Resolution [Hi-To/Kionchi]

The entire world was folding and converging around them, warped under a pressure far beyond their scope of understanding. Sometimes he wondered if this was the end.

Other times, he didn’t care.

Sand of the finest grain molded under the imprint of his sandals, the touchdown gentler than it had any right to be given the gravity of their situation. Each breath he took was filled with the stench of nothingness, and the desolate plains of Hueco Mundo stretched out before him with a lifelessness that could never be conveyed in the textbooks they were given as children. Not a single hollow had come to greet him, and for the briefest of moments, the world stopped spinning. It almost didn’t seem real.

A lingering glance behind his shoulder proved the sensation a lie. The portal that had guided him now looked little more than a window to a better life, all vibrant grass and windswept coronations. The Fourth had been able to find little evidence to explain the phenomenon that was sweeping the 3 worlds, linking them together with a harmony that didn’t exist in nature. It wasn’t right, and yet somehow he’d become dull, numbed to the surprise in a way his peers couldn’t understand.

They’d all seen some horrible things in the past few years, things no soldier could be conditioned to take in stride. Compared the slaughter of their friends and family the various windows opening up between their worlds were nothing but simple head tilters, a curious anomaly and mild irritation.

Neither Tova nor Kirishi had needed such a window. The mortals and hollows that were foolish enough to take a trip to the other side of life would find themselves met with a force that could shatter millions, the Shinigami kindness dying with their old culture. Things changed, people changed, and the luxury of being so carefree was one they were casting aside for more drastic measures.

It was one such extreme measure that had guided him to his current scene of loneliness and solitude. Kiriko’s agenda had always been one that flew over the heads of many, but for him, nothing had ever made such sense. Tough love, he’d heard it been referenced as before, and despite her reputation he knew her to be capable of such dedication and love it hurt just to bear it. Kionchi may have escaped the Maggot’s Nest with his wayward freedom, but the weight of it had led him down a path just as damned as the rest of them.

He was so very curious to see the fruits of the sovereigns combined efforts.

Each footstep brought him no closer to the domed monstrosity that was Los Noches castle, the citadel little but a distant mess of towers and domes on the horizon of a land that never knew sunrise. Shunpo kicked up the sand behind him in a flurry of life far too vivid for such a barren wasteland, and riding the unrestricted reishi he took to the sky, hair whipping his cheeks with a freedom that couldn’t be tasted back home.

He ran. Not with recklessness but ambition, the kind that could only be understood by bounty hunters who lived for the next prize. Slowly but surely black specs would appear far off in his peripheral, only to vanish into the sandy winds the closer they got, hollows galloping into death with a hunger they’d soon be cleansed of.

There was something incredibly liberating about being able to just simply run free, to strip away the carefully constructed shield that housed his reiatsu and psyche. To not be Kohara Hi-to, if only for a little while. Perhaps he would have enjoyed it more if not for the very specific purpose in which he’d come, to find Tsukiyo Kionchi and bring him home, for better or worse.

People often did the worst things under the best intentions. With the Broken, it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Despite everything that had happened it almost felt wrong that the world had become so deathly silent, as if everything was laying in wait for something more. Even the hollows that lingered to close and died as a result of his unhindered reiatsu felt like the calm before the storm, the castle the eye of it.

And he was heading straight for it.

The journey itself wasn’t nearly as strenuous as it could have been. With his reiatsu bringing a vibration to the sand that had it breathing like a living animal the world gained another dimension, a sense of liveliness it had lacked before his timely arrival. It was that kind of pulsing energy that would be key to finding the man he sought; a homing signal to friend and a death warning to foe.

By the time that mirage of a castle became a reality his body was almost glowing with the adrenaline rush, chest rising and falling with little inhibition as his fingers glided across cool stone. Up close the castle dwarfed any structure in Soul Society by at least half a mile, its structure unlike anything he’d ever felt without the presence of sekiseki stone. The hollow race never had had any desire to restrict themselves safely as their Shinigami counterparts did, and without that barrier in place everything was open to the flow of unhindered reiatsu.

It was as close as he was going to get, at the very least.

Was Kionchi here? The size of the castle was something the academy had done a poor job at conveying to its students. Up close and personal the building could have dwarfed Soul Society and then some, and pushing his reiatsu through its walls was only a small flare when compared to all the locations Kionchi could have been hidden. The search could last anywhere between a few hours and a few days at this rate.

He hoped it was the former. With all these portals there was no doubt more than a few strays had decided to take up home where they didn’t belong.

******

1014 words: 20 GP

A familiar red ripple just barely floated past the furthest range of his senses. He turned his head in vain to get a better look, but it just faded off like a floater caught in the corner of his eye. Was this the old Kionchi, perhaps he'd have run off to investigate, desperate to find some way to redeem himself after his week or two of giving into the pleasures of his hard-won freedom, his duty as a shingiami long since shirked in favor of his new found resolution to keep himself free. His thumb and forefinger pulled a bit on the leather collar around his neck, the ironic symbol of personal liberation stained as red as that long trailing blindfold.

”What could she be up to now?” Following up his words with a melancholy sigh, the pair of lithe lizard-like adjunchas circling the lone shinigami actively hissed for his clearly divided attention. He'd been watching the duo for the past minute or two, drawn toward Kionchi when he released enough of his energy taking out that cow from before. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate their company, their claws skittering across the ceiling and walls as they continued to reposition themselves around him in the narrow corridor. But rather that he decided that not paying attention to them for as long as possible was far more amusing than rending their souls in half before they had a chance to launch an attack. A thought that caused the shit-eating grin on Kionchi's face to widen as he heard the telltale rattle of their long forked tongues whipping up the air behind him. It really was funny how many creatures thought that sneaking behind him would give them some kind of advantage, his body becoming more and more used to this new way of taking in his world.

Another red ripple cut through the two green auras. Too distant to confirm its familiar hue.

“Ssshinigami!” The first of the two decided he was sick of Kionchi's stupid game, launching itself from the ceiling towards him unerring precision. Razor sharp claws dripping in black bile made their way to Kionchi's backside, the shinigami merely lifting a single finger as he felt his own energy coalesce behind him. A green hexagon of reishi erupted from his backside, the lizard's talons passing through the barrier just enough to catch itself inside Kionchi's bakudo, as helpless as an fly on a web.

”Boring,” Kionchi turned to half face the glowing blob, his spiritual senses not even bothering to sharpen the hollow's form enough to give him a clear look at his mask. Curling what had been his extended index finger, he held out his fist toward the barrier and watched the creature struggle in its sad attempts at yanking itself free from Kionchi's bakudo. The perfect fusion of barrier and binding, trapping a soul in a simulacrum of its own spiritual energy by allowing his kido to adapt itself to the other soul's exact resonances. Like tangling a spider in its own web, its legs flailing in vain as it found itself betrayed by its own weapon. And with a single flick of his finger, a spear-like protrusion shot from the hexagon through its captive hollow's forehead, the pair so uninteresting to Kionchi that he didn't even bother listening when its partner cried out some series of curses and threats over the ear-drum piercing shriek of its final death throes.

Rather it was the considerably more frequent red hue pulsing from the other side of the wall that captured the blind man's attention. So much that he didn't even bother reacting when the second hollow screamed bloody murder and flew at Kionchi with its own poisoned claws, the seemingly helpless shinigami preferring to cycle through a series of opening lines as he prepared to reintroduce himself to one of his most admired comrades.

A bloodied stump of a claw palmed in his hand like a shiv, in case his fledgling spiritual perception was misleading him.

WC: 671; GP: 13; TGP: 27