imprisoned us, then had to rely on us to clean up your mess because your stupid psycho boss turned on you.”

“Irys-” X began, but Irys held up a hand at him, one of the few times she’d ever openly cut him off, as she walked right up to Tempest and stared the Soul Reaper hard in the eyes. Tempest met Irys’ look, and didn’t flinch or so much as raise her hand in defense as Irys drew a hand back and belted a fist across Tempest’s face.

“H-hey!” Yang said, but Tempest held up her own hand to forestall the twin.

“No Yang. She earned the right to do that. All of this has been my own fault. I...” she looked to Irys, then at X, her voice heavy, “I trusted the wrong master, and it has cost us all. Reparations are owed. More than that, these people have risked their lives to defeat the one who betrayed us, and gave me the opportunity to save the souls of our comrades, and return the two of you to me. Irys, Gigan, Megalon, Di Roy, Gaw, Roka... and X, please... I can’t ask forgiveness, but I do ask you let me do whatever I can to pay back the debt I owe you all.”

Irys kept up a firm expression of ire, but blew out a quick sigh and turned around quickly, waving her hand, “Whatever. I did what I needed to. Anything else is between you and X, far as I’m concerned.”

Gigan shrugged, “All I want is a way to get back to our mission start point. We’ve got a portal to catch, and I’m quite done with this particular reality, myself.”

Megalon just rested his hands behind his head and said, “Eh, it’s all cool to me, long as my buddies and I all are all okay. And it was a pretty cool set of fight scenes. I’m feeling jazzed, all things considered.”

Regarding Tempest with a steady gaze, having listened to his companions' words and already himself having come to his own conclusions about the Soul Reaper, he said, “The lives of my team are now safe. Little else matters to me. If you feel a debt remains owed, I’m not even certain how you’d repay it, given your current state.”

She let out a laugh laced with a world's worth of exhaustion, both physical and emotional, but Tempest still managed a smile, “I may have little left to give, but there’s still a surprise or two left in me, X. Firstly, you need a way back to Las Noches. Yin and Yang can create a Garganta portal that will take you there.”

“Wait? Seriously!?” Di Roy exclaimed, “The heck you guys doing knowing how to make a portal that close to Las Noches from here?”

Yin held up her chin a bit, “We were planning to eventually attack the place, remember? Me and Yang did several recon runs near the fortress. We can’t get you right on top of it, but we can get you within a few miles.”

“Beats walking,” Gigan said, and Irys nodded a faint agreement.

“Guess I won’t eat you two, if you give us a ride,” she said.

“Before that, however,” said Tempest, “You originally came out this far into the desert because you were looking for information on Privaron Espada, right?”

“Correct,” X said, tilting his head slightly, “Adagio Dazzle wanted us to gain insight on the whereabouts of such individuals. As it turns out, the Storm King was the only one we ran into, and he’s officially out of play. I don’t know if that will satisfy Adagio, especially given her desire to forge alliances, but it is all we have to give her it seems.”

“Ah, not quite,” Tempest replied, glancing at the twins, “Do you both recall where the underground records rooms are?”

Yang blinked, and Yin tapped her chin, “Yes, I think so. But the fortress...”

They looked at the smashed ruins of the two former pyramids, now little more than broken collections of stone rubble more suited to a child’s pile of broken Legos. Tempest didn’t appear daunted by this, turning towards the rubble with a determined look, “Those rooms should still be intact. My strength may be spent, but with a bit of time to rest, I can, with your help, excavate those chambers. X, if you don’t mind postponing you and your team’s return to Las Noches for a bit, I will obtain for you every record that I and the Storm King had gathered on the Privaron Espada. They were our primary rivals for power and troops out here in the deep deserts, and while some of them we conquered, there are more still that were too powerful for us to risk attacking yet. If Adagio Dazzle is serious about seeking allies among them, our records should prove to be exactly what she’s looking for.”

X’s eyes didn’t change much, but there was a slight softening around them as he said, “That would be... appreciated. There are still several days yet before we are due to return home to our master, so there’s time.”

