[Esq/Kyuu/??] Week 118: Oh Shi

[DarkToaster]

A line of red erupted from the withered Arrancar’s finger and the retreating shinigami’s form fell out of the sky like a bird whose wings had been broken. The Commander leapt at Esqueleto in a flash step, but emerged only to find that Esqueleto had darted into his own sonido and stood on a nearby pile of rubble, leaving the Commander to strike only thin air.

“I’m a man of my word,” Esqueleto called into the sky, seeming to take no notice of Shiroi until the Vice-Captain hit the ground. He turned back to the Captain of the 1st. “You’ll excuse me, but if a man ain’t got his word, then what does he got?” He laughed a wheezing laugh. “Don’t give me that look, it was just a bala. I’m a hospitable host, and I’m saving the best for my guests of honor.”

“Gangrenousssss limb. You will be ammmmputtatttedd.” Orcus hissed at the Arrancar’s back and his eyes flashed red. Twin beams of red arced at the dread lord and he disappeared into a sonido, only to find the beams continued their chase.

Shiroi was not going to waste the small opening worrying about the fate of the Vice-Captain. He shoved his sword back into his sheath and ripped the weapon from his belt to hold it in both hands. “Ban-kai!” He cried out, and the air boiled with pestilent reiatsu as Ekirei truly entered the field.

It was like a disease as the sheath rippled and melted, coating the white haori-clad Commander in its inky ebony sheen from head to toe. His face was featureless and muted – a poor reflection of what once had been a human being. The pale moonlight reflected dimly off of him, as if he had become a living embodiment of the night. Lurking within the reflection was the Sin Eater, a memory of the hollow Shiroi had become for decades after his death. How close had he come to being a hollow general himself? How close had he come to being Esqueleto?

The Commander rose from the ground to float up several feet, a true icon of destruction, as his eyeless face scanned to try and detect the Arrancar lord, who appeared and disappeared lately as Orcus’ cero continued in hot pursuit. Shiroi hesitated to join the battle and hedge Esqueleto into the trap as he wished for the two to exhaust each other and allow his debilitating presence to take full effect. He was thankful that Louhi had not attacked yet so that the Arrancar’s power could degrade as much as possible.

Esqueleto’s laugh seemed to echo from one end of Hueco Mundo to the other, from the southern battlefield to the north. He finally stopped and batted the Cero away with the back of his hand, his skin sizzling slightly as crimson energy met enhanced Arrancar skin.

The Arrancar king’s hand went to his hilt and his duster billowed. His grey eyes were ringed by lines of glowing crimson that extend to his entire face. A wild grin stretched across his leathery face, “There ain’t nothin’ more to life than this. The killin’ is going to go on forever. Let the murder begin, Megiddo!”

Hundreds of thousands of voices, lost echoes from all of history called out to the fighting shinigami, vizards, humans and hollows. They all shared the commonality of conflict, dating back to the first time man had taken up arms against another. Their warcries resonated and shook Las Noches to its very foundations. Buildings collapsed into dust as the earth shook.

Hundreds of spirits composed of dust poured from the earth and took shape around Esqueleto. Each took the form of a weapon. Knives, swords, flails, guns and spears of every conceivable design and size roiled about the Arrancar king chaotically. Then, they attacked him.

Flame, bullet and blade riddled the creature in one moment of violence. His flesh melted in some places, split in others. Bullet holes and tears riddled his clothes and scraps of severed muscle and sinew were clearly visible all over his body. But there was no blood from the wounds. Only dust.

As dust spurted out of an open throat to the rhythm of the monster’s heartbeat, Esqueleto’s voice boomed. “I have my bones wrapped around every weapon ever made to kill another man. Killin’ – that’s all I am and that’s all that humanity has been doin’ while I’ve been under the dirt. They’ve gotten damn good at it too.” Dust settled underneath his arm into the form of an enormous Gatling gun that spun in warning of the destruction it was about to bring.

