Chapter Text
A/N: Quick-written for practice (This is not up to my standards and reading it feels weird for me). I'm sort of planning to rewrite all of my old Arknights crossover fics to keep them up to speed with my current writing style and because I'm dissatisfied with my writing from months ago.
The corpse-moon of Hueco Mundo shone its decrepit light upon the tenebrous dimension. No longer could the myriad Hollows be heard screeching maledictions in their pursuit of avarice, for at the very capital, a rancor trembled them into silence.
Kurosaki Ichigo could hear the thousand wails of long-perished ancient Menos Grande amid the blasted sands beneath Las Noches. The cacophony merged into an agony sublime, fueling and rekindling the deep-seated madness inherent to his bequeathed powers.
He arose from his mangled status, spirit reignited, glaring fiercely at the creature who had dared to steal his heart.
"Who are you?" The question was demanded from his adversary, Ulquiorra Cifer.
But he would not answer with words.
Instead, Tensa Zangetsu soared into his grasp, cracking hypersonic vectors. All fingers conformed to the handle's shape, and the Hollow glared with its empty sockets, whereupon its rim yawned the lightless abyss.
"Answer me," Ulquiorra insisted once more.
The Hollow snarled, charging headlong in kinetic speeds that reduced his form into a static blur.
Sonido.
Ulquiorra couldn't begin to fathom nor scrutinize it. The bat-winged foe veered on instinct's demand, meeting the ebon steel of Zangetsu with his claws.
The Hollow was the first to lay siege in the duel.
And after that one blow, it soon flurried into thousands in which Ulquiorra was forced to haplessly abate. Each clamoring strike landed at disparate intervals and angles, the two taking flight. Sparks trailed behind them, fizzling particles briefly illuminating the shadows.
Their quarrel dragged on, a thousand strikes proliferating into a million, Hierro hardening flesh as beams of Cero scarred the blackened sky. In the night, they cut and maimed and butchered until residues of Hollow reiatsu tainted the hemisphere.
Down came blood-carmine rivers, and streaks of sickly green lightning, and with it, a raging comet descending with a tail of thermal stardust made from those very same residues.
Against one of the solemn pillars of Las Noches was Ulquiorra unceremoniously smashed into, the mad Hollow dragging him down.
The creature unhinged his jaw as jagged fingers raked through the other's throat, spraying red liquids all over his mask.
Still, Ulquiorra remained unperturbed, raising his gnarled finger to the Hollow's visage. Black-verdant light shone the nihility of the Espada's own energy made manifest, before the entire vicinity's color spectrum was drained.
Space screeched in grayscale collapse, the two repelled from each other in a spherical explosion.
Ulquiorra scraped across the floor with his flesh-flayed arm digging furrows to halt his momentum. The appendage of denuded bone snapped clean, becoming mere red smears across the ground. Then, as quick as it came off, a burst of wicked Reiatsu sprouted a new functioning limb.
"My greatest ability isn't offensive," Ulquiorra flaunted, stretching his arm. "It's regeneration." A crackle of green lightning flickered into existence when he opened his palm. It assembled a javelin.
Lanza del Relámpago.
"Stay where you are," Ulquiorra muttered.
The other Hollow stood diametrically opposed a good distance away, just in the midst of rigidly raising himself. When he finished, a new refulgence sparking in viridescence caught his attention.
Maleficent blight lanced through the air carrying the force capacity of a large nuclear device.
With only a microsecond to react, the Hollow inclined forward, making the fierce report of a Cero known from his horns.
It confronted the projectile directly, meshing into an emulsion of discordant energies.
A fresh fulmination brought along a tsunami of debris pulverized into a maelstrom of smoke.
At the very heart of blinding cataracts Ulquiorra persisted, glaring away the disturbance, retinas attempting to capture any sight of the Hollow. Wherever he was.
Until the Arrancar felt something akin to a cold dagger prick his neck.
He veered around, and—
In the haze of uncertainty, the Hollow severed the fog with his upraised Zanpakutō. The pressure cleared the taint of clouds, revealing the naked moon crested alongside the blade.
Ulquiorra could do naught but stare in bewilderment, the feral mastication of Zangetsu gorging upon his skin and flesh and bones and organs. Cruor like chewed up bloodied bolus flew in a horrid frenzy through the air, splashing the Hollow anew, and the Hollow reveled in the gore.
