The Skin-trade Standoff [Rickl/Levi/???]

Levi didn’t usually handle the day to day stuff himself, but this was a special occasion. Mortals of the 21st century often underestimated the use of gold and silver. They thought of it as the currency of a bygone era, pretty metals that could only be sold as jewelry or antique coins. Few realized how useful it was in circuitry. Far fewer knew it conducted magical energies even better than electricity. Of course, the best material would be reishi gold, but that was virtually impossible to get outside of soul society. For now, a metric ton of each precious metal was a pretty sweet deal. Especially for the low price of everyone the black claws yakuza leader knew and loved.

His mother, his grandfather, his sister, his wife, his two sons, his daughter, and his three closest lieutenants were all in the back of the eighteen-wheeler that Levi currently had parked precariously on the edge of a boat-ramp in the harbor. The truck itself of course was on solid ground, with the e-brake engaged and no chance of rolling back into the water. That is of course, unless Levi’s driver backed it up. Then the trailer would go into the water and all the poor souls inside would drown. And then be summarily turned into hollows. But surely it wouldn’t come to that.

Levi smiled wickedly as he heard sound of two armored cars. Levi had told the crime boss to come alone with only a driver for the other car, but he was hardly surprised when four men jumped out of the vehicles and leveled UZIs at him. The passenger of the first car, who walked in front of the others, was Yamato Daiga. The leader of the black fang.

“Where. Are. They?” He hissed out, his rage barely contained. Levi rewarded him with an amused grin and an honest answer. “In the truck of course. Ready to be released at any moment, one way or the other. It took Yamato a few seconds to analyze the situation and catch Levi’s meaning. When realization dawned on him, Levi spoke again. “Drop the guns, back away from the cars, and lets trade keys. Otherwise, you all die tonight.” He said flatly. The Yakuza leader ground his teeth for ten seconds before finally complying.

“One day Grisha... I will get you for this.” He said in a defeated, but still enraged tone. Levi laughed.

“On that day, you’ll find all of them right back here, and me a little more pissed off.” Levi gave his warning with narrow eyes and a smile that was more of a snarl. Then he immediately adopted a friendly expression again, as if the two were old friends exchanging a favor. “Keys please.”

Once again, Yamato hesitated. He tried his best to think of some way out of this, some way to win. But there was no way, and he knew it. That was why Levi wasn’t going to kill him. As long as the black claws were led by someone who knew what Levi was capable of, having so many people in so many different places and with varying levels of protection kidnapped on the same day, they wouldn’t dare challenge Levi’s Desenmascarado Clan. Essentially, Levi had just won his little gang war. That was why he had come personally.

All things considered the tradeoff was almost disappointingly uneventful. Levi and his driver, Rex, checked the trucks to make sure the product was all there, and no bombs were, and Yamato had a happy reunion with his family before driving off.

“Well that was easy.” Levi said once he and Rex were alone. He snapped his fingers and opened a garganta big enough for the two trucks to drive through. On the other side was the storehouse that Levi had in La Colonia. The metals would wait there until Levi needed them, either for his experiments or to pay some of his people. “Come on, Rex. Let’s drop this off and I’ll get you home.” Rex, being Levi’s most trusted Lieutenant, knew about the existence of Hueco Mundo, Las Noches, and La Colonia. It was useful on days like today. Of course, even Rex didn’t know much of any details. He didn’t need to know, and he didn’t seem to want to know.

In his usual manner, Rex nodded his head and obediently started up the silver transport.


WC: 733

It didn’t take long for Rick to find his way over to the meeting point. It was only an hour of travel time on his motorcycle, but it didn’t bother Rick in the slightest, If he believed in this intel, it would be safe to say that Rick wouldn’t be late for the meeting. As a matter of fact, he was already sensing signatures up ahead, prompting Rick to turn off his motorcycle and decompose the bike into a more absorbable spiritual compound. The think about being a Quincy was that you could honestly make whatever you want if you knew its components. Rick had enough practice to do it off of memory, but his goggles definitely lessened the leg work. In addition to getting rid of his motorcycle, Rick decided to lower his spiritual energy to half of his original strength. Maybe if Rick appeared weaker, the sensing of his spiritual energy would be passed by as nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

"It's worth a shot. On top of that, if they ever did turn out as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, I can’t have them picking up my scent. “

Hollow that gained the ability to use a Gigai was nothing more than a wild rumor these days. However, Rick tangled with an intelligent bunch of hollows these days. He would hold it against the to think of something that could mimic the capabilities that the other bunch of spiritual beings had at their disposable.

