Foxes and Hounds are not Friends [closed]

COMBAT ORDERS
Four days ago, we lost contact with a patrol unit just outside of your Gifu Prefecture area of responsibility. Upon investigation, trace remnants of Spiritual Pressure from an Unseated or Officer-level Quincy were discovered at the likely battleground. You are hereby required to investigate and, if at all possible, neutralize the Quincy responsible for this murder. Your priority is your own life.

That was the message that had come through on his Soul Phone two whole days ago. Today was the sixth day after the murder of the neighboring Shinigami patrol, and Noboru could still remember the feeling of his blood running ice cold as he read it. It wasn’t until the end that he was able to breathe a sigh of relief: This wasn’t one of those dreaded “kill at all costs” orders.

Noboru himself had never gotten one, and he didn’t want to. In fact, this was the first time he was being asked to kill someone or something. During all of his assignments on Earth, he had never once been asked to go after a target like this, even though there had been orders issued to other Shinigami nearby.

This entire time, he simply figured that the Fifth Division avoided handing these orders to him.

That’s how they did things, after all. Prize those lucky enough to be born with powerful, inherently growing souls, and stuff the other ones into a corner for the crime of not being so blessed.

For a couple of hours, he just sat in the grass and looked at it. He had been in the middle of fighting a Hollow when the message came through, and managed to kill the young monster—born of a local Plus woman he hadn’t been able to save in time—before he pulled out his phone. The order didn’t even include any additional information on the Quincy, just that it was a Quincy and that he needed to kill them.

Part of him wanted to reply to the orders, to say that he couldn’t do it. Truthfully, he knew that if he could have come up with a good enough reason, he would have. His fingers hovered over the keys for the longest time that day, but he ultimately relented. There was no way to get out of this one without causing more problems for himself, and he had to accept those facts.

Understood.

That was the last contact he had with the Seireitei.

Now, he found himself sitting on the roof of a hotel building. In it, just beneath his very ass, was a gorgeous young woman that he would much preferred to have met under different circumstances. Tanned, with strangely white hair and amber eyes. He had no idea who she was, or where she was from, but she absolutely loved to talk about killing Shinigami to her mother on the phone.

The mission had, really, ended up just being a lot of tedium up to this point. Noboru worked his way through crowds for hours at a time, stretching his spiritual sense as far as it would go. He weeded through countless humans with spiritual pressures much lower even than his own, with a few that were above average. But he didn’t find a single spiritualist, not this far from a major city.

Until a single presence caught his attention, one that was even larger and more powerful than his own. When he arrived—and kept a very healthy distance—he found this woman. It didn’t take long to catch her mention something about Shinigami, and what he just heard had proven his suspicions.

She wasn’t just a spiritualist; she was the Quincy that had killed the other man six days ago.

Before their conversation could end, Noboru quietly launched himself from the rooftop of her little hotel and ran through the sky, to give some distance. He didn’t need to have this fight right there, in the parking lot, in the middle of the day. People might not be able to see him, but they’d see her and all of the destruction they’d cause if she proved to be as violent as she sounded.

Who spoke to their mother about those kinds of things, anyway?

Noboru found the perfect spot in just a minute or two. It was a park, empty at this hour, that would just have to do. He landed on the opposite side of it from the hotel and, after he straightened his posture after his landing, took a deep breath.

He was really about to do this. Even now, it hardly felt real. How were you supposed to feel before going into battle against a beautiful, young, homicidal woman? Sure, the Academy had taught him to cut down all opponents like that with the same detachment he did with Hollows.

In practice, that hardly held up.

Noboru drew his blade a moment later.

Majohime? he asked for his Spirit.
What’s up? She answered him instant, as upbeat as ever. He just smiled.
Really? ‘What’s up?’ That’s what I get, right now?
Sooorrryyy~ What else am I supposed to say? Good luck? Don’t die? Maybe rip her shirt off?
Now there was an idea.
I guess you’re right, but that’s…whatever. I wanted to ask you for some help.
Help? With what? You’re going to use me right away?
No, no, not yet, Noboru corrected her. I need you to scream. With me. Full force. Got it? I want to put out every ounce of spiritual pressure that I can, so much that anyone with a modicum of awareness would feel it.
Noboru really had no clue what this girl’s spiritual sense was like, but it couldn’t be too bad if she found that patrolman in the middle of nowhere.
If you think it’s a good idea! she answered, and he could hear her giggling beneath the words.