The Espada collapsed in a heap. A malformed, bony foot stomped him further into the ground, spiderwebbed cracks forming around. The cretin had been captured.
"Go ahead," Ulquiorra suggested without fear. "In the end, it doesn't matter."
The Hollow was more than willing to oblige. His horned head pointed downward, a spherical radiance of promised slaughter emitting and expanding.
The guillotine of energy fell there, bringing the nightly dominion to day before darkness crept back to reclaim its eternal realm.
By then, nothing remained whence they stood; save for the desecrated remains of Las Noches.
To protect others.
To protect 'them.'
That is the most basic instinct you follow.
So...
Get up!
Something shuddered him from slumber's embrace.
Kurosaki Ichigo revulsed on the ground, claws frantically attempting to clutch at anything. It did, vanquishing his brief bout of hysteria. He arose rigidly, hearing the creaks of his own worn joints snapping into place.
His mouth greedily drank in the air. Fresh air. An air tainted but at least removed from the befoulment of Hueco Mundo.
In that moment, he realized just where he remained. A rooftop of a derelict building overseeing an equally dilapidated city. Legions of skyscrapers remained in disrepair with wilted vines corroding concrete. Some gnawed off pieces belonging to those structures also floated in the air beyond gravity's whims.
An oppressive force pervaded the air, contemptuously pressing down on his shoulders. It felt like Reiatsu's pressure, but completely foreign and alien, more so than Ulquiorra's Segunda Etapa.
Gobsmacked, Ichigo could only stare in silence, attempting to chew over this overly large bite of a scene. Breathtaking.
Where...where is this? he questioned amid the tumult of his disturbed thoughts.
The higher drafts of wind invaded his ears. Infernal frustration nibbled at where his vacant heart was. It did not help that while he saw his own palms, he saw only the monstrous pallor of osseous skin.
Then, he focused on his clothes. Or rather, lack thereof.
The raiment of the Gods of Death remained as scraps upon his body. A few small pieces of fabric sloughed away in the wind. It was as if they were ashamed to even cling themselves onto his inhuman, blasphemed self; of which was an insult to all that 'Shinigami' stood for.
Mortification riddled his psyche, but he quickly relinquished them.
The crack of Zangetsu's onerous chain tolled an ungodly sound when he lowered his arms. It whipped him out of his stupor, and he yanked the armament back into his grip.
Something was with him
Of course, he was always with him.
Ichigo whirled around.
A vision of gravitas stood before him, a phantasmagorical black-masked beast of humanoid proportions. Shihakushō white. Blade white. Skin white. White. He was completely white save for the mask.
Ichigo groaned, the intonation bordering upon an animalistic growl. In some way, it pleased the other.
The pale beast grabbed his ebon mask, lifting up to reveal a grinning fang which glinted in moonlight.
Come to terms with your situation and we'll talk again, yeah? For now, I recommend you don't screw things up.
A single blink, and he was gone.
Only the landscape's demented vistas remained. Dying light gathered where the gray clouds blazed from horizon to horizon in their gloam array like dregs gathering at a waterfall's precipice. Shadows loomed, casting images of what civilization was before this... apocalypse Ichigo did not know.
Ichigo sauntered with inflexible limbs through the distorted streets. Nothing captivated his attention as his viscera continued to fester in lunacy.
His own body didn't feel like it belonged to himself, and to save himself the discomposure, he avoided any and all reflective surfaces. Tensa Zangetsu was kept by his side, lugged with its extended chain scraping across the ground.
What to do?
The question surfaced in the boiling oceans of his thoughts.
What to do?
He repeated, mind drifting.
What to do?
He grasped it so he could reclaim clarity.
What to do?
The question repeated ad nauseam.
Ichigo's fears became tangible the more time passed, that his mental faculties were deteriorating at a rate which would leave him a mindless Hollow.
One which only relied on Instinct. Again. That... abominable Instinct.
His heart would have beat palpitations at that petrifying thought, if he had one.
Instead, a different sensation invaded him.
The scum of all survival instincts floated at the very top of his boiling viscera. Hunger, fight or flight, and all the like became priority. Especially hunger. Oh, how his stomach churned, slowly consuming its own bacteria-sludge for sustenance.
A terrifying notion struck him there.
Full Hollowfication. Permanent Hollowfication.
His bones froze over.
