Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Hell Butterfly ❯ Pyrrhic Victory ( Chapter 9 )

 

Hell Butterfly

 

Pyrrhic Victory

~09~

 

o)0(o

 

 

There was an explosion of perfectly melded Hollow, Shinigami and Zanpakuto synergy.

 

Tenebra was tossed away like a skeleton leaf in a storm. White blood splashed across the floor, barely visible. Back in the centre of the arena her brother coughed for air, strained by his Herculean effort to end this emotional torture as fast as inhumanly possible.

 

His bitter hopes were futile.

 

With the hiss of swelling flesh, deep wounds filled as swiftly as Ichigo's own, when he too was overtaken by his inner demon. Faster, in fact. He viewed his Hollow form as being at Adjuchas level, given its thick lizard-like tail. Other than its tail, he wasn't sure what he looked like at those times. Yet Karin was clearly far beyond this. The only concession to Hollowification she bore was the thin tiara of jagged teeth and her colourless skin. And the same instant regeneration of wounds.

 

The pitch-black hole bored through her forehead and out the back of her skull went without saying. This was no trepanning surgery. They had cut her mind away in order to create an obedient soldier. It made Ichigo feel sick to his stomach. He would hate to see her Resurrección. He would hate to see her more changed than this.

 

She was meant to be at home, kicking a football around the park in the sunshine, getting tanned and beating up their dad and looking out for Yuzu. He did not really know what they had done to her, or why. But it was ridiculously unfair that she had been distorted into an arrancar.

 

Karin didn't even believe in ghosts.

 

o)0(o

 

"Go show Shirojos how to fight, Ulquiorra," commanded Hallibel with a tilt of her head in the direction of the child soldier spread-eagled on the floor.

 

"And why do you grace me with such a task?" asked Ulquiorra, disinclined.

 

"You can share your memories, can't you? You can crush your eyes to dust and show others what they have seen. Seeing as Tenebra cannot reason or speak, or really understand what is around her, it is the best way to teach her. Speak directly to her instincts."

 

Aizen nodded slightly as the arrancar looked askance at him. His soldiers were intelligent. What a pleasant surprise. Perhaps he would keep them in the end after all.

 

"Resurrección of Espada Zero. This shall be interesting," grinned Grimmjaw, the teeth on his cheek twitching hungrily as the muscles beneath bunched.

 

Ulquiorra stalked over to Karin, standing above her with a blank expression. Calmly inserting his fingertips into the small gap between cornea and muscle, he pulled out his eyeball without flinching. The orb rolled wetly in the palm of his cloud-coloured hand, until the sharp pupil and ink-green iris stared at its twin. Perhaps it felt betrayed, having been ripped from its place. A stub of optic nerve hung from the blind spot, he used this to pick it up and dangle it as it hardened in his bizarre version of rigour mortis. Before extracting it; he had recalled his past from pathetic Hollow, through the ranks of the Gillian to Adjuchas and beyond; the savagery and hunger to eat all around, to gorge on the strong until one could best him - which they never had. And then, after many centuries of craving and hunting and feeling the heavy despair of never being sated, never feeling safe; Aizen had come to Las Noches.

 

Although he had never once visited the ruined castle, nor bowed to its king Barragan Luisenbarn and his grandiose airs, Ulquiorra had changed his mind then, and arrowed towards the glowing power source that was a rogue shinigami captain. Like a moth to light, he had approached, and like a fly in a web, he had been caught.

 

Then at last to shuck his ancient, ugly mask, and experience the wonder of having a face again. Being able to blink eyes that had before burned red with fatigue and desert winds. Being able to emote again, to display expressions, even if his heart remained empty, his interests narrow, and his face maudlin.

 

And after that, the Resurrección, and the rush of power. And then in secret, the second level, and the ocean of despair that bled out of his hollow heart to drown all around.

 

He remembered all these things, held the vision of them in his mind's eye, then crushed his real eye to dust. Its replacement was already regenerating.