Was she excited about this?

Right now, he couldn’t be bothered to investigate. Instead, he gripped his sword in both hands and held it in front of him, as if he was ready to strike. Then, slowly, he dug into himself, letting his Spiritual Pressure and Spiritual Energy flow freely. In just seconds, Majohime herself started to vibrate, giving off a high-pitched, almost sing-song hum that even he could hear.

It less than a minute, Noboru felt the distant presence of the Quincy race off in his direction. That, right there, was the last evidence he needed: At the first sight of a Shinigami, she was after them.

Who was this girl?

But Noboru couldn’t leave her unanswered. He rounded the corner from the nearby convenience store that neighbored the park, and walk back into onto the perfectly mowed lawn. He waited until she had stepped foot into the park, walking right into her little, sarcastic speech.

“Sorry, I’m old, haven’t been paying attention to things,” Noboru quipped, his disinterest thick. He felt his nerves pick up, turning his strong limbs into something more like quivering noodles. “Now, listen, I don’t normally do this. I come here, purify Hollows, and I go home to have a drink. I don’t get involved with you Quincy types, and I don’t really care about your business.”

Sword in one hand, Noboru took out his phone and waved it at Luna.

“But you’ve gone and murdered one of my colleagues,” he told he straight. “And I’m under orders to make sure that you don’t do it again.”

He pocketed the phone a moment later and put his hand back on his sword.

“So, no, not leaving,” he answered and allowed, for a moment, a little smile to show. “Pretty sure I was here first.”

*****

1,280 Words

Luna eyed the man and his boring looking sword. Thin -- probably nimble. It was a drastic change to the bulky, stupid Hollows she spent most of her time hunting. Obviously, it hadn’t stopped her in the past. Unlike him with his facade, she had not a single qualm with striking down someone who looked like an everyday person. Maybe Luna herself had no strong ties to anything except her job, or maybe she was just particularly sociopathic. Either way, she did not shake or even flinch as he threatened her and tried to put on a false bravado.

“Yeah, I can tell you don’t do this often,” she said simply as she raised a hand, fingers lazily pointed at him. “You look kinda scared. I bet you’re shaking on the inside. Knees weak. Arms heavy.”

She mentally smirked at the reference. Would he even get it?

Four pins surrounded her hand and forearm, each glowing a soft, pastel blue as they began to take the form of crudely crafted arrows. The hummed against her left ear, each held still only by sheer willpower.

“I’ve murdered more than one of your colleagues, just to let you know.” Still so casual, she watched him as he stood ready. She didn’t even so much as change her stance. “Countless, actually. But you strike me as a lower ranking kinda guy. They probably didn’t even give you the details, did they? At least the last guy knew my name.”

De la Cruz wasn’t a commonplace name among the Seireitei’s most wanted. The only member of the family who had ever risen to noteworthy power had been her grandfather and he had never been quite so religious about the slaughtering of spirits. More focused on his personal pursuits. In all honesty, even her own parents were laughably quite compared to her. Luna was the first to so quickly and actively kill everything on site. She made the name something that, at the very least, was starting to get recognized.

“Are you a Fifth grunt or a Second spy in training? You certainly don’t have the nerves of the Fifth, but your wordplay is so bad I’d be disappointed if they actually took you into the Second,” Luna chuckled, her hand moving with her words. The arrows followed dutifully, never leaving the comfort of her body. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. Either way you’re a nobody rank and file.”

This is what got her off. Not the fighting, not the sight of their soul being ripped apart. The brief moments before all of that where she could just play with their minds and let go. After all, out of all years of biting her tongue, these were the times she could let go. She didn’t consider the man anything more than a particularly smart dog in front of her. It made the words come out easier. Let her detach herself all the more.

“So, Mr. Rank-and-File,” Luna smiled at him with a tilt of the head. “What’s your game plan to make sure I ‘don’t do it again’? Kill me? Try and talk some sense into me? I’m really excited to see what you so thoughtfully came up with.”