“This should be a good spot..”

As Rick was sneaking around the meeting place, he decided to build a small layer of soul synthesized concrete on the floor below him as he stayed out of sight. The reason about why he did this was behind the special qualities of soul synthesized constructs, it pretty much mitigates the spiritual activity that happens around them. Even if there was a prior scan by anyone who was capable with their Reiatsu Perception, they wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. The compound replacement was just enough for the result that Rick wanted, he only listened in from far away as the talking started.

“Grisha huh?"

Rick didn’t know of the person, but he seemed to protrude a different air around himself than the others. This man seemed confident for some reason, leaving Rick to wonder why that is? Unless this person had a special ability that Rick didn’t pick up on, the woes of regular people are usually based off who had the bigger gun.

"Maybe Grisha could take a bullet or two?”

Either way, the other yakuza members backed down, putting up with the cockiness of Grisha and agreeing to the deal. A light whistle escaped from Rick’s lips as he watched the others begin to pack up and leave. There was a trade of briefcases, leaving Rick more curious about the contents inside than the people involved.

“But still, nothing out of the ordinary. Just the everyday gangbanger….”

However, Rick spoke too soon. A garganta began to open up, leaving a clear path for the van to drive through. It surprised Rick, lowering the targets of his prime interest to this “Grisha” individual.

“Better catch this ride….”

Maybe it wasn’t the smartest choice, but what other options did Rick have? He had to redeem himself in some fashion after failing the Queen in the way that he did. This was an easy job to Rick, or better yet, he could make it easy on himself. All Rick had to do was get in, find out what this Grisha fellow was up to, sabotage it, and possibly find a way back home.

“Shouldn’t be too hard…..”

Rick wasn’t noticed yet, making it a lot easier to make a light dash in a crouched stance, making a dive for the garganta before it closed on him. He didn’t know where he would land, but perhaps Rick was in for an unexpected surprise?

WC 656
Total WC- 1216

La Colonia was proving to be more useful every day, as was Zettai in leading it. It had gone from a worthless circle of sand, to a walled in worthless circle of sand, to a virtual metropolis if hollow glass and civility. Well, civility by hollow standards anyway. Its biggest weakness was that its residents were among the weakest of hollows, save for Zettai himself of course. It attracted those who desired peace and civility over combat and strength. That was also what made it so useful. Those types of hollows were usually somewhat cowardly. They were more obedient, less likely to cause trouble, and less likely to stick their noses where they shouldn’t. Levi could get away with all kinds of experiments here, and no one would dare look into strange lights or smells. Especially not when they knew the Segunda had approved them. He didn’t have to worry about hungry hollows wandering in and eating Faelan, or getting into a fight with each other and blowing up his stuff by mistake, or deciding science wasn’t for hollows and blowing it up on purpose, or much of anything except results.

And now he had a giant underground bunker where he could store anything he wanted, and no one would disturb it. Over the past several months he had collected everything from rare minerals, like the silver and gold he was dropping off now, to weapons that could perhaps be converted into something useful for hollows, to radioactive isotopes which had to be stored in their own lead safes in their own special corner of the warehouse, which was basically a massive lead safe. The whole place was quite organized. One row of shelves for metals, another for chemicals, yet another for devices or parts, so on and so forth. Among their areas everything was organized alphabetically by their most technical names. Chemical compounds, such as metals, were organized by their chemical formula, weapons and devices by their model names, etc. The idea was to make it easy for anyone who knew such things, such as Levi or Zettai, to find them, and difficult for anyone else.

Of course that was more of a security gimmick than a security measure. The security came from the various video cameras, and the fact that it was a hundred feet underground, and that the only physical entrance was a tunnel which lead directly to Faelan’s Laboratory, which spanned about 300 feet due to the angle, and was lined with several turrets designed to fire cero and bala at anyone that wasn’t Levi, Zettai, Faelan, or someone approved by them. Rex was one of those people, even though he never actually went through the tunnel.