The aberrant atmosphere did not help whatsoever in quelling his rampant hysteria. Only his Zanpakutō acted as the final anchor of human soul which he held.
He lurched forward in order to vomit, but nothing spewed out.
However, all nauseous sensations immediately dispelled themselves.
...A presence lurked nearby.
All his nerves fired off in rapid succession. No longer were his movements perturbed, and a feral grasp forced his wits to yield.
A gargantuan shale figure stood in front of him.
Ichigo stared up, meeting its... 'glare' defiantly. If an iridescentally-hued black hole of a head could accommodate a glare.
Well, it didn't matter. It was rearing back for a strike.
Eradicate it, his Instinct ushered in response.
He complied.
Zangetsu swept back an arc akin to a grim reaper's scythe, and in that motion the ultimate fate of all things became apparent.
Death.
He hurled forward.
The air ionized into veined streaks of white plasma, striking with delayed thunder and leaving scorch marks marring the street.
The monster in front of him was vanquished.
The chains wrapped around his arm click-clacked eventually to a standstill whilst the thermal slipstream fizzled away.
Its threatening visage alone was not enough to dissuade his blade's barbarity.
Ichigo wanted to question what exactly it was, where his friends were, his current predicament, but—
Multiple creatures bearing the same frequency as that creature began to become known from the unknowable. His primal senses had already grown accustomed to the foreign energy. It wasn't Reiatsu, but he could make do.
Go on, his Instinct spoke with glee.
His blood surged with madness.
And he complied, again.
Ethereals scuttered all about the demolished highways, knocking over deformed and rusted cars due to their morbid and robust frames.
An azure blur warped in imperceptible speeds, darting like a meteor and targeting the Ethereals and drawing multiple intersecting lines.
Right after, when both velocity and momentum ceased, a single figure sheathed her blade with a smooth, fluid motion.
Every Ethereal collapsed into a million pieces. By then, her thousand mirages vanished.
"Whew... looking sharp as always, Chief," Harumasa complimented, tugging an arrow free from a dissolving Ethereal on his end.
Miyabi gave him a curt nod, her vulpine ears swaying. "Thank you. Is there any damage on your arrowhead?"
"Oh? You noticed?" He turned it over, inspecting the tip. "Guess I shouldn't be shocked. It's still straight. Less warped than last time, too." He slid it back into his quiver.
"You've improved," Miyabi said. "Good work."
"Heh. I'll take it." He grinned.
A blue Oni bounced in place closeby, making her presence known.
"Soukaku?" Harumasa turned her way alongside Mayabi.
"Hey!" Soukaku beamed, resting her oversized blade across her shoulders. "If you're keeping up that pace, Miyabi, you could've thrown in a couple more flashy moves, right?"
"We all grow at our own speed," Harumasa said with a shrug. His gaze drifted to the ruined highway. "That said... this Ether activity's way off the charts. Ethereals don't just swarm like this for nothing."
"Agreed," Yanagi replied calmly. "Something's provoking them."
Harumasa tilted his head. "Any confirmation on that 'other' disruption Scott Outpost flagged?" He made air quotes. "Or was it a bad read?"
"Still unverified," Yanagi said. "We'll need direct observation."
"Ehh~! That's assuming we can even find it," Soukaku stretched, arms high. "Hope it doesn't chew up our whole shift."
"We'll track it down sooner or later," Harumasa said lightly. "Don't worry."
"How long do you think it'll take?"
"I'd guess an hour? Depends on its activity."
Yanagi adjusted her glasses. "Until then, eliminating the surrounding Ethereals is the most efficient use of our time."
"Works for me." He nodded, then glanced at Miyabi. "You good with that?"
"I concur," Miyabi said, but then paused. Her ears twitched, brows knitting. "...Hm."
Yanagi noticed immediately and stepped closer. "Miyabi? Did you sense something?"
Harumasa's fingers brushed the string of his bow. "If Miyabi's locking onto something, then it's probably—"
The ground trembled violently.
"W-Woah~!" Soukaku staggered, barely keeping her balance as combustion blasts of vapor rose yon the defunct commercial district.
A vague pressure draped over.
"What was that...?" Harumasa muttered, already pulling out his scanner. He creased his features. "Huh? There's no spike? It's... nothing abnormal?"
"Same readings as usual?" Soukaku leaned in to check alongside, squinting. "You'd think it'd be short-circuiting after a shake like that!"