The arrows burned all the brighter as she smiled at him expectantly.

[ 1 5 2 9 ]

“Oh, I’m very scared,” Noboru smiled and nodded at her. “This is my newest Shihakushō, blood stains something terrible, and replacements are not free.”

Of course he was scared. He had never fought a Quincy before and didn’t very much like what he had learned in the Academy about them: When one killed you, your soul was gone. Even though spiritual death was the final destruction of one’s identity, the idea that the soul would become someone new at least gave Noboru some solace. In a way, he got to try again, start over entirely. Instead, if he died to this young woman today, that’d be it.

It’d be all over, forever.

That should scare any Shinigami, in Noboru’s opinion.

The Quincy raised her arm after she spoke, and Noboru’s entire body went tense, ready to leap out of the way. That tension grew when, around her arm, a set of glowing pins—the mystical ‘arrows’ of the Quincy, no doubt—appeared and floated there, aimed right at him.

That’s when she saw fit to raise the stakes. Noboru watched as she, with no shortage of pride, pointed out that she had murdered far more than one little Shinigami. Noboru genuinely didn’t believe her at first—she would have been killed by now, or would at least be on a list. He still didn’t know her name, his orders didn’t say.

Instead, here she stood, confidently threatening him with his life. For some reason, he believed her. She really had killed plenty of Shinigami, then? No doubt, some of them had to be stronger than him. That too probably added to her confidence and how comfortable she seemed with those pin-arrows of hers.

“Kill you?” Noboru repeated her words, when she finally finished babbling, and dipped his head down and forward just a little bit.

This little shit has gotten away with this much murder? He complained to his Spirit and, for the first time, didn’t hear back.

Majohime? He asked again, after a pause.
Gut her. His ever-positive cheerleader sounded ice-cold.
Excuse me?
Gut. Her.

Well, that settled that.

“No, I’m not going to kill you,” Noboru answered again, his voice lower and sharper, just like his Spirit. “I’m going to rip your insides out and strangle you with them. I’m going to make you watch me smear your own blood all over this park, and use my healing magic to keep you alive long enough to feel me empty you. And when you reappear as a Plus, I’m going to split you in half.”

Once more, his gaze lifted and he stared right back at the Quincy girl. He wasn’t scared anymore. Now he was just angry. What had been lament for his luck in getting these orders turned into excitement, even joy, that he got to put this psychopath down.

“Then I’ll find a few more Quincy, maybe some children,” Noboru went on, speaking faster and louder. “And do the same thing to them. And when they look at me, crying, begging, wanting to know why, I’ll lay your name at their feet while the last light of their life vanishes from their eyes.”

A single hand came off of his sword and he gestured towards himself once, then twice.

“My name is Noboru Takayama, Seated Officer of the Fifth Division,” he introduced himself and corrected her earlier misconceptions. “Come and get me.”

*****

565 Words

“Zesty,” Luna chuckled at his little attempt at a joke. “I promise to be as clean as possible. Just stand stand still, alright?”

She closed a single eye and pointed her arm at him, as if ready to shoot him straight through the chest. But a large grin on her face said she wasn’t quite ready to cut him off. Like all Shinigami before him, she’d let the moment sink in. Let the fear wash over him and change to courage -- stupid, blind bravery. Watch as the emotions rolled through the no-name recruit until he was drained of all color.

But then he just had to keep blabbering.

Her grin fell and, without even a signal, the four arrows launched at his chest. Though he dodged them easily, simply stepping a few feet to the side, they split through a tree behind him, leaving it a scarred mess and a testament to just how powerful she was. He seemed to get the memo and went onto the pleasantries.

Seated Officer? So they were starting to get annoyed by her. Starting to catch on that she wasn’t something a newly recruited soldier could handle. Well, she knew this would happen eventually.

“I’ll tell you my name as you take your last breath,” she said calmly, a new set of arrows already formed. “Until then, lets have some fun, shall we, earth wrecker?”

And with that, it began. As simple as it started, the two of them were off. Noboru moving forward easily -- clearly quick on his feet and a master of controlling the flow of battle -- as Luna simply stood and watched. She wasn’t one for flying around like an idiot, after all.