Shiroi could only watch as the apocalyptic spiritual pressure assault him with wave after wave of energy. He had to hold up his hand to shield himself from the sheer strength of it. Only once had he felt energy of such magnitude and it was from a great distance. Now he stood in the center of the storm. Yet he was still standing.

Shiroi’s arm slid into the shape of a shield as the avalanche of projectiles rained down upon him, shoving him feet into the ground with their sheer weight and power and chipping away at the iron that was now his flesh. He could not withstand the onslaught for long.

Orcus shifted behind the corpse only to have Esqueleto turn his free hand and fire a spray of pellets from a shotgun that had materialized in the air. The creature hissed as it was knocked back into a pile of stone and mortar, bleeding from multiple wounds.

 

[louhi]

The commander's invisible ally was still standing somehow as well, farther from the Espada's assault. Her knees were shaking, but that was beyond her notice. The released Esqueleto was the single most powerful thing she'd ever witnessed. Compared to this, she would have rather had another round with Seisatusu. Here she was an insignificant little maggot. But she had to act.

Her eyes were fixed to the molten iron image of her former captain. Though he appeared fluid and impervious, she knew the damage of the bullets raining down on him was real, and the man contained within that form could be ripped to shreds.

At that provocation Louhi could only throw caution and strategy to the wind. Clutching Kirjokansi tight, she released her Ban Kai with all the fierce desperation in her.

Behind the shadow of the clashing giants, her own power flooded out, reaching and searching with unseen hands as she clung onto her floating naginata. The battlefield's fallen reached back to her, and among them...

"No!" The assassin roared, throwing all her strength to the bullet-riddled limbs of the Soutaichou, irrationally furious with him for letting an Arrancar get the better of him.

"Fight back you dumb idiot!" Aurora spilled around her unbidden, cracking with electricity.

 

[DarkToaster]

It was a strange feeling as the Commander weathered the assault of the strongest creature in existence. Under the avalanche of projectiles and spiritual pressure, he suddenly felt her strength like the presence of hundreds of tiny hands, pressing him forward; bolstering him. His own reiatsu reached out and intertwined with hers to reciprocate with the division techniques he had devised to hold the Gotei together.

Instinctively, she had used Kirjokansi as he had always tried to teacher her to use it, as a force that allowed her to avenge rather than desecrate. She had shed something in her that had been lurking in the darkest corners of her soul since the beginning, but there was no time to recognize the significance of it. There was only time for action.

Orcus rose from the rubble and grasped touched his bleeding wounds with his phantom hand experimentally. How long had it been since anything had struck him without his permission? He had almost forgotten the sensation of the pain. It did not do.

His mask twisted to the side in confusion as the lurker revealed herself. The white-haired one had brought a thrall? Was she the one who had been with him when he defeated the masked imposter? What power did he hold over her? The feeling was familiar, yes. It was the feeling he had used to control Haruka and Merche. Yet it felt alien as well. Why?

The phantom rocketed forward in a burst of sonido. Wherever the power had come from, it needed guidance to reach its destination. He raised an invisible claw at the grasp the Arrancar by the throat, but the decimated creature wheeled back swung and enormous sword from the dust and carved a gash in the attacking spirit.

The Commander did not waste the opportunity. With Orcus wounded, striking the deathblow now would ensure that he could not consume even a fraction of the dread Arrancar’s power.

He reached out toward Esqueleto and his arm was a river of black, molten steel, barbed and sharp over every inch. Esqueleto, as strong and fast as he was, found himself caught off guard by the strength of the attack. He had seen what this Faust was capable of when they had fought before. This was beyond him. Had he been holding back?

The torrent of steel wrapped around the Arrancar’s broken body, shuddering and flexing as it attempted to rip and shatter the creature into pieces. Shiroi willed the metal of Ekirei to become hotter, burning even as Esqueleto’s hierro resisted all attempts to harm it. The Commander knew how fast the Arrancar king was. If he let Esqueleto go, he might never get the chance to strike again.

