First came the Reiryoku.
Thick, saturated with the emanations of Hueco Mundo, yet without a drop of the energy of the Lands of Eternal Night. More like a memory or an echo, merely a sorrowful tint in the typical, potent blend of physical and spiritual energy of this world that belonged to the technique's creator.
A prick, a barely audible crack in space. Then, the strangest Garganta he had ever seen tore open in the fabric of the world.
An oval, neat portal of a deep crimson color, the color of its owner's aura. No moans of tearing reality, no musty energy of the World Divider, no Menos figures in the background. Just a slight disturbance, a ripple in the global energy flow of the world.
And a human figure in a white porcelain mask, an obvious imitation of a Hollow's mask.
A new killer, come for the soul of the wounded huntress. Another bitch on a leash, serving the betrayers of humanity.
"Oikakero, Aogari."
Blue flame surged like the leaves of a falling autumn, traced an intricate pattern on the sharpest blade, reflected in the aura, settled in the phantoms of movements, drowned in the shadows around the blade owner's eyes.
As the killer stepped out of the portal, the crimson light of the transition dimmed, vanished, thinned out. Along with it, the passage closed just as ignominiously, mundanely.
A female figure, a luxurious mane of curly black hair, a scarlet gleam from under the eye sockets of the terrifying mask, frantic, jerky movements of a person who already knows they are too late but still allows themselves to hope.
"Hai, ye teki wo yomigaerasero." Third Officer Okumura's voice lost the last vestiges of human warmth.
Only the frost and ashes of a veteran of the most powerful and influential military organization in the Three Worlds.
No mercy, no attempt to capture. Because he felt a thin thread connecting the stranger to the wounded huntress. An attachment so strong it had gained a spiritual aspect. A double traitor, come to snuff out a life once so important to her.
This spiritual connection is too ephemeral to… an anchor for the Garganta! Okumura realized.
"Summer!" A voice hoarse with worry.
Where is all this anxiety coming from? Fear? Of mission failure? Of course. What else could maintain discipline in such a vile organization?
Not a moment for thought. The stranger's blade, glowing with infused elemental fire energy, leaps from its sheath, its point aimed precisely where, behind a layer of metal-reinforced wood, the unconscious huntress lies on blankets.
The bandit's crimson sword cuts through the reinforced wagon side with almost no resistance. A firework-bright shower of sparks sprays from the impact, the acid-red blade visibly melting away.
Gradually, the gap reveals the view of the pale, no longer quite so pained face of the woman he saved.
"Get away from her!" Seki wanted to scream.
His lips wouldn't obey.
Good that they didn't. Just as well. Any talk during a fight is a trick or foolish childishness. The situation is too unexpected for the former, too dangerous for the latter. Probably, it's desperation.
He had come so far, defeated a much stronger opponent under terrible conditions, saved the huntress, cared for her, washed her after her… accident, made no mistakes. Killed all the Hollows, prepared edible food. Protected her, damn it! Almost waited for his charge to finally open her eyes.
Just for this hypocritical, red eyed killer to hysterically undo all his efforts in a minute, snuff out his comrade's life, and then mockingly dive back into her portal?!
The mere thought of such an outcome drove the Shinigami to fury.
Perhaps emotions played a role. Perhaps he had once again pushed the boundaries of soul-body interaction. Perhaps good old Aogari had lent a helping hand once more.
He managed to summon all the low-level Hollows available to his Arena of Heroes at once.
"Ruler, the one who wears a mask of flesh…"
The masked woman was so focused on cutting a hole in the reinforced wagon side that she only noticed the new enemies when they had fully materialized in the world of beasts.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?! Are these Grimm too?"
AUO-O-OOO
The first to attack was his old friend: the Hollow baboon. Durable, strong, fearsome.
"Before whom all that exists waves its wings…"
The killer severed its arm with one careless gesture, though its appearance made her cautious, buying a few seconds.
Bad.
In pure skill, the brunette in the mask clearly surpassed the previous opponent the desert drifter in the top hat. Surpassed him not by an order of magnitude, but noticeably enough for a master like Okumura to see the difference immediately.
She surpassed him just as her weapon surpassed that primitive desert cleaver. A sword with different blade types, including elemental ones like that red, fire-essence blade, spelled a real headache. Too much variability, too lethal in the right hands.
And I only managed to defeat that desert freak because he was wounded and tired. Doesn't matter, I'm stronger now than I was yesterday. Less confusion, better control of the body, much better control of the soul.