With not so much of a flick of her fingers, the arrows blasted into the ground around her, kicking up sand, dirt, and concrete alike as she ducked down. He wasn’t attacking, just testing the waters, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t get ready. Her hand slapped the ground for a moment before the other was raised and a flurry of arrows rocketed out in seemingly random directions.

[ 353 ]

Few moments were more tense in Noboru’s life than the gap between his silence the first movement of Luna’s arrows. In those intervening seconds, he found himself—for the first time—quite happy that he had been given this assignment by the powers that be back in the Seireitei. Now he, finally, had a chance to do something with his job that he enjoyed.

Beating freaks like this up.

“Eat me,” he snapped right back at her cute little quip about holding still. In fact, the moment her arrows moved, Noboru moved with them. One step to the left, the other two the right again, and he swayed between two shots with relative ease, ending up two steps further towards her with nary a scratch.

Was that her best? Noboru wondered in the gap between the first few shots and what happened next.

All he had to do was walk right past them, and he did just that. So what was Luna’s answer to this? She bent over and touched the ground to set off a spray of blue, needle-like arrows in all directions. Noboru’s eyes widened, at first, but then he saw his path—straight through, right up to her.

This was almost too easy.

Each step Noboru took, he hardly believed. He moved straight through the wave, convinced that at any moment the Quincy was going to hit him with something else, something new, something that would really catch him off-guard. One arrow dodged turned into two, four, eight, sixteen, and then she was on her feet and her volley was complete.

All around them, blue spires stuck out of the park. Benches, the grass, the fencing, all of it got covered by her assault. Some of the metal was bent, wood crack, and holes were punched into the grass and dirt that surrounded them. Without a moment’s hesitation, she had wrecked this entire place and didn’t seemed bothered by it at all.

In fact, she seemed much more bothered by the Quincy who was now well within range. Noboru’s final step had brought him within striking distance and, before his hair could so much as settle to a stop once again, he drew his blade back and caught the flash of sunlight off the flat of it.

“Hadō Number Four,” Noboru announced as his blade started to creep forward, the edge aimed right for her neck, as if in slow motion. All around the steel, the air began to glow a faint silver to reflect the spiritual energy built up around it. “Byakurai.”

Just like that, time snapped back into its proper place and Noboru’s blade swung its arc forward, meant to behead the girl in a single slash. Just as it did, a bolt of white lightning crashed forward—drawn into the shape of the crescent his sword had made in the iar—and blew away clumps of green grass, wet dirt, and stone walkway all at once.

Even if she dodged, even if she blocked, that would burn her.

Hope it blinds you, you crazy bitch.

*****

511 Words

He was fast, she thought with little amusement. The fast ones were always the most annoying, though not impossible. She was an iron wall in the face of the bee stings they sent for her. Unflinching, unmoving, and more hardened than they. So while they may be able to dance around until the moon came up, they were not limitless. It was just a battle of patience and good fortune. Beyond that, there was nothing more.

Though, having a few tricks up your sleeve was always a plus.

Noboru slid through her attacks like they were harmless balloons, lazy wafting through the breeze. As the dust of her volley settled and his muscles tensed for the counter, she only dropped her hand to her side in tandem with his announcement of a low level Hadou. Defensive and proud, she didn't so much as flinch away from his attack. She met it on with a straight face and an impassive stare. Even as the light of his attack burned through her eyes, turning the world into nothing more than a white washed line art, she didn't pull back. Only when he was close enough did she start to turn her body.

As if he had moved past an invisible trip wire, the ground at Luna's feet exploded. From the dust shot a pair of light blue strings that sought to entangle his attacking arm and drag it to the ground with absolute force. The net typically used for catching Hollows, was not particularly flashy, especially in this state, but it got the job done. Activated by the presence of a spiritual being, they acted without command, so long as they were set up properly, and attacked any and all that crossed their path. The one time use was excellent if only to momentarily stun him. It bought her the precious seconds to flick her hand to her belt. Upon contact with her hand, the Seele Schnider erupted with cerulean life. As if mocking his Hadou, it, too, let behind a faint trail of light as she aimed to block what remained of his attack.