Six spiked appendages erupted from the Commander’s back, even as his hands wrapped around the ruined creature. Before they could pounce, a red glow ripped through the Commander and into the sky - a crimson lightning bolt tearing from the ground rather than the sky. Shiroi roared in agony, but did not let go, even as the hole in his shoulder bled freely.

All his training, all his preparation and plans were with him now. All of his focus went to wielding Ekirei. There was no time for pain or for bleeding. The spikes shoved themselves into Esqueleto’s flesh and his cry of pain joined the Commander’s, shaking the very foundations of Las Noches.

But the Arrancar king wielded murder as his weapon. A torrent of wind and fury threw the amorphous creature off of him as a simple sword materialized in his hand. Clouds and storms spiraled in the sky above.

The cry of agony from Esqueleto became a crazed laugh. This was the moment! Kill or be killed! The winds howled around him, for he was their master now. "Every weapon ever used,” Esqueleto’s voice boomed, carried on the wind, "to murder. That’s my weapon.”

Another sword appeared in his other hand and a swarm of chittering locusts came into existence in the sky, their hundreds of eyes glowing red in the darkened night of Hueco Mundo. "And the greatest weapon ever made to kill others is the zanpakuto. Killin’ is all we are. That’s why I’m the strongest. That’s why I get to keep livin’ and you get to start dyin’.”

A cyclone of debris and locusts tore apart the battlefield and Shiroi could only watch as the weapons of fallen Captains, his teachers and mentors and the legends of the Gotei that sustained them and motivated them were used like crude tools for demolition.

---

Mechanical notes

Over the course of these "turns" consider every buff from those feats applied and all division and united front techs activated. Battle adaptation has been used to shift everything to zan. With that in mind its snoogtime.

 

[louhi]

The girl's hopes rose as she watched the Commander locked with Esqueleto, her own strength running through the mighty grasp that held him and sought to shred him to bits. Every bit of her focus was there, even if her own blade wasn't. But everything was at stake, for both sides. A beast like Esqueleto wouldn't lay down and die, not for anyone.

Full of himself, Louhi thought and gritted her teeth harder as the Arrancar proclaimed his dominion over death. The arrogant words rang in her ears as the horde of locusts blotted Hueco Mundo's blank sky.The shock of what was being released ripped through her, the world cracked in two and she clung to the anchor of kirjokansi in the wretched hurricane. The slicing wind and voracious insects knifed at her exposed flesh, flumes of her blood vanishing into the storm.

Is this what it means, to really wield death?Her heart was flapping like a bird trapped in her chest. She couldn't even see the Commander anymore through the maelstrom, but she could still feel him there in the eye of it. Her pitiful attempt to help him accomplished nothing.

She and the Espada were opposites, maybe. One who had preserved his life indefinitely and one who had lost it, over and over. Which one was closer to mastering it? Even those murderers whose weapons he had claimed, they were...

Dead. Of course. Bodies, souls... if he was using their weapons, it had to be linked together, no matter how the lines were blurred. She expanded her ephemeral reach from the body of the Soutaichou, reaching through Esqueleto himself not sure what she was trying to find. Flashes of white seared at her brain, threatening the grip that prevented her from being torn away in the wind.

Always when things became so bad, at the very end she would give up and throw herself on the altar, because it was easier, because she thought it was her fate anyway. But not this time, because... Shiroi could die too, if she did. She didn't have time to be embarrassed by that thought. With renewed effort, she tried to fight against Esqueleto's own control over the dead.

 

[DarkToaster]

There was a moment when the weight became so heavy that the Commander thought he could not bear it. He felt her support leave and the hundreds of hands holding him up abandon him. Had her strength failed? So be it. He would fall as well.

Yet the final strike did not fall. The winds died and the locusts froze, hovering in the air in silent anticipation. Shiroi looked over to Louhi back over 500 years. She had defeated his opponent in her own way then too. No, it had been an illusion then. Part of him doubted whether this was not an illusion now.