 

A sorrowful Sandman, he scattered the motes of his memories over the girl. They seeped into her, her eyes that were slanted and predatory, the white irises ringed in thick black, and the barely-reacting round black pupils. Nothing like those of old.

 

Karin's breathing changed, the air rushing in and out of her healing lungs as Ulquiorra's past overrode her present. Easily tricking her instincts into acting upon dangers he had long since bested, and leaping to mirror his Resurrección. Using the first hand memories as an example, her empty mind began to figure out how to do it herself.

 

Karin's mouth moved silently at first. Yes, there were noises that had to be made. Special noises that would remind her of her true shape. Her Resurrección. And no, repeating the words that the bat - hollow had said made no difference to her, so the instincts burrowed deep within the broken and bound soul of the arrancar, searching for a name and a summons.

 

A summons and a name.

 

o)0(o

 

She no longer had thoughts, so she did not know something was reacting to the search. She did not see, consciously, the great black behemoth in the seat of her soul as it rolled around in awakening. The two blunt, white heads at either end of an ash-speckled black body, as a vast caterpillar tried to awaken. Its many legs and swollen, segmented body were hideous. One side was alert already, its face a mask, neck swinging from side to side in search of prey. The other side was a skull, neither human nor animal, but neither a stylised mask. It was still overcoming its slumber. It had reacted only to the search for a word. Two words. A verb and a name.

 

The skull looked around at the barren landscape of Karin's soul with void eye sockets, and understood that there was no inner mind to converse with here. Just a grey rain-washed sky, and a grey ocean, and a thin, razor's edge ridge of stone splitting the ocean in half. This slender bridge reached all the way from the other end of the sky to the small lump of black earth that held the monstrous larva that was itself.

 

The skull wondered where the soul of the human could have gone. Then it saw its other half, the masked half, the Hollow part, and realised perhaps what was going on. The Hollow half was thrashing around, searching for conflict as its instincts burned for survival.

 

But the battle was outside this world.

 

"Name. Name. Name and summons, resurrección. Resurrección." The words whistled frantically from the mask's jaws, Ulquiorra's instructions voiced as far as it could manage. "Power. Power. Survival. Despair. Resurrección. More power! Enough. Enough....power......survive....despair...."

 

"Enough power to survive despair? Though a Hollow knows not that despair never can be killed."

 

The skull chattered its teeth. Its voice was dried-out, husky, and there were no muscles to enact its attitude. "Deep inside the emptiness there must be hope, for you attempt to survive despair and reach its other side. Yet there is none. It is like this ocean. Endless."

 

"Name. Summons. Resurrección."

 

"You cannot remember your own name?" The skull shivered. “We are now one being. “You have none. Mine becomes yours. This is not what I waited an eternity to achieve. Yet here we are, and there is no choice in a mindless soul."

 

"Name. Name."

 

"Here we are, we Naraku, and we are Condemned to this world."

 

o)0(o

 

Tenebra was still lying on the floor, to all intents and purposes comatose, aside from her thin chest pumping air in and out methodically. An automated piston, no life inside. Ichigo looked at her, finding it so hard to believe that the chalk white mannequin could be Karin. Perhaps it was a trick to break down his defences. Perhaps they had told Orihime to lie, and put on an act. His certainty was backpedalling fast, trying to escape the truth by fleeing into denial...

 

He had already admitted it... and accepted it... but he was more than willing to be proved wrong. He was desperate.

 

The black hair was slightly longer and wilder than his sister's. A bad imitation? The eyes were slanted, giving the impression that she was focused on hunting, rather than a mindless Minus. And that strange crown of teeth, sharp fangs both pointing up and digging down into her hair, as the long slender jawbone tapered away to the back of her head. At each end a thin curved horn bent inwards, overlapping beneath her hollow hole and scraping her shoulder blades. Ichigo shied away from thinking about it. He just could not imagine his sister as a Hollow. He didn't want to know how Inoue had felt when Sora had fallen; wanted it not to be true.