"To whom is granted a human name…"
Next in his Zanpakutō's hierarchy came the Hollow twins, third and fourth from the bottom respectively. The Rukongai bandit, second from the bottom, didn't answer the call.
The left one, with the mask and body of a porcupine, continuously fired spines. Small, not too dangerous, but there were many, they were irritating, prevented normal movement, disrupted rhythm.
The right one, with the mask and body of an armadillo, sent vibrations through the ground from its ugly, short legs under its belly. Adapted to the grey sands of Hueco Mundo, it felt perfectly at home in the desert. Its "Tremor" robbed balance, disoriented, affected the inner ear and vestibular system.
"Tear your own throat out, black hound of Rondanini…"
The double attack of the summoned monsters managed to suppress the opponent, but she adapted with terrifying speed, then went back on the offensive, knocked back the one-armed baboon with a swing of her blade, lowered her sword for a finishing blow.
"Look upon yourself, destroy yourself, crumble into fiery ash…"
The last, fourth Hollow, the strongest of all the low-level Menos stored in the Arena of Heroes, entered the fray.
Anorexically tall, flat, with a body as black as a Gillian's and a small mask resembling a convex embroidered pattern or an emblem on clothing fabric. Thin, no thicker than a centimeter, it billowed over the portal killer like a black curtain over a pet.
And it was excellent at strangling victims, and its pliable, elastic body was difficult for bladed weapons to harm.
Okumura had nearly lost to it once, despite his then-position as Ninth Officer with corresponding strength. A fluke saved him: the Hollow was critically vulnerable to Bakudō, the Way of Binding.
After that, the Shinigami spent a long time searching for a Hadō capable of effectively destroying such a creature and found nothing better than the overwhelming power of Haien, the Destroying Flame, number fifty-four. Clear overkill, but he had been truly afraid of death that time. For the last time.
Needless to say, how much time Seki subsequently spent in the Fourth Division hospital after critical exhaustion?
"Where. Did. These. Bastards. Come from?! Damned Ozpin and his fucking wife! I hate new types of Grimm!!!"
Unlike the previous raiders, this one was particularly talkative.
"More like, foul-mouthed," Aogari frowned disapprovingly.
Not because of the vocabulary: because of the situation itself, where the killer was gradually turning the tide in her favor.
She was caught off guard, forced to fight unfamiliar opponents, on foreign terrain, against numerically superior enemies personally controlled by a Zanpakutō, unlike the local brainless monsters.
She was winning.
She broke free from the embrace of the three-meter-long ribbon Hollow, destroyed the porcupine Hollow with slashes from her yellow blade, and finished off the Baboon for good.
Yes, her energy had dipped slightly, but the killer had spent no more than a quarter of it, and only two of the four summoned monsters remained. And they stood no chance at all.
But Okumura had already finished chanting his Kido: the full version, without abbreviations or tricks, with energy nodes charged to the limit.
This was a spell he could use effectively even with his degraded control. He had hammered the matrix of the ninth Bakudō into his soul's reflexes too persistently.
The effect of demonic magic became truly powerful if one spared neither time nor energy. Another reason why many Captains continued to use low-level Kido, especially with the quality and quantity of Reiryoku possessed by high-ranking Shinigami officers.
"Bakudō Kyū…"
He rushed forward as his fingers ignited with the cold blue light of his aura and began tracing a kanji the physical embodiment of the spell. One of this particular Bakudō's drawbacks: the need to get right up close to the enemy.
A downside easily outweighed by its power, coupled with guaranteed accuracy.
The brunette's eyes widened comically as she saw the child running towards her. Okumura only had a moment to be surprised by her high level of analysis: if the woman got worried immediately, she considered him a threat despite his appearance. But then she screamed.
"Stop, kid! Get back, you damn brat, you'll die…"
"How noble," Aogari's tone gave no indication if it was sarcasm or silent acknowledgment.
Okumura himself silently continued running the strange attempt at mercy from an obvious bandit didn't move him in the slightest.
"…Geki!"
His opponent had just managed to finish off the armadillo with a long-range sword slash when the Shinigami completed his spell. She blinked in confusion, then froze. At first irritably, but almost immediately her grimace shifted to one of shock.
Complete paralysis of the opponent.