With that, the wounded, tired warriors, Arrancar and kaiju alike, rested as best they could. It took several hours, but when Tempest recovered enough spiritual power to make use of her Bankai once more, it was almost trivial to remove large portions of the ruined fortress until a pathway could be found into the still intact lower chambers. By the time Roka had finished sewing up injuries with her threads for everyone, Tempest had returned with Yin and Yang carrying bags filled with scrolls and books of files. The twins had managed to appropriate some fresh clothes, although notably not replacements of the Storm King’s armor. Now they wore what looked like pale white school uniforms, apparently clothing taken during one of their rare excursions to the human world and left in storage. Tempest had also gotten rid of her old armor, now wearing the plain black robes of a Soul Reaper along with a simple, gray colored cloak.

Handing over the scrolls and files, with Gaw and Megalon carrying the bags between them, the two groups stood off from one another.

“Yin, Yang, open the Garganta,” Tempest said, and the twins both nodded at her.

They went to stand about ten paces apart from each other, and between them formed the dark, open maw of a Garganta, the portal almost instantly crossing the space of darkness which was the Precipice Realm and into another part of Hueco Mundo. White dunes, and the distant, but unmistakable form of Las Noches could be seen through the portal, miles away.

“Well, can’t say this has been fun, but... yeah, no, I’m never coming back here if I can help it,” Gigan declared, putting himself through the portal first, making an easy hop across the small gap to the other side.

Di Roy chuckled, “Dude really needs to unwind. I’m thinking party when we get back.”

“He doesn’t strike me as the ‘party’ type, but perhaps we’ll find something to help everyone recover upon returning home,” Roka said, joining Di Roy in striding across.

“Well, I kinda had fun,” Megalon said, waving at Tempest and the twins with zero rancor in his cheerful face, “Have a nice life peps. Don’t join up with any nutjobs again. C’mon Gaw, I’m hungry, and sooner we get back, sooner we can do another food run, maybe watch some movies on that sweet entertainment system your boss has set up. I keep thinking we should ask our boss for something like that..”

“Mmm, food would be good,” Gaw said, yawning as she helped Megalon carry the heavily laden bags through the portal, “But I don’t know movies.”

Irys was next through, pausing hesitantly for a second as she cast a glance at Tempest and the twins as if she wanted to say something, but then she just shook her head and jumped through. That only left X remaining. He approached the Garganta, and turned his gaze to Tempest, meeting her eyes.

“What will you do now?” he asked.

“Honestly?” Tempest said, and her gaze slipped away from his for a second, looking at the destruction of what had once been her home, “I don’t know yet. Continuing to seek Tirek’s downfall seems... almost petty, now. I think I’ll need to take time to really consider what matters.”

Her eyes turned towards the twins, her voice filling with a heady combination of regret, but also loving resolve, “Them, above all, matter to me, so their safety will always come first. Beyond that, I just don’t know.”

“It's possible Adagio Dazzle will seek you out,” X said, not in any suggestive manner, simply stating what he considered the most likely possibility. Tempest nodded.

“If she does, I’ll hear her out, but can’t make promises. Feel free to tell her as much.”

“I will,” X said, then after a moment’s hesitation, added, “Take care of yourself.”

Before he could step through the Garganta, Tempest stepped towards him, placing a very gentle hand on his arm to halt him. He looked at her, and her eyes were filled with an odd, serious light.

“X, one last thing. I know your loyalty to your current master is firm. I’m not asking you to do anything other than just one thing. Be careful. I sincerely hope your faith in him is justified, but... I don’t want you to have to go through what I just did.”

He was silent for a few seconds, expression unreadable. With slow deliberation he raised his own hand to place on hers, not with any force, nor necessarily with affection. It was more like an acknowledgment, the kind of motion that was more in line with the body language of kaiju than the words of people. A simple touch of acknowledgment that said; “I will.”

Then he turned and strode through the Garganta. After it closed there was a long minute of silence as Yin and Yang gathered around Tempest Shadow, and the three observed the remains of the place they’d called home for so long.

“So, Captain, what do we do now?” asked Yin.

Tempest took a deep breath and let it out slowly, like cleansing herself, and said, “First, we honor our dead. We can’t dig the graves, but we can carve a remembrance for them in the walls of this place. Then... we find our way.”

And so it was that, a day later, a lone Soul Reaper and two twin Arrancar left the ruined, empty canyon behind. In the largest portion of the remaining fortress wall a monument had been carved, consisting of hundreds of names from each fallen Hollow that had taken a name.