 

She was in one of their uniforms.

 

Just like Inoue, the other person he'd intended to protect. And Rukia, at her execution, had been all in white. Forget that it was a colour symbolic of purity and goodness in other cultures. Ichigo only associated it with death, enemies and emptiness. And here was his little sister wrapped in it from head to foot. Here was her skin, bleached to Aizen's colours.

 

Had they hurt Oyaji too?

 

He froze.

 

What about Yuzu?

 

If he ever returned, would there be a home for him to go to?

 

His skin was starting to creep. If this was really Karin, then everyone else was probably gone too. If everyone else was gone, and he himself was at Aizen's nonexistent 'mercy'...

 

It would be the cruellest thing in the world to leave Karin here alone.

 

Here in the heart of Las Noches, with nothing but monsters and dust all around.

 

Best to take her with him. Best to trust Zangetsu, and save her soul.

 

Best to kill Karin.

 

The zanpakuto was thrumming in his hand as Zangetsu sang out his warlust…

 

o)0(o

 

The soul reaper's blade scythed down, his eyes and its edge ignited with the blue fire of absolute commitment.

 

chink

 

The sword bit deep into Shirojos's own weapon; earlier cracking it yet this time not overpowering it. Her eyes rolled up to meet his, and for the first time he saw something other than nothing in their shallow depths.

 

It still wasn't his sister.

 

But it was definitely aware.

 

The voice crept out, not Karin's sarcastic drawl either, a voice from within her that was dried out and brittle, the voice of a skeleton.

 

"Condemn,"

 

Ichigo leapt away, starting to spin Tensa Zangetsu by its short length of black chain. Its blurringly fast rotation formed a swift makeshift barrier against any explosion that might arise from the arrancar's Resurrección. The one that would break his soul even further to see.

 

Tenebra Shirojos dragged herself to her feet, holding the short blade's handle in both hands.

 

"Condemn," repeated that alien voice; "Naraku."

 

A shadow fell over the arena. When it began to weigh down on his shoulders and make his skin prickle, Ichigo realised that it was actually her reiatsu. Colourless, insubstantial, yet certainly it existed. A shadow. He peered through the sudden darkness, trying to spot his opponent's new form in the poor light.

 

There.

 

Nothing had changed.

 

Oh, thank god.

 

Seeing Karin as some totally mutated Hollow would have broken him. But to be humanoid even in Resurrección - did that class her as a Vasto Lorde? What the hell had Aizen done to her?

 

As Tenebra's passive reiatsu faded and all brightened, he saw streaks of splotchy non-colour across his field of vision. Had some glaring light given him after-images? Blinking hard, his eyes swept the battlefield quickly in case of attack.

 

The thin lines were still there, and slowly it dawned on him that they were swords.

 

"...shikai?"

 

"Shikai." Aizen confirmed by chance, leaning forwards in fascination. "What a temperamental thing that Hougyoku is. Perhaps it created a vaizard."

 

Ichigo shifted his weight from side to side, warming up before bolting forwards at supersonic speed. He crossed the stadium in the flicker of an eye, sidestepping behind Karin and swinging Zangetsu at her unguarded back. Bile built up in his throat but he did not slow down. It was horrific, but there was no other choice than to lie down and die.

 

That felt too much like abandoning her.

 

So he mentally clutched at all the thin straws of justification, everything Rukia had ever taught him about how a shinigami could cleanse and rebirth a Hollow, prayed it applied to vaizards and arrancars, and charged.

 

But nothing connected. Leaping away, knowing this probably meant she was behind him at his weak spot, he turned and scanned the vast hall with its false sky avidly.

 

No. She was far away on his left. As he watched, she flickered closer in a sonido movement. But she did not stop where he had expected. Instead her path zigzagged at abandon. And again, and again, so soon he did not know where to dodge to, because he could not predict her pattern. And with the insane speeds of shunpo and sonido, where enough actions could be packed into ten seconds as to make them feel like twenty minutes of slow motion, not being able to think ahead could be fatal.