Yanagi checked her own device, frowning. "Identical results...? Was that not caused by a source of Ether spiking?"
Miyabi's hand tightened around her sword hilt. "Stay alert," she said firmly. "There is a threat ahead. Even if our instruments cannot perceive it, we should proceed carefully."
"Yeah, I hear you." Harumasa lowered into a ready stance. "Guess we've found what's been stirring things up. Heads up by the way, Ethereals incoming from the sides. Got your targets set?"
"I have."
"Affirmative."
"Yup!"
The chorus of responses elicited a nod from him. "Alright, let's clean house."
Their advance began.
Multiple Ethereals had begun converging toward where the commotion was, cluttering the streets and making themselves seen.
Moving in perfect unison, the team dispatched them with Miyabi at the fore.
Blinks of blue light scattered alongside projectiles and smashed debris. Before long, the street they passed by had been left utterly vacant.
They continued on toward where the vapors swayed in ghostly fashions.
Further and further into the unfathomed districts, Miyabi eventually scraped her heels across the ground.
"Halt!" Miyabi called, raising a placating hand to her group.
"Why? What's the matter?" Harumasa asserted a more serious expression from the other's intonation.
His question would be answered from the sky.
Corpses of Ethereals plummeted.
Each collision of their body cracked the pavement and played sickening tunes.
"Oh—!" Harumasa jolted to the side when one prodigiously-sized Ethereal nearly struck his previous position. "Yikes!"
"U-hm..." Soukaku's gaze was fixated elsewhere, her bubbly energy popping.
"Soukaku? Is something the issue?" Yanagi noticed, glancing toward where she looked. "Ah..." Her face paled.
A downpour of strange viscous liquids consumed a skyscraper halfway. Trailing along its path revealed the fount where it seeped.
They saw it.
Uncanny limbs with sharpened claws jutted into the Ethereal, causing the creature to wail in torment the deeper the digits plunged. Resistance did not matter. The pinned creature dissolved in its tormented death throes.
Where its cardium should have been lay a hollow aperture, a passageway clean through its form. The anatomy was irreconcilable to its figure.
"Is—is that a Thiren or a new Ethereal?" Harumasa nearly stuttered in his observations, nocking an arrow in careful preparation.
"I haven't a clue," Yanagi mumbled. "There's this... pressure. Do you all feel the same?"
"It's... it's ferocious!" Soukaku wrapped her arms around herself, a bead of sweat trickling down her nape. "W-wow! It's really nothing like Ether, haha..." She chuckled nervously.
Miyabi was the only one who remained unperturbed.
"Chief...?" Yanagi hesitated when the fox lady stepped forward.
Miyabi watched with a stern gaze.
There held in its hands a nighted katana which shone ravenous moonlights. Each cut and hack of the weapon gnawed hungrily upon the Ethereals. Whether to fulfill some petty feast or satiate an endless gluttony, Miyabi could not correlate.
After mutilating the Ethereals, its front along with its angled horn turned toward her.
Threat registered.
Her hands moved toward her blade, lips thinning in scrutinization.
Those hollow sockets told of a hell far emptier than any of those known in brimstone fables of nethermost reckoning. Its exposed teeth merged with its gums of which were as abhorrent and as white as its whole complexion; frozen in a perpetual scornful sneer. Remnants of human clothing clutched only from the hips and lower.
Despite the tranquil countenance she bore, her innards surged with adrenaline and her heart drummed sporadically.
"Stay back," Miyabi warned, stepping forward.
A voice called in panic, "Miyabi—!"
She hardly registered it as she rushed forward with the wind as her guide. The vicious squall brushed along her hair, her drawing blade revealing an exquisite gleam.
The beast moved in tandem, hefting its armament.
Miyabi's pupils dilated as she saw its skullish features zooming closer, before—
Her blade struck an Ethereal behind it.
Its blade struck an Ethereal behind her.
A moment's interstice occurred at the last second divergence. Her team watched in bewildered silence.
Miyabi tracked its movements peripherally, breath shallow. No malignance was directed her way.
She veered around, primed for a thrust.
The creature seemingly reciprocated.
Two Ethereals front and back were cleft apart yet again, the space around them booming.
In a blast of static sparks, the white-horned creature rushed elsewhere, feeling like its presence was erased from existence.
Miyabi stilled her breathing, turning toward where she last saw it, giving chase in the skyward passages.
