“How are we even going to find Phantom? It has the name for a reason.” Suzumi called as we raced over rooftops, bounding from one to another with our eyes peeled warily. I felt everyone in the group turn to me, even Ururu who I’d only just met. Apparently, my reputation precedes me.
“I still can’t get a hold of Phantom’s ribbon. The Hollow is an enigma even for me. I’m spreading my sense out as much as I can at the moment, but…” I shrugged and Kisuke sighed along with Suzumi.
“Thought so. You have sensed him in the past when you were much weaker than now, so keep looking for him. I don’t trust that I’ll be able to sense him.” I swallowed as we bounded of yet another roof with a light step. Being given a responsibility like this int eh middle of a literal Hollow incursion was borderline, my senses suddenly being the stopgap between people actually dying.
The group of Soul Reapers and High-spec humans worked out an order to the group very quickly. Kisuke took the front position, followed only slightly by Tessai. Directly behind them was the woman that we’d heard much about, Uyu’s mother Ururu. She had healed extremely quickly under Tessai’s powerful healing kidō and a bottle of the spiritual tincture that Kisuke had given to me a few times in the past.
At any other time, I think we’d likely have a great conversation, likely including Uyu herself. We hadn’t seen much of Uyu over the past weeks, mostly because she was having to focus on school properly now and she didn’t have the almost absolute freedom of time that we had when it came to training. Now, though I was severely regretting not staying in contact more.
I pushed down the fear in my chest, the one that whispered into my ear that it very well may be the last time we see Jinta and Uyu alive. Thankfully, Suzumi didn’t let me wallow.
“Do you think my mother will be okay? The Hollows are targeting spiritually powerful humans, right?” I looked around quickly in my vision, easily pinpointing Yua’s spiritual ribbon. Now that I looked at her ribbon, it was a miracle that I’d ever believed that she didn’t have any spiritual power. Maybe it was just because I was more powerful now.
“She’s still at her home Suzumi. Have you called her, or sent her a message?” I asked quickly, and she nodded succinctly.
“Then I don’t know if there is much more we can do right now. Hopefully she’ll be able to get in touch with someone who can help her, like Jinta’s gang.”
“She won’t.” A cold voice said from in front of us, Ururu’s turning her dark blue eyes to us for a moment. “They are in hiding since they took Jinta and Uyu.” Suzumi sighed heavily, frustration leaking into her breath.
“What information do you have about the Hollows we are up against?” I asked, though she turned away as she answered.
“They are strong, and without my weapon on hand, they were able to take us by surprise. They hid themselves extremely well, I didn’t even get a hint of their reiatsu.” She senses things by their spiritual pressure then. It was a powerful sense, but easily tricked. Kisuke had determined ages ago now that I don’t just sense by spiritual pressure and energy, but also more deeply. By soul. It made my ribbon sense immensely powerful and almost entirely untrickable, though hiding from it was a far easier feat.
“How strong are we talking; Adjuchas level?”
“The lead Hollow may be, though I didn’t sense it or see them directly. The other Hollows aren’t that strong, most are regional Hollows, but there are a few heavy-hitters that came from Hueco Mundo as well.” My mind whirred as we made our way towards the Hanakari household. Kisuke and Tessai likely could have made the trip multiple times by now, but there was something to be said for spending time collecting information along the way.
“Kisuke!” I called out to the front of the group, making the man turn his head to the side to listen, “Likelihood that the lead Hollow has a stealth ability powerful enough to hide that many Hollows? I can’t sense Jinta or Uyu’s ribbons either.”
“Unlikely,” he said after a moment of thought, “If it has the power to control other Hollows the way that it is, then it’s more likely that the lead Hollow is controlling another Hollow with that ability.” There was a moment of silence between the group as we travelled, each of us using any part of our skillsets that we could to sense any movement whatsoever.
“Meaning that it may already have Phantom under its power.”
That wasn’t good, not at all. Phantom was powerful enough to escape from anything underneath a Captain-class Soul Reaper, and even Kisuke and Tessai aren’t able to pinpoint its location, instead relying on me.
“Let’s hope that its just another Hollow with a similar ability.” I said, even if I didn’t feel so optimistic. “Just how smart is this Adjuchas supposed to be?”
“Roughly human equivalent, though it may be unique.” Kisuke said simply, “In that case, it may be able to find a way to become an Arrancar, if its lucky.”
I growled, about to respond with a set of very aggressive words towards that idea, but it was then that I sensed… something. It was the barest flicker of a Hollow’s ribbon, something that was very noticeable in the eerily silent Karakura.
“Hollows to the north-east.” I called and we changed direction ever so slightly from the due north that we were travelling. The group went almost entirely silent as we sped up a good fifty percent. Suzumi, who was the slowest of the group, still managed to keep up with the rest of us. In fact, I realised that she was cribbing the movement technique that I’d both developed and remembered while down in that pit. Suzumi was an impressively good experimenter, though I beat her out in actual learning speed.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
We travelled faster and faster as our weakest link continued to improve under the pressure of the situation. It was only a few moments later that we were only metres from where I’d sensed the Hollows originally.
However, no matter how close I got to the area, I couldn’t pick up anything.
“Please tell me that someone else can sense something?” I asked hesitantly as I widened my spiritual senses to my maximum range, losing some of the three-dimensional definition that I’d become accustomed to.