Of course, the spell wouldn't last long. The moment he completed his trap, he felt a powerful, no, a crushing resistance, as if he were suppressing not an Adjuchas, but certainly a Gillian on its evolutionary path.
A pitiful few seconds, he couldn't hold it longer. And even that was only due to the opponent's freezing surprise, her near-stupor at the moment of activation.
The black ribbon body of the last remaining Hollow coiled around the killer's shoulders, pressed her arms to her torso, and her sword to her thigh. The spell was rapidly fading, but that no longer mattered.
Okumura stood close enough for a sword strike.
He made the fastest lunge with his own tantō that he was capable of. He wanted to say it was pure Zanjutsu, but no, the dagger's form was still unfamiliar, strange, just as the short arms and weak grip of the young body were unfamiliar.
So, it came out at best a fifth of the standard power of a Third Officer.
The strike to the unprotected throat triggered a flare of Aura… a critically bright flare of Aura.
A veritable explosion of spiritual energy threw his puny little body back into the desert. Somewhere in the back of his mind, there was a void following the death of the last monster he had summoned. And in front of him, the enraged killer flared with spiritual, "Aural" pressure.
She tore the Hollow apart, threw me back, and shook off the paralysis simultaneously, just by releasing her Reiryoku? Even if it's colossal for my current self. In the Gotei, only the strongest Lieutenants and Captains can do that. So this is what a physical admixture in Aura means…
Ah, I should have anticipated such tricks, since the energy of the locals is both spiritual and physical at once. Kido will have less effect on them, Zanpakutō will weaken in this overly material world…
Hmm, but the Hollows here are more sensitive to Reiryoku their material form deprived them of many advantages, in exchange for an expanded food source.
At least his combat speed of thought remained closer to that of a trained Shinigami soul than an immature mortal.
Okumura got to his feet. The movement required some effort; his hands were shaking, his vision blurring at the edges. Stupid human physiology.
"I can still fight."
More of a mantra, self-persuasion, than words one could believe.
The useless Gigai was too tired, physical parameters severely reduced from wounds and overexertion. He had less than a tenth of his Reiryoku left, the sword's form was unfamiliar, and perfect interactions the foundation of Zanjutsu were not to be expected.
"I can still fight," he repeated stubbornly.
"You stand no chance," the Zanpakutō replied calmly, as if stating an obvious fact. Which it was. "You are not afraid and feel no regret. Good. Though you have been reborn, the core of your personality remains."
"Where are you going with this, Aogari?"
"You are young now."
"Are you saying I have a chance to win through evolution in battle?"
"Why not?"
"Ha, indeed, why not."
They both knew: miracles happen less often than the people who wait for them. But going into a hopeless fight imagining such a scenario seemed a little more pleasant.
"I believe we will meet in a new life, Master."
"Shoulder to shoulder," Okumura felt his steadfast partner touch his chest in a sign of respect.
And the incorporeal shadows in the Arena of Heroes raised their fists, paws, and tentacles.
The Shinigami nodded to him, smiled slightly, and assumed an aggressive stance. To hell with defense; it would be broken by sheer power. Time to risk it all, put everything into one strike. He had just enough energy left for one proper Shunpo.
By a twist of fate, he and the black-haired villainess had swapped places. Now he was shielding the wagon door and the hole in its wall with his back, while the criminal slowly advanced towards him, spreading suffocating Reiryoku pressure.
"Why are all the criminals here so strong?! Her spiritual power is on the level of a mid-tier Lieutenant, stronger than my former self! Well, excluding Shikai. Is that the local standard? And my charge, the huntress they're trying to kill, isn't much weaker than this masked Hollow-thug either."
"Although…"
The first enemy in this world, the desert freak, had Reiryoku at the level of a weak Third or strong Fourth Officer, and the last guard (hunter?) who died near the saved girl barely qualified as an Eighth.
He died quickly from his wounds after being discovered, so Okumura couldn't be sure of the assessment.
"Maybe the other warriors here aren't that strong, and I'm just lucky with my opponents?"
"Step aside!" snarled the black-haired killer, angry as the process of evolution into a Gillian.
Her voice sounded slurred and hoarse; a bruise was forming on her throat; the decorative feathers on her thighs drooped, frayed by the sand.
White-knuckled fingers gripped the yellow ("lightning," Seki noted) sword. The woman muttered indistinct curses into her mask but didn't attack immediately, slowing her pace as she neared the Shinigami.
Why is she even trying to avoid a fight with me? It's much more logical to eliminate the witness.