What had made her listen to all those hollow speeches he had made to her about her power being to avenge the dead rather than desecrate them? He had been a foolish old man spouting platitudes about dreams which had no basis in reality when he had believed. When he had seen the truth of how she died, he knew everything he had believed about her was wrong. And yet here she was, invigorated by his own misguided fantasies, even after destroying them in the one who had authored them.

Shiroi raised his hand to the sky and from his outstretched palm came a duplicate of Kirjokansi. He would wield her power now too. He could feel the Espada’s dead flesh call out to him, begging to fall under the sway of a new master. Begging to be freed of their eternal monotony. The Commander obliged, even as Esqueleto struggled.

Esqueleto was powerful, but the combined strength of the two Captains was enough to restrain him. The killing. The murder. That was his weapon. And that had been his downfall. The arrancar laughed hoarsely at the irony. All those dead were pulling him down now. The murdered called out to the king of murder. He had avoided death for as long as he could.

He could, however, decide the manner of his death.

How did a hunter decide who to hunt? Often the hunter picked the young, weak or wounded. But there were other times when he did not. What motivates a pack of wolves to strike at a creature sometimes, and retreat to hunt again at other times? Esqueleto and Orcus were hunters and they knew.

It was the language of death. The hunted knew when it was time to relent and when it was time to fight. There was an unspoken bond between the killer and the killed. Orcus knew the signal well. It was in that language that Esqueleto let Orcus know he was ready. He was finally ready to die.

In an instant, everything changed. Shiroi fired the Obliteration Sphere at Esqueleto and readied another to finish the job should the first fail. Esqueleto fired an apocalyptic bolt of Cero at Louhi in a final strike at the authors of his demise.

The Commander did not think, firing his second sphere at the Cero. When faced with the choice between destroying Esqueleto and saving the woman who had wounded him most deeply, he had chosen to save her without a second thought. Shiroi wondered whether it was weakness or strength that had guided his hand as the explosions rattled Las Noches.

In the wake of the explosion, the form of Esqueleto, now but scraps of flesh on a skeleton, remained. Orcus sped toward the form, and opened his jaw, his mouth burning with red Cero energy and liquefying the bones as they entered his mouth.

The power. Orcus felt the ancient terror’s energy augment his own and he knew that he was complete. He was now a fit vessel for human evolution. He was the crux by which the soul would ascend. It was time to use the Hougyoku. He would use it to gain the Control. His Control would grow, and encompass the cosmos.

His light burned bright as a cocoon of energy enveloped him and then the other Vastro Lordes and hollow generals, carried across the battlefield by his will. With the fall of Esqueleto, he was the uncontested king. With his power to command and the Hougyoku, he commanded them to evolve. They could not disobey.

Shiroi tried to attack, but he had no energy left in him. He could only watch as a creature which could best Masaru himself was born. From the light, a figure emerged, small and childlike. Its features were muted and alien, as if a machine had tried to create an approximation of humanity and failed. No perhaps it had succeeded so well that it was unnatural.

An "0” was on its forehead. Its eyes opened and it beheld the two wounded Captains. Then a third eye opened in the 0. Emptybones had declared itself the 1st Espada. This was Espada Zero.

He raised an arm, obscured in robes and buildings fell to the ground. The earth beneath them split and trembled. The reiatsu was so thick in the air that it could be seen as well as felt.

There was no fighting this creature, even if they were at their full strength. Shiroi grabbed Louhi and whispered in his intercom for the retreat. The arms of the Senkaimon ushered them away, and the two Captains trudged the path between Soul Society and Hueco Mundo in silence.

The last remnants of Masaru’s era were gone now. The Second Age of Turmoil had begun.

PMs are over. You guys have until the end of the week to write about the retreat if you want. You don't have to though. Any hollow generals and VLs remaining are now Arrancar and all hollows are now hostile to Vizards, humans and shinigami. AHs can hitch a ride with the shinigami as they enter the Senkaimon.