It took the two of them about fifteen minutes to drive the trucks up to the proper shelf and unload the cargo. Between Levi’s Manos Fantasmales and Rex’s touch based telekinesis, the weight was a non-factor.

“Thanks for the help, Rex.” Levi said as he tossed a small roll of hundred dollar bills to his associate. Rex caught the money with a curt “welcome” and pocketed it unceremoniously. Rex was much better at work than he was at conversation.

“Come on.” Levi said as he snapped his fingers and tore open another garganta. “Let’s tell the others the good news.” The war was over and there was nothing left to do but expand and rake in the money. Things were really looking up for the Desenmascarado clan. He would have to take all his people out for a drink to celebrate. And then come back to La Colonia to grab another drink with his fraccion, and celebrate again. It was going to be a good day, no doubt about it.

WC: 621
TWC: 1,354

As soon as Rick slipped in, he managed to find himself in a bunker of some kind. Much to his surprise, this sort of organized crime was being done through two different dimensions, Hueco Mundo and earth. Was this mysterious yakuza leader involved with some kind of deal with the hollows? If so, what? What could possibly be the kind of trade that involves working with regular human beings on a social level? What did they had to offer? Was it a skin trade? Were they giving up bodies of sedated homeless people of the hollows to experiment on? Rick wouldn’t necessarily put it past them. He’s had one run in with a scientist hollow breed, loathing the idea of any more of them coming out of the woodwork.

Moving to the nearest corner in a small sprint, Rick decided to wait around for a little bit until the yakuza member were finished uploading all of the materials and taking their leave. However, Rick noticed that there were a few cameras located inside of this storage area. He couldn’t make too many movements until he dealt with them first, and that wasn’t going to happen until the yakuza left.

“Come on, get lost already!”

He was exuding quite a bit of patience, wanting to limit all sorts of energy bursts that would bring attention to his spiritual activity. If Rick wasn’t too careful, he could be unintentionally baiting the surrounding hollow breeds to his location.

“He still hasn’t left yet?”

It took a while, but another garganta opened, following the exit of Grisha and his family minivan. It was the break that Rick need, quickly getting to work with the use of his goggles. “Connect, scan.” Bringing about a full scan of the bunker, the blueprint layout of the place was basically fed to Rick through the use of sending the information through reiatsu perception.

“Ok, cameras seem a bit average. Let’s see if I can do something about them?”

The first thing that Rick did was recoat the inner compound of the facility with it soul synthesized variant. There wouldn’t be an apparent change what would come off as noticeable for those who were inside, not unless they tested the new durability of the place and realized that it was stronger than before. On top of that, it gave Rick a sense of control, as well as blocking out spiritual from being sensed from within the compound.
He also had the layout of the facility, which meant he knew where the cameras were, as well as the tanks. There was something farther ahead in the tunnel, but Rick wanted to focus on what was in front of him now. With a click of his shotgun, Rick fired off a basic at the first camera. The spiritual blast zoomed through air as it hit the camera dead on, but it didn’t stop there. Rick manipulated the trajectory and stabilize the reishi bullet, making it ricochet to the next few cameras after it had contact with the first one. The blast was powerful enough to damage the camera’s considerably, which made Rick’s job of reconnaissance a whole lot easier.

“What’s with all these materials? What are they doing here?”

Even though Rick coated the storage with its soul synthesized counterpart, he didn’t coat what was beyond the corridor. The previous scan revealed to him that they were collecting a variety of goods, currency, and even pathogens that could lead to biological warfare. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good. Rick needed more answers, and he figured that the only way to get them was through the end of the well-guarded corridor to the main lab. But first, Rick started to destroy everything in this room with the use of his Quincy weapon. If it was anything that the hollows wanted, he was going to put a stop to that. In the midst of the cleanup, he wasn't expecting a sudden return from the yakuza members.

WC 663
Total WC-  1879

Of all the things for Levi to forget before taking his people out for free drinks, his wallet was among the worst. As it turned out, booze cost money, and criminals didn’t take kindly to empty promises. So when Levi realized that his wallet had fallen out of his pocket while he was driving the armored cars, he had to go back to his bunker and get it. Who would have thought that losing his wallet would be his lucky break?