"I won't let you go any further. Die, scum of humanity."
Even through the mask, he could see her face contort into a vicious grimace.
"You nasty little freak. Getting in my way, siccing monsters from your Semblance, striking to kill right away… Feeling like a grown-up? I'll treat you like one. I'll gut you, make you eat all the shit from my camp, then shove it back into the vagina of your pathetic whore of a mother with the bluntest side of…"
A faint groan from the wounded huntress, almost inaudible over the monologue, cut her curses off more sharply than a sword strike to the throat.
The bandit lunged forward. Greedily, impulsively, forgetting the obstacle between her and her target.
Okumura himself had not forgotten.
The enemy rushed forward fast enough that the need for Shunpo vanished. All the maintained concentration of spiritual energy crashed into his sword; an economical step placed his body in the criminal's path.
Kabutowari.
A direct Zanjutsu strike, but with a certain trick to it, which is why it's only taught in the sixth year of spiritual arts.
At first glance, it's a simple thrust. However, the key lies in a special energy concentration: the least amount is at the very tip, on the last centimeter of the blade. Then comes a rather thick disc of concentrated Reiryoku, and a smooth cone leading back to the hilt.
It's like striking with a club where the additional force is focused on the unprotected tip, allowing almost all the imparted energy to bite freely into the opponent, mangling their internal organs.
Difficult, powerful, effective against armored foes or Grand Menos with dense Hierro defenses.
Two serious drawbacks: an increased chance of the blade breaking, and almost no cutting damage only a crippling blunt impact, as if from a staff. No, more like a nail driven into a wound.
She managed.
The Shinigami didn't know if it was due to experience, intuition, or simply overwhelming speed, but she managed. She interposed her rather battered blade in the path of the tantō, which glowed dully with its owner's mysterious, icy-blue aura.
The yellow elemental metal shattered into fragments.
The Zanpakutō continued onward, slamming into the villainess's stomach, but with its force spent, exhaling the last remnants of its imbued energy. The short child's arms involuntarily slowed the momentum due to the need for an extra step; the small blade reached its target later than calculated, giving her time to deviate from the lunge.
A cascade of minor inaccuracies, misalignments, and misfortunes severely weakened an already not-too-powerful strike.
The black-haired woman was thrown back a meter. The steel tips of her boots skidded across the sand; a weak rasp escaped her throat more from the surprise of the attack than from pain. Her Aura flickered, held, and restored itself.
Okumura bit his lip, his palms wet with tension as he shifted his grip on the sword to a two-handed hold.
Even with all the traps, surprises, and successful hits, the enemy still had a good half of her Reiryoku left. Most of which had been spent on that insane surge.
Half her Reiryoku and a whole heap of unrealized rage.
The Third Officer himself had exhausted almost his entire reserve. The next step was only fainting from exhaustion.
No miracle had occurred.
"R-ra!" The next strike came from the criminal herself, enraged by the constant game of cat and mouse and her role as a punching bag.
A new blade, now a loam-brown color, shot towards him without any pity. The parry was messy, forced: blade against blade. As always before, the opponent's power in a direct clash overwhelmed any resistance.
His hands were once again seared with fire; his back slammed into the corner of the wagon with such force that the wheels on the left side momentarily lifted off the sand before, after some deliberation, settling back into place.
Seki didn't allow himself to groan as he slid down the wagon's side like a discarded rag. He just planted his sword in the shifting, unreliable sand, trying to rise before the enemy's finishing blow.
She didn't take it, though she definitely could have. The strong showing mercy to the weak? It didn't matter; he would take any chance.
A pity his knees were shaking too violently to rely on them in a fight any longer.
"I don't know what a scrappy brat like you is doing here, but I don't have time to mess with every little shitstain in the desert. Even if She sent you…" The woman hesitated.
Furious scarlet eyes found his neck; the sword clenched in her fist twitched in a precise, years-practiced motion…
The girl in the wagon let out a hoarse exhale in her restless, healing sleep.
The bandit's shoulders tensed, then slowly relaxed and slumped; the blade lowered, its point sinking into the sand.
"Step aside nicely, I only need…"
"I won't let you lay a finger on her, murderer!" Okumura shouted, but there was no Reiryoku left in his body even to properly reinforce his sword.
To hell with it. He'd still surprise the enemy with a couple of Hakuda techniques.
If only the world around him would stop swimming and flickering so much.