“Not a thing, Mister Carter.” Tessai said smoothly, his voice a quietly calm tone that starkly contrasted the immediacy of the situation. No-one else spoke up to correct the man, so I just continued to widen my own range, permeating the intangible cloud of spiritual pressure and the particles of it that extend its reach further.
That was, until I hit a massive wall.
Not a wall in that I couldn’t physically push out my spiritual pressure further, but that it was being stopped by something. I looked with my physical eyes in the direction of the wall and finding nothing where my spiritual senses were being impeded.
“My spiritual senses can’t see past there,” I drew a line in the environment where the wall was, “I can only assume that they have a barrier of some sort.” There was no immediate rush into combat, something that I was almost expecting, instead Kisuke spent a moment with his eyes closed, as did Tessai.
“I see it.” Tessai’s voice rumbled, making Kisuke open his eyes, “It isn’t kidō, but it works off a similar principle. This is an immensely powerful ability; it could only be a hyper specialised Hollow capable of doing this.”
“Alright!” Kisuke said, clapping his hands together obnoxiously, “Mission one; find the Hollow that’s creating the interdiction field capable of throwing us all off. Understood?” Everyone nodded succinctly, and only after another moment did the scruffy man give a wide grin and disappear from view, launching the rest of us into action.
Suzumi and I quickly broke off from the group, only Ururu following nearby us in a parallel strike as we rushed towards what Kisuke had called an ‘interdiction field’. It only took a few leaps to reach its perimeter, and as soon as we actually contacted it, it felt as if we were swimming through water for a few moments before we surfaced on the other side.
As soon as I was on the other side of the barrier, my mind burned with the sudden influx of information that I’d been missing.
“Holy shi–”
Before I could even complete my sentence, there was a cacophony of simultaneous Hollow screams, rumbling the air with their spiritual pressure like a cicada buzzed with its wings. Within my spiritual senses, now back to its usual high-resolution mode, I could see a huge amount of spiritual energy being gathered and pointed.
Right in our direction.
“Suzumi!” I bellowed as I dived out of the way, Suzumi doing the same thing after a fraction of a second. Just as we made it out of the energy’s path, Suzumi and I had a strange moment where we stared at each other as we waited for the attack. Then our view was obscured almost entirely by a massive green beam of dense spiritual energy.
The feeling of the massive power moving by us was electrifying, the sheer power of it made the hairs on my arms stand up on end with the rush of adrenalin. The beam quickly dissipated, whittling itself down to almost nothing before petering out, allowing Suzumi and I to look at each other once again. Acknowledging what had clearly been an ambush attack on the Hollow’s part, likely a part of the ploy of letting me see just a flicker of the Hollow ribbons earlier.
My only response to her bewildered expression was a savage grin, a precursor to the enjoyment I was going to get out of this fight. She rolled her eyes, snapping out of her fugue, turning to look at the small army of Hollows collected on the ground and just above it.
The current number of ribbons didn’t quite allow me to pin down which one was creating the barrier, and which had tried to incinerate us with spiritual energy, but it didn’t matter. With a powerful leap off of the multi storey apartment building I was standing atop, I launched myself towards the battle, hungering for the challenge.
One Hollow lashed out first, using its vine-like appendages to try and capture one of my limbs. However, it wasn’t strong enough to stop me from pulling it towards me. By the time it realised that it wasn’t going to be capable of holding back it was too late, and even as its appendage detached from is lightly red coloured body, my fist was already plunged elbow deep through its mask and its malformed head.
Hollows, not the type of creature to heed the warning, all quickly tried to take advantage of my moment of weakness. However, Suzumi was only moments behind me, landing within the encirclement of Hollow and pulling her body into a tight formation, similar to a boxer’s.
The flurry of blows was faster than I’d ever seen from my girlfriend, each blow taking a chunk out of the Hollow it hit, her arms, shoulders, and back muscles glowing with the spiritual cloaking that we’d been slowly building.
Now, though, the power only grew more potent with every passing second, quickly racing to match my own combat prowess.
It was then that I remembered part of what I’d done in the fugue of silver power. How I’d changed her soul into something more powerful, more unique than any other that existed. It was when Suzumi turned to me with a challenging eye that I saw the power that flowed through her, changing her eyes into that predatory yellow.
Sitting on her cheek was the beginning of a bone-white mask, seething with spiritual energy far surpassing anything that she had command of before.
I could only watch and admire my handiwork as Suzumi turned to demolish five more Hollows with singular blows. However, I couldn’t just watch.
It was easy to take a quick look around at the ribbons of the surrounding Hollows and grabbing the most powerful one. With the new rush of spiritual energy, ever so slightly discordant to my own supply, I took that ribbon and swung it sideways like a blade.
The spiritual energy burned from my fingers after the swing, accompanied by a flash of spiritual energy that swept through over ten Hollows, destroying their bodies in that same moment. The grin I shared with Suzumi just after was wild and competitive.
“Grayson!” She yelled over the clamour of Hollow screams and her own blows, “You better damn tell me what the fuck you’ve done to my soul!” I laughed at her, though it was cut short when I felt a new ribbon come into focus, much more powerful than the Hollow’s we were chewing through.
“I will, but first…” I turned towards a large, frog-like Hollow clinging to the side of an apartment building, its mask splitting open to reveal a massive gaping hole where its throat should be. Just inside of its mouth, a small ball of spiritual energy began to form.
“How about we take down the big guy?”