Levi was nodding his head and humming a catchy little tune that had been playing in the club when he stepped through the garganta and nearly had his ear ripped off by reishi buckshot. His eyes snapped open and kept getting wider as they scanned the room. The destruction was massive. Most of the minerals were in smoking pieces, the electronics and mechanical parts looked like a smoldering scrap pile, and had that moron actually been SHOOTING at the chemicals!? All in all, probably half of Levi’s little collection was destroyed and another quarter would probably need serious repairs.

But how!? How was this possible!? How had he gotten past security!? Why was there no hollow response!? Why were there no bodies? Why hadn’t he been alerted to a freaking quincy in his base before this could happen!? How had he even gotten here in the first place!?

Then it started to click together and Levi’s rage only grew. First he noticed the faint fragrance of the quincy’s reiatsu was literally everywhere. He had coated the entire room in some sort of shield. Then he had reduced the cameras to scrap, which someone better have realized and be sending someone down there. But that wasn’t what infuriated him. That actually impressed Levi a bit. What infuriated him was the realization that there was only one possible way that this quincy could have gotten here without going through the tunnel. Why, oh why, had Levi not thought to use his Pesquisa? Because he was overconfident, of course. He had been focusing on the easy victory over the yakuza boss, and hadn’t though about there being another threat. He had gotten tunnel vision, and now he was paying for it.

But this quincy would pay a much steeper price. Levi’s eyes narrowed from an expression of shock to rage as they took in his enemy. He was a tall man, with straight blonde hair, blue eyes, and a warrior’s build. His reiatsu had a kind of intensity to it, similar to a young hollow on a hunt, or perhaps a wolf. He wore black clothing with the unmistakable symbol of the quincy order embroidered on the shoulder. The quincy wielded a shotgun and reiatsu that was even stronger than Levi’s.

“Tell me, quincy.” Levi hissed as his physical hand adjusted his glasses, and an invisible one snaked its way over to the chemical rack. Levi had the homefield advantage, and he was absolutely going to use it. “What kind of stupid rat waltzes into the lion’s den, and start’s busting it up? Waiting for the hunter to come back and giving him a reason to be pissed off?” As he spoke, his hand wrapped its fingers around a particular canister. “The answer is...” he trailed off and pointed his finger at the quincy. The trademark glow of a cero appeared on his finger as he finished speaking. A distraction more than anything. “The dead kind.”

From the quincy’s left, a gallon of hydrogen peroxide. In concentrations between three and six percent this stuff was an effective over-the-counter disinfectant. The can heading toward the quincy however, was about seventy percent pure. It was basically pure rocket fuel. If the quincy was foolish enough to shoot this, or even knock it away, it would explode in his face. If he dodged it, it would explode in a corner of the warehouse that had already been destroyed. Whatever he did, Levi would fire the cero toward him at an angle and try to force him back toward the exit. Collateral damage was inevitable, but the lives lost in the crossfire would be negligible compared to the destruction of Levi’s more volatile, and expensive, resources.

WC: 700
TWC: 2,054

As Rick attempted to continue his investigation and sabotage mission, he would start to feel a spike in spiritual energy that he hasn’t necessarily sensed for a while since the van left. He possessed a shadowy sense of it, but he knew that a hollow of some sort seemed to be with the Yakuza members. Now that it was back, as well as without the group of humans that accompanied it, the reiatsu signature seemed a lot more distinct than before.

“What the hell? How could it be back all of a sudden?”

Rick turned around, seeing Grisha once more. It turned out that this man seemed to be the hollow of the bunch, a strong one at that too.

“I think there’s no actual need for me to hold back any longer."

Rick stopped holding back and let out the entire extent of his reiatsu, something that the hollow in front of him would only be able to sense because of the coating. With the small stare down that they had for a few seconds, Rick caught a glimpse of an expensive as hell looking wallet that laid on the floor. Whistling as if he was impressed, Rick walked over to the wallet while he still had his shotgun pointed at the arrancar. The next thing that Rick done was something that the hollow probably didn’t expect from the Quincy, he kicked it over.