 

Very quickly Ichigo realised that the only way to counteract her erratic butterfly steps was to go up a gear. So he focused hard on memorising the battlefield to ensure he never had to think twice about his location, as he wouldn't have time to slow down, and kicked off.

 

This was his bankai speciality, compressed velocity, although since fighting Byakuya's Senbonzakura Kageyoshi he had never achieved such a high again. Something about the pent up energy then had pushed him into overdrive. Whereas in the fights against arrancars, fears of his Hollow escaping and doubts of his own power had somehow allowed that ferocious speed to ebb away. Not to mention they were often equally fast.

 

The time for faltering was over.

 

"Zangetsu-san," called out Ichigo. In the back of his mind, and in the steel that weighted his hand, the tall man answered. "Ichigo."

 

"What's your top speed?"

 

"How much can your muscles take?"

 

He almost laughed. "I'm a ghost. I can probably take anything."

 

"Probably? Definitely. Do not do things by halves, Ichigo. I will only ever demand three hundred percent effort from you."

 

"Gotcha."

 

And he kicked off.

 

For a moment, none of the watching Numeros and Fracción could see him. The more elite Espadas and Privarons were able to track him, but even then he appeared as a multi-shadowed blur. Zommari Leroux's eyes widened. He might have found a match for speed. However the expert could track how each clone moved slightly differently, the illusion not as perfect as his own.

 

Now the room was full of simulacra Ichigos, flashing every which way, coming and going like the drum beats of a high-octane song.

 

He took to racing round and round Shirojos, corralling her in the centre of the room. And then Zangetsu began to roar in his mind, throwing himself unflinchingly, eagerly into the combat. Ichigo started to compress his reiatsu at the tip of the onyx katana, flicking fast and furious waves of red-tinged black energy at the ghost-like arrancar, whose stammering sonido was still hard to see.

 

The Getsuga Tenshous started to flood in. With the ringing pincer attack he had to dodge his own blasts, yet that was an advantage in itself - he always moved to where Tenebra would dodge next. And though she shrugged off blow after blow, the constant waves of vicious dark matter had to be wearing her down.

 

Soon the centre of the coliseum was a pool of black. Even Ichigo was surprised by the sheer volume of condensed reiatsu he'd thrown out. He paused for half an instant, to see if he'd done any damage. His cloak-like shihakusho was still in one piece, which boded well for energy levels - he was pretty sure it acted as a gauge. Now if only he could make it into an enormous wing-like cape to match Zangetsu's...

 

Karin was still in one piece too. A few streaked burns were healing away with a quiet sizzle, and her face was more focused than ever. She was starting to look terrifying, despite being half his height. And three years younger. Twelve and fifteen. God, he was too young - why was he duking it out in Hueco Mundo? He was still a brat, right? All the shinigami were something like a century at least.

 

He wondered how strong 'Tenebra Shirojos' was on the Espada scale. He looked her over for a tattoo. The white shihakusho she wore was unusual - its black border formed a large X over her child's torso, leaving the stomach visible with a… black zero tattoo.

 

Zero?

 

As in, lowest or as in, off the scale high?

 

He frowned, hoping that he was wrong, raising Zangetsu for another strike.

 

And walked straight onto one of her swords. It was hard to see, a shadow hanging in mid air, and it seemed to have no solid substance. He felt no more resistance than from air. In terror, he leapt backwards, only to find himself unwounded. Beyond a heart attack from the shock.

 

And she slashed out with the twin umbrae, this time catching his chest and scything straight through the guarding Tensa Zangetsu.

 

Blood spurted; the zanpakuto was sheared effortlessly in half. Ichigo stumbled backwards, yelling in pain from the shallow gashes and from Zangetsu's *scream* inside his mind.