The glow of their attacks brightened the entire block of houses, casting an unholy glow of raw energy as they carelessly duked it out. Even she couldn't help but squint her eyes and struggle to focus on his silhouette. At this point, it was more of a guessing game, but with the help of her little trap, hopefully the guess wasn't too far from reality.

[418]

What’s that? was the first, less-than-panicked thought that occurred to Noboru as he swung his sword and fired off the blinding arc of Byakurai that accompanied the steel. It was only the slightest hint of blue in his vision that gave away that there was something below him. There was another flash too, this one coming from directly in front of him, as Luna activated another mysterious technique that he felt impact his blade and split his spell in half around her.

But he didn’t have the time to wonder what was going on. He felt danger, and his body reacted accordingly.

First, his foot smashed into the air—a platform of spiritual particles gathered into a perfectly smooth surface to act as resistance—as he leaped into the air. He moved just quick enough, with just fast enough reflexes to avoid the gaping maw of what appeared to be a spiritual net, light blue, with shimmering threads of energy that threatened to ensnare and do who-knew-what to his poor body.

Through the dusty haze above and below him, now, Noboru barely saw the glow of it or the much brighter, denser light of the blue, sword-like construct that had appeared with her. He barely saw anything else except those lights and her silhouette, but that was all he needed.

Noboru tucked his legs under himself and turned his jump into a tumble, extending them when he was upside down, facing the ground. His feet caught on another platform in the air and the momentum carried him into a perfect crouch, as if he stood on a very tall ceiling. He looked down as the dust floated through the air, spread out by the impact of his sword and spell against her new, mystery weapon that she had drawn.

But there was no counterattack. His furious assault, he figured, had put her off-balance. All he had to do was push it, and he knew just how to do it.

Next, both of his hands wrapped around the grip of his sword. His palms dug into the fabric wrap around the solid core. As always, Majohime felt sturdy and powerful in his hands, even against an opponent that could, very well, kill him. But already, he could tell that her advantage in raw power wasn’t enough to outclass his superior experience.

She’s just a little girl, Noboru reminded himself as he flipped his weapon upside down and raised it high above his head. I’ve had more fights than she could even imagine!

The quiet rush of his Flash Step followed when Noboru hurled himself back towards the ground. Again, he twisted into the air—blade still held high, angled straight down—until his feet were underneath himself again.

There was more than just Byakurai for him to use.

“Hadō Number Seventeen,” he shouted in that last instance, above Luna. His silvery blade immediately erupted with red fire reminiscent of the much more advanced Shakkahō, and flowed off of it more like water than flame. “Hinoyari!”

Just as Noboru’s feet impacted the torn-up soil of the park, he brought his blade straight down on Luna, angled for her neck. At that same moment, fire erupted from the tip of the blade—in the same shape as the weapon, but projected farther and wider—with explosive force powerful enough to completely clear the air around them.

*****

563 Words

He was quick, she'd give him that. As the two of them separated, Luna's feet still firm in the same place as he bolted upwards like a spider. She had just enough time to turn her hips and raise her Seele Schneider.

That's it. Come a little closer, fucker.

Compared to the wide eyed, all but screaming man before her, Luna was a robot. A Terminator, she had mused on more than one occasion. Unfeeling and unflinching in the face of his assaults as he pushed and pushed until sweat started to pour down his forehead. All of that dancing around surely had to take its toll eventually? It had in the past and she had no reason the same wouldn't hold true now.

His sword caught against her Seele Schneider once again, the blue flames beating away the burning steel that had tried so desperately to cleave her head straight off. But the liquid flames poured over her weapon and oozed onto her shoulders. It burned and hissed as it ate away the collar of her uniform . Only with the aid of a strong push did she stop the attack from burning away anymore of her flesh.

No sooner had their weapons broke away from each other did she fling her free hand up, as if to punch someone who was still in front of her. The air vibrated for just a moment before all of the arrows that had found home in trees and the landscaping erupted from their slumber and all shot in towards the attacker. The needle like arrows cut through anything that happened to be in their way without prejudiced, none of them stopping until they would either slice into Noboru's flesh, or collide with each other in a large explosion of light blue reshi.

All she needed was one little hit on him and then it was over. Just one little scratch.

[318]