Obsidian Mirror [Jian]

A moment free of hesitation was what saw him safely through the portal to this strange world but apprehension followed him. His feet touched a soft ground which shifted beneath him. He no longer stood upon the hewn stone of the Seireitei but the soft shifting sands of Las Noches, a land he'd seen in bare imitation once before but never fully from the other side.

His dark robes shuffled as he drew a breath and steadied himself, quieting the rolling of his stomach that came with his first true Hollow transportation. He found the air here was stifling, unlike that of the Seireitei or even Earth.

His quarry stood before him not more than a few feet away, wearing the robes he'd once seen Tokiyo once wear. Captain Commander. Jian's grip of Hogoshi tightened and his power coiled around. The benefit of standing in such a lifeless world, of having chosen to face this threat alone was that he didn't have to fear the weight of his power crushing those around him, he didn't have to worry about shattering this already dead world.

Jian tilted his head when Kionchi spoke, accusing him in his own evidently mad way. Jian returned a stony expression but kept Hogoshi at his side in stark contrast to his opponent's bared fang.

When the dust had settled with Obsession, all the power Jian had fought so hard to attain had amounted to almost nothing. In the end he was left wondering why he had gone through so much only to be forced to watch as his friends were the heroes of the day, to watch as they vanished from his life as the price for everyone's peace. What had he sacrificed for if nobody needed his power?

But then, in the midst of his uncertainty, here came a Vaizard who tried to strike a blow at the Seireitei, who put innocent lives in danger, who he had a chance to stop. An enemy with power enough to rival his own. It couldn't have been better timed, this was the one for Jian to stop, this was why he'd come so far.

Whether he knew of those thoughts lurking in his head didn't matter, they provided the focus to put aside his momentary trepidation. The air around him crackled and burst with flickering plasma as he considered the spellwork at hand. His own spiritual pressure uncoiled and worked its way around their impromptu battlefield causing the ground the shudder and sand to slide steadily away. His right arm began to burn with the essence of destruction that lingered still as the forms came into awareness on the edges of his mind. He considered the simple elegance of Byakurai and the deadly flames of Haien. With those concepts to set the frame the nature of destruction was given life. Jian's left hand formed the conduit and with his spiritual presence he ignited the spellwork. It surged through him like breath itself and lanced through the air without hesitation or sign, cast in an instant without a syllable off his left hand and towards Kionchi.

A bright blue beam of focused lightning that, aside from the force it was given from Jian's power, would seem not unlike any other casting of Byakurai. It was the flames that hinted at Jian's own twist, bright red fire that flickered from the lightning as the air around it ignited from intense heat. On impact, the spell would deliver its payload: a piercing strike that would rip through the most impenetrable armor, an explosion of fire that would glass the sandy world for meters in all direction.

"Sorry," he spat.

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A smile graced his lips as the crackling energy ran through Jian's arm. Only a year ago, Kionchi would have spent the entirety of their battle dodging and provoking the human, whimsically testing his mettle like it was some kind of twisted game. And while it would be fair to assume his growth could be attributed to the number of times that strategy ended with his face resembling raw hamburger meat, the truth behind this change of heart was far less admirable.

He was pissed.

His energy coalesced around his blade like a razor, a single upward slash of his katana his only counter to a spell that would vaporize any other soul in that castle. His energy etched through the air between them like electricity running up an invisible circuit board, an impossible number of tiny lines manifesting between the two as Jian's White Lightning met with Kionchi's Wall of Blades.

Ash Like Snow...

The lightning broke apart the second it hit his blade, the spell letting loose a high pitched scream lasting as long as the chime of a bell. The energy burst in every direction, dispersing into harmless motes of reishi that lit up the otherwise dim desert around them, drifting lazily in the air like snow. Kionchi's plan to dismantle Tokiyo's legacy had been ruined, not entirely because of Jian's thick-headedness. And while it didn't cause the same level of existential angst that drove the Fox to first don his mask, it was enough that he wasn't about to sheath his sword and leave the self-righteous human questioning his self-worth.

”You have no idea what you've done.” Kionchi's obsidian blade still shook from the impact of Jian's spell, burning red-hot as Kionchi bent his knees and tightened his muscles. He'd never encountered a spell capable of weakening Tsukuyomi with mere convection. He'd have to rely on his own Kido for a while.

”You are just another who see's the world in black and white, desperate for any excuse to slaughter anyone wearing a mask.” A black smoke quickly erupted from Kionchi's hands, the Bakudo spreading for a good three hundred feet in every direction as the Fox's energy signature seemed to disappear. The smoke itself felt almost identical to Tokiyo's aura, the shift in signature making it more and more difficult to pinpoint where Kionchi was hiding. Even his voice seemed inconsistent, every other word coming from a different angle as a subtle whirlwind kicked up around the impossibly thick shroud of ash.