 

The way Karin fought with the two swords would have been efficient if they were more solid than nothing. Her every sweep ended with one guarding, one poised to attack, though her brother had to wonder why. She'd shrugged off a lake's worth of his reiatsu, or healed too fast to be affected in any case.

 

Now she lowered them slightly, reversed the grips so the translucent blades ran parallel to her arms in an efficient streamlined manner, and vanished.

 

Just like he had, she had leapt into a top-level sonido that could barely be traced. If he didn't know any better he'd guess that she was learning from him as they fought, or whatever inner hollow he was matched against in her place. Because Karin would never hurt anyone. Lovingly kick them in the head, perhaps, but never seriously bring pain.

 

Blood was streaming down him, damping his clothes, running down his arms to make his grip on Tensa Zangetsu slippery. He couldn't track Espada Zero. Her speed was just mind-blowing. And to think he had thought he was so fast! It would take all his energy just to follow her, as not only did she flit miles in a single step; her path was also all corkscrewed and unpredictable.

 

Ichigo tried not to panic, and with a jerk of his wrist began to swirl the broken Tensa Zangetsu in large, lazy circles again, holding it by the chain. How could he defend on all sides? His mind was racing. How could he stop her coming near if her sword was only solid when she wished it? What was he meant to do with only half a sword?!

 

A rain of silver-grey Bala suddenly poured out of the pale ring surrounding him that was Tenebra Shirojos's sonido.

 

Ichigo clawed his hollow mask onto his face, felt his eyes burn with the change to black sclera and yellow iris; and let his reiatsu flare. It came up like an alien fire, a blue core with midnight flames and blood red tips. It was all of his energy, shinigami and hollow. Above the inferno a streamlined skull that matched his mask roared a challenge at the Espada endangering his life. Within the fiery tempest, Tensa Zangetsu had reformed by taking a huge bite out of his powers. A deficit equal to one of the sleeves and part of the cape of his red-lined black cloak. A quick mental calculation told Ichigo that he'd just used up a fifth of his overall stamina - a worrying amount to lose in one shot.

 

But of far less concern than losing his zanpakuto.

 

Whilst the dense surge of his reiatsu deflected the many shadow bullets Karin was firing at him, inspiration hit. Ichigo began to spin Tensa Zangetsu again, this time at a speed that made the sword hum. A whirring noise filled the air, shortly followed by a riproar as the vaizard yelled "GETSUGA TENSHO!" and a great ripple of deadly power spilled out in all directions.

 

It hit, and hit heavily. Karin was thrown across the stadium and crashed into the wall in an implosion of dust and rubble, tumbling into the crowd. One of her shadowblades was dropped, and it severed a Privaron Espada in two halves as it fell. When it landed, a line was shaved through the stone steps of the ampitheatre, only its black-braided white hilt stopping it from falling forever. That area of the crowd was unsurprisingly deserted when Karin landed catlike beside her weapon.

 

Ichigo still couldn't figure out what her swords were made of. Was it like a lightsabre?

 

He charged, not caring so long as he could avoid it. Slowing down in any way would only kill him faster. Karin was knocked back by another spinning Getsuga. Ichigo loomed over instantly, stabbing down.

 

Marble cracked under the point of the zanpakuto, but Shirojos had rolled to avoid it. "One, two..." gasped that haunting subconscious whisper of Karin, but the eyes that rose to meet him were still cold, dead, and hunting. He tripped backwards, long coat flaring as he skidded away. "Six," he replied, stressed. The seconds till his vaizard mask would shatter were decreasing, no matter how insanely he defied the limits of physics.

 

She jump-started her sonido, accelerating. It had turned into cat and mouse again. A game of chase swiftly terminated when she appeared in front of him, whirling with both swords razoring through the air, because he had miscalculated her trajectory yet again. Or perhaps it had changed midstep. It didn't really matter, because those twin zanpakuto had gouged out half of his ribs and lungs again before he even registered it.