"Chief Miyabi, hold on! Wait!" Harumasa yelled.
Miyabi didn't turn back. She became a cobalt streak dashing high above the highrise towers.
"My goodness," Yanagi breathed out, massaging her forehead. "Everyone, clear out the vicinity for her!"
Disheveled nods of approval were given.
"What about that... thing?" Huramasa queried. "Is it an issue?"
"We'll determine our next course of action once we reconvene with Miyabi!" Yanagi answered.
Miyabi stirred along in her muddled thoughts.
Why?
Her legs moved briskly atop the skyscrapers, tracking the pallid creature. All its targets were fixated solely on the Ethereals, and so too did the Ethereals reciprocate its aggression. Much to no avail, as the edge of its blade cut a superheated vacuum which screeched an ear-deafening caterwaul.
An explosion of pure-white light repelled Miyabi's vision for a moment as she shielded her eyes.
Everything in its indiscriminate trajectory was vaporized. Its movements were wholly cryptic.
Why? Miyabi questioned in her mind again, intuiting each peerless strike it proceeded with.
There was a chain wrapped around its arm which heaved. A multi-segmented chain snapped serpentine, a hideous sound emanating forth as it continued to slither between each Ethereal like a cunning snake.
Amazing, Miyabi muttered in her mind.
The realm of bladework the beast followed was accessible to humanity. It was wild and untamed, a principle in which only a demoniac creature such as itself could follow.
The metal tether continued to extend and expand until a concentric river of ebon chains became rattlesnakes all across the city-block, seething with all-consuming black flames. The sanctuary where the critters known as the Ethereals once flittered about, claiming to be their own dominion, now burned in this fabricated hell.
At the center of all chaotic whips stood the conductor.
Miyabi's gaze never wavered upon it, moving atop higher platforms whilst spontaneously making quick work of any enemies in her path.
Should her wariness be warranted, a single question lingered in her psyche, How can I counter such a technique?
Surrounding the white creature were now flapping geometric Ethereals with needled pointers. They bore resemblance to metal wasps, wisping downward for a mad aerial strike.
A vortex of incarnadine energy knifed through the sky in thin laser form, popping them all in a noxious plume of smoke.
Miyabi took note of this new ability.
However... I can't feel any Ether.
She didn't know what to feel nor what to think.
Her voice of reason told her to quickly devise a plan and make her next course of action meaningful.
That's enough stalling.
Inhaling, she decided upon her next endeavour.
Just as the beast was about to spurr into action to wherever it was spellbound, Miyabi drew her blade, Tailless.
A burst of vigor routed through her capillaries' every system, and she propelled forward.
Miyabi saw lines of predetermined positions. One. Two. Four. Six. Nine. All where paths which she could partake in, but she saw the one she needed.
Her blade was bereft of its sheath, and Foxfire smoldered to life.
Got you.
Miyabi screeched to a halt. A sound of thunder rang out. Her edge pointed upward, positioned just where the beast's neck was. Her gaze transfixed upon it, nose respirating evenly despite her tousled state.
Intense heat corrupted the air around the creature and left ghastly steams wafting whorls. It looked like all its pores were breathing them out. Like they were alive. Living as clustered phantoms of unearthly make.
"Answer me," she demanded.
It stared down with its static face, having registered her presence.
"What are you?"
It was a gamble on the cosmos.
A/N: I always thought: Hey, wouldn't Full Hollow/'Vasto Lorde' Ichigo be pretty eldritch? Ulquiorra's Segunda Etapa already feels like sort of an 'alien, unfathomable sea' to Uryu who's familiar with Reishi and Reiatsu, and 'VL' Ichigo is probably(?) a step above that in terms of inscrutability.
So... yeah. I've been reading too much Blood Meridian and H.P. Lovecraft's works and Vampire Hunter D.
Quick-written for practice (This is not up to my standards and reading it feels weird for me). I'm sort of planning to rewrite all of my old Arknights crossover fics to keep them up to speed with my current writing style and because I'm dissatisfied with my writing from months ago.
Ever since Mahoraga and true form Pochita, I've come to realize I absolutely adore the design of a monstrous creature whose blade-like teeth merge with their gum. Full Hollow/'Vasto Lorde' Ichigo was the first of them all.
This was originally supposed to be a Mahoraga (Possibly with Yuka) x ZZZ, but I scrapped that idea.