At the top of those names stood one carved just a bit larger and bolder than the rest.

Grubber.

Comments

[MSie95]

Tempest is such a mum. Hope they'll find their place. Sunset's group would be nice. Or one new under Tempest, but I guess she's more a Commander than Leader.

Shame about Grubber though.

[hydra30]

You guys really know how to write epic battle scenes. Storm King, what a disloyal ass, no matter the reality.

[Ultimate Warrior of Zera]

That was epic. I was really sad when Tempest told X to be careful about Bagan, as it is a forgone conclusion that he will eventually betray the Dark Hunters.

[Aemon Targaryen]

Yin and Yang were quite naked, although they didn’t seem to notice this much as they both fluttered icy blue eyes awake and sat up in mixed confusion. They had all of a second to breath before both of them had strong, violet arms wrapped around them tightly.

“Urk! C-Captain!?”

“Captain Tempest? What’s going on?”

Tempest, head nestled between the pair as she held the twins close, her eyes shut against tears, managed to say, “Yin. Yang. I’m so sorry. I should have looked after everyone, should have realized...”

Oooh

The mother-daughter relation than Tempest have with them is so sweet, what made you decide to have that ?

“We could hear everyone inside him, struggling against him,” Yin said, voice haunted, “Everyone fought to try to break free, to do anything to weaken him while he fought you all. And when you killed him, we all felt it, like a hook in our souls got yanked free. Everyone else started fading away, but Grubber, he... he stubbornly held on, and he grabbed onto us.”

You know, it remind me a lot of FMA, and of the souls inside « Father ».

Tempest took a deep breath and let it out slowly, like cleansing herself, and said, “First, we honor our dead. We can’t dig the graves, but we can carve a remembrance for them in the walls of this place. Then... we find our way.”

And so it was that, a day later, a lone Soul Reaper and two twin Arrancar left the ruined, empty canyon behind. In the largest portion of the remaining fortress wall a monument had been carved, consisting of hundreds of names from each fallen Hollow that had taken a name.

At the top of those names stood one carved just a bit larger and bolder than the rest.

Grubber.

It’s sad.

Did you thought of the possibility of the Storm King not pulling such a stunt ? I find this idea interesting.

[thatguyvex]

11105856

The mother-daughter relation than Tempest have with them is so sweet, what made you decide to have that ?

The first reason is I thought it would be a good way to develop and add some depth to Tempest's character, making her more than just a commander of her soldiers, but a more motherly figure. As for why Yin and Yang specifically, that's something of a compensation on my part for the fact that I wasn't super fond of the way the canon pair were used in the Bleach movie they were in. In the film they're not given much personality, no backstory, and are just flat henchmen to the movie's antagonist. Figured I'd actually give them background, personalities, and a genuine relationship with the character they serve here, by contrast.

Did you thought of the possibility of the Storm King not pulling such a stunt ? I find this idea interesting.

The most logical way that could pan out is if the Storm King actually listened fully to Tempest and decided to give the meeting with Adagio a genuine chance. Such a timeline could certainly go in a lot of different directions, as it'd potentially give Adagio a powerful ally, but one who is still unstable and very paranoid, so the Storm King could be as much a burden as a boon to Adagio's own plans.

[Aemon Targaryen]

11109023
Tempest would definitely have a mix of contempt and pity toward her alter ego i think with how you developed her

The most logical way that could pan out is if the Storm King actually listened fully to Tempest and decided to give the meeting with Adagio a genuine chance. Such a timeline could certainly go in a lot of different directions, as it'd potentially give Adagio a powerful ally, but one who is still unstable and very paranoid, so the Storm King could be as much a burden as a boon to Adagio's own plans.

I would had loved to see a alliance alongside a less shitty Storm King.

It would had been extremely interesting, and the discovery of the ability to turn normal Hollows into Arrancar would had definitely be extremely helpful, especially since it’s quite likely the Storm King could had done a reverse of his ability to do a mass Arrancar transformation instead of a mass absorption.

Also, I hope than Soul Reaper Tempest and her daughters will appear soon in the main story.

I really love the idea of Tempest meeting her Equestria version .

[MSie95]

Thinking time: Could Storm King return? Both Szayelaporro and Aaroniero ended up in Hell, SK would definitelly go there.Hard to tell how it works here, but maybe there's a possibility.