 

It was odd, he thought as he fell backwards, falling so slowly in real time after the speed of a second before. He never felt those swords entering him. He only ever felt it when they moved away. His organs and bones had been sheared clean away, nowhere to be found on the white floor and no gore on her blades. Though that floor was soaking red with his lifeblood now.

 

The pain was unimaginable. He could hardly comprehend its size. And shock took so long to set in...though he knew a place he could escape to.

 

Again Ichigo let his awareness move onto another plane of being, one in which resided the zanpakuto spirit he staked his life on time and time again, and the hollow that only wanted his death if anything.

 

"Ichigo..." rumbled Zangetsu, worried and drawn behind the confident colour of his amber shades.

 

"Aw, shit," screeched the Hollow, the colourless him, the figure that looked so much like Karin did now. "Look at the state of him. I'm taking over."

 

It marked the true gravity of the situation that Zangetsu did nothing to stop him, and that Ichigo could do nothing.

 

The Hollow paused momentarily before fading into the outer world. “Ha. And don't expect me back here again, assholes.”

 

o)0(o

 

Aizen wandered onto the battered battlefield with the relaxed air of one taking a walk in a park. As the ryoka boy bled out on the sand, sputtering reiatsu like a damp firework, he approached Tenebra Shirojos, Espada Zero, the boy's own hollowified little sister and his best fighter.

 

"Let me see how you are doing that," he murmured softly, calmingly. The arrancar flinched and stared at him in alarm, raising her swords ready to sweep straight through him.

 

"Ah ah! No, my dear Espada, that kind of greeting is only for our enemies." He caught her wrists and held them above her head, immobilised as easily as the human twelve-year-old Karin would have been. Sosuke studied the strange shadows, tilting them this way and that, never touching them.

 

Shirojos kicked and struggled below, her kicks knocking him backwards with their weight. Without a single word or gesture, he placed a binding kido upon her.

 

"This is dangerous. Oh so very dangerous." He sounded pleased. "It's not a blade, nor even energy." Carefully leaning the zanpakutos away from his face, as she strained to snip his head off, Aizen transferred her wrists to one hand and reached out to the blades.

 

Hands and body immobilised, Karin started to aggregate a dense rain-grey Cero at her mouth instead. Before she could fire it - in the same time that most arrancars took to form a Bala - Aizen clapped a hand over her mouth much like she had done to Wonderweiss. The attack snuffed out. The black-ringed white eyes widened before settling into a savage glare. Whatever kind of being was piloting Karin's empty body, it seemed to hold no fondness for its creator and master.

 

"Genius. A sword-shaped rip in reality. A hole in the universe. It would be like walking into the edge of a Garganta - effortlessly torn in half. There is no resistance, for the zanpakuto has no substance - but when the portal is moved away the slightest amount the physical object is separated from itself. How ingenius. Your swords are as sharp as air."

 

With the wild arrancar fully subdued, Aizen reached a hand into the grey dimension beyond her blades. He retracted his hand, and it remained whole.

 

But all had seen Tensa Zangetsu shorn in half mere moments ago.

 

"And of course nothing could halt their descent...for they are not made of physical matter nor spiritual. Wonderful. I am proud of you, my dear Tenebra, you have turned out very well."

 

Karin shuddered, even unconscious still disturbed by his joy.

 

o)0(o

 

Clouds were forming around Ichigo's still body as if it were generating steam. They spread out, dense enough to hide him completely from view. The quality of his reiatsu began to change, and the air grew heavy and electric.

 

No forewarning, a monstrosity lunged out of the roiling vapours, chomping onto Shirojos's frozen legs and hauling her out of Aizen's vice-like grip. It was little more than a vast amoeba with huge jaws and sharp teeth. And it seemed to have come from Ichigo's dying body.