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Jian watched as his spell met steel, diffused against the edge. He watched as brilliant flame erupted with a defeaning cry and echoed out through the air around him. He readied himself as the smell of burnt scattered spiritual particles filled the air and knew that his opponent had made it through unscathed. He hadn't noticed the anger at first but Kionchi's fury came out in that slash. Good, he thought testily. The second spell had already begun to form conceptually in his mind, and the third, and the forth. He laid the groundwork lattices for the spells to come needing only his will to form and ignite them, and the right moment.

As the smoke settled Jian realized he'd been wrong, Kionchi was not unscathed. The spell had not been utterly diverted, the man's Zanpakuto bore the heat of the spell and burned still. He smiled at his success but it was short lived. Kionchi's words were a poison to his calm, an irritation to whose groundwork was laid across dozens of battles that came before this one. An anger that matched Kionchi's erupted immediately, the kindling needed only the barest spark.

"I am so -sick- and -tired- of all these half-assed fucking moralizations!" he bellowed out as the air around him grew heavy, motes of his own power surging through the air to signal an anger already obvious. "As if I need that damn mask on your face for my judgment of you! As if that mask is anything less than a physical representation of your already fucked up morality! As if you have some justification for your attempted murder of all those people!"

Jian followed the black smoke, watching carefully as it filtered through the air around him. Kionchi's presence vanished instantly replaced with a familliar one that caught his breath in his throat. He pushed it down and aside, filtered it for later and turned his mind to understanding the spell around him.

"Hiding in a smokescreen, how appropriate for someone like you," he whispered venomously. He followed the brief flow of the wind, the changes in the smoke where the presence of Tokiyo appeared briefly and vanished. He followed the faint signature of power while he spoke, looking for the pattern, tracing through the energy of the massive spell.

"Hide then!" He dared. "Behind your words, behind your tricks." His eyes flicked from left to right. In contrast, he spoke softly now, "But I hope you have something behind these tricks, because I see right through you."

Jian twisted on his heel, a pain in his right arm erupted a second time as a spell ignited from his hands and out. Simple and to the point. He chose a spell whose concept had become so rote to Jian that even his mortal self was a master of it. It was powerful, uncontrolled, unstoppable, simple and elegant. Near as close to the very nature of destruction itself as Jian could evoke. With a single focus to its existence, Jian let the spell burn through Las Noches and erupt furiously across the sand. Blue light filtered turning night to day, illuminating the smoke with its brilliance and casting a mile long shadow behind Jian as it brought the world around it to silence. Sokatsui.

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It took such a small spark to light that fire. An inferno of righteous indignation, the mortal hero flailing about wildly in the same kind of smoke that had blinded the shinigami for well over a century. Even his use of Kido reminded the Fox of his stray master. He almost expected Jian to rip off a wig and chide Kionchi for not having the guts to kill him right then and there. Of course, it wasn't far-fetched to be thinking about Tokiyo, his coat on Kionchi's shoulders. But as he stood atop a pillar of bent steel and melted stone, watching the fog swirl in a perfect circle beneath him, he couldn't help but feel like it was the same sensation Tokiyo had watching Kionchi screaming for the head of the only person who really gave a shit about him. Hiding? Please. He was far beyond that blinding maelstrom.

”I think your mistaken, Jian-kun.” With a slash of his sword his spiritual signature erupted around the circle of smoke, the ground around his raging adversary cut into a perfect sequence of runic kanji. The spell circle lit up once, the smoke subtly shifting as he felt the crackle of the spellcaster's next attack. ”That's not smoke.”

The waves of white-lightning quickly ignited the gas into a blazing inferno. The explosion had just enough time to pop Kionchi's ears, the lightning shooting through his body before it faded away from sight. He just barely got away with a singe, appearing on the other side of the ruined valley just in time to feel the pressure of his own explosion. He knew it wouldn't do much to anyone of blocking his attacks. But if he could see first-hand the precision of Kionchi's handiwork and remember what it was like when he blocked Kionchi's attack, maybe he'd realize the would-be Captain Commander had no intention of doing any permanent damage. It was his spark that caused the explosion, after all.

”Hide?” He laughed into the inferno, ”I'm the one who put on my mask and made myself an enemy for Seireitei to hate.” The gears in his head were spinning a mile a minute as he spoke his peace. ”Do you really think I wanted a bloodbath?” His heart began to race as he saw a shadow shift in the flames, another weight lifted as he realized how different he was from his predecessor.

”I am not one who stained this haori with innocent blood.”

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