 

Aizen quirked a half-smile at this development, walking leisurely back to his vice-captains and Espada as the hall continued to flood with smoke. A click of his fingers erased the kido affecting Tenebra, as she was dragged out of sight. A gurgling noise emitting from within the cloud; occasionally more formless maws would rise above the fog; long-necked Loch Ness monsters.

 

"Weird," yawned Gin, scratching the side of his face. "Ichigo-kun seems to've turned into a hydra or something."

 

Red lamps became visible. A dim Cero like a ruby lighthouse beaming out to tempt sailors onto rocks. As the mists cleared in the heat so a sinister voice become audible.

 

“It's not gonna be so easy now, na, Karin-chan!”

 

The Hollow's speech was rasping and synthetic, as though its voice box had been dragged through a thorn hedge backwards. “I'm nothing like the other guy… My instinct and desire to fight is perfect.”

 

The voice was grating, half-strangled. And hungry, and gloating, and heartless, and cruel.

 

Now his body became visible, changed beyond recognition. Where Ichigo had suffered a deep carving out of his torso, the Hollow had a nest of snakes. “Even my healing wounds want to bite you,” crooned the demon. And released the Cero.

 

It scorched the air and birthed a thunderclap, melting the sand to bubbled glass like a Gran Rey might. Several of the Fraccion in the stands were obliterated, unable to block it like their stronger cousins.

 

Tenebra had sent most of the blast to a netherworld, sweeping her zanpakutos in a way that widened the portals and absorbed the damage. Now she watched her brother's outer Hollow like a hawk.

 

It had a completely white body, signifying a higher level of Menos Grande. Its Hollow hole ran through the centre of its chest, and a strong, supple lizard-tail followed from the base of its spine. It had a mane of livid orange hair; a mask that was all bloody stripes and fangs and scowling eye sockets.

 

The eyes completed their transformation from lambent yellow to hellfire red.

 

“THE KING IS DEAD!” shrieked the personification of Ichigo's despair. “LONG LIVE THE KING!” Then it laughed; long, low and threatening. Staring round the coliseum, it almost sighed in satisfaction at all the future fights before picking up Tensa Zangetsu and roaring.

 

A Getsuga Tensho coiled all over the battlefield like a black serpent, Ouroboros in its death throes. The violence was devastating.

 

“Ichi-nii!” cried the ghost of Karin's memory one final time.

 

Espada Zero materialised behind him, lacerating him with thousands of gashes, ricocheting around the Hollow at bullet speed, always hacking and spinning and slashing. Leaping above him and swaying low whenever his deadly claws swiped in retaliation; flaying him alive as those unavoidable blades flickered in and out of sight.

 

Her unrelenting stabs and cuts and slices were overcoming the speed of his regeneration. She pressed her advantage with furious chains of attacks, every gash opened in him deeper than the last. Poisoned Hollow entrails were unburied as Shirojos carved away its steel skin.

 

It began to scream the scream of the damned, the scream that heralded utter oblivion and the shattering of an already broken soul.

 

“Two,”

 

Now little more than a half-eaten carcass, mutated from messy regenerations and its many jaws still snapping. Tenebra continued to shred it into nothingness, unfaltering until every last scrap of her dangerous sibling was gone.

 

“One.”

 

Kurosaki Ichigo's comrades collapsed, horrified. The surviving arrancars crowding the stadium went wild, cheering and heckling and firing Bala like fireworks; no longer caring that they had been denied their pound of flesh.

 

Provoked by their riot, Karin swept both swords in wide arcs around her. A shadow halo hung in the air, until it swelled into a sheet Cero that wiped out hundreds of the surrounding horde.

 

Hallibel appeared by the child's side, radiating a calming aura. “And?” she prompted.

 

“…Zero…”

 

Her shikai faded, two blades reforming as a single chipped dagger. Falling back into a doll-like state, Karin blinked, the zealous eyes empty once again.

 

White robes spattered in flecks of gore, she walks out of the arena; treading carelessly upon the blood smears that are all she has left of her brother.

 

o)0(o