“Must be rolling in cash Grisha, wouldn’t want your family to be left out of your will because I smashed your wallet. I don’t know what you hollows are planning here with the Yakuza, but I’m here to put a stop to it anyway. “

Rick had a pretty simple mindset, the hollows are never up to anything good. He ran into a few serial killers, but he couldn’t tell if Grisha being a crime lord was a step above the rest. However, Rick still held his confident smile when it came to the hollow breed. He was pretty much ready for anything that the arrancar would throw at him, like that canister he threw not too long ago. Now, Rick wasn’t too sure why the hollow decided to go for such method of distracting Rick, but the Quincy ended up putting up a guard anyway. Getting a nice wall of soul synthesized silver, Rick was expecting the canister to fall flat or something. Still, it looked as if the canister exploded on contact with the soul synthesized silver wall that Rick set to protect himself.

Rick was rather surprised at the end result of the canister blowing off, the smoke and bright embers of the explosion covering a piece of his vision as he sensed a build up of spiritual energy over at Grisha’s side. He had to think quick, but he didn’t necessarily know what kind of dimensions he needed in order to generate another soul synthesized construct to protect himself. Rick also didn’t have a clear shot either, he didn’t want to risk damaging the coating and alerting the other hollow to his presence. The only option that he had was to trust that the damaged synthesized construct could hold up another blow, so Rick ended up placing his faith into his previous coverage and swung it in front of him through the use of fully manipulating the construct at will. The cero zoomed through the smoke and debris, heading straight for the soul synthesized construct.

Rick was hoping it held, but the cero broke through, hitting Rick square in the chest. He flew back into the exit, bursting through it actually. It wasn’t a perfect defense, but the silver guard managed to protect Rick from the full force of the assault. A bit of the front of Rick’s shirt and jacket was gone as he was inflicted 1st-degree burns, but he was alive. That's all that matters to him right now.

“Ok, so maybe I underestimated you a little. My mistake…”

Rick let out a sharp cough as he came to his feet, but was surprised at what he witnessed around him. It was a small town of some sort, only nothing like Las Noches. Rick been there before when he was a part of the Vigilance extraction team. However, this new scenery made him wonder if this case was much bigger than he originally thought. Either way, Rick had Grisha to think about, and his adversary needed a proper response. Utilizing his special power, Rick fired out a grenade bomb into the room that he just flew out of. However, it wasn’t intended to hit Grisha directly, Rick didn’t need it to do that in order to achieve results. As soon as the Slug made contact with something in the bunker, it erupted into an aoe spread of reishi. Rick was hoping that the spiritual shockwave would get to Grisha, as well as hoping that the blast would set off the rest of the explosives from the inside in order to add to the degree of destruction.

Rick originally came here to investigate, but the plan was slightly altered now. He had to take out Grisha quickly if he was to have any chance at survival.

WC 886
Total WC- 2765


used

Well that worked surprisingly well. Not only did the distraction allow Levi to knock the quincy through the tunnel, but now he knew to be warry of barriers too. It hadn’t killed him though, not that Levi expected it too, and now he was alone and unhindered in the center of La Colonia.

Levi had used Sonido to run about half way through the tunnel when he learned something else about the quincy. He could fire exploding rounds. As soon as he saw the explosion of reishi coming for him, Levi formed a bala in his hand and spread it into an oval barrier that shielded him from the blast. Unfortunately, he forgot about all the explosive traps that Faelan and he had installed in the tunnel. They were made to recognize Levi’s reiatsu and disarm until he had passed, but explosions tended to set off explosives.

Five seconds of explosions later, the burnt and broken body of Levi Grisha fell to the floor. And the spiritual body of the Segunda Espada stood with minor burns over his back and arms. His gigai had been destroyed. It would take hours to put it back together, especially since some of the key components were in the half-destroyed warehouse behind him. Furthermore, the tunnel between Levi and the quincy invader had been turned into a huge wall of rubble. A few minutes ago, Levi had been having a really good day. Now it was officially, a horrible day.

“I hope...” Levi hissed at the quincy that he knew couldn’t hear him “... you didn’t think...” He started charging a cero in his right hand, a sickly yellow light of death and destruction. “... this would let you escape.” With that Levi fired the cero, not just through the tunnel, but directly toward the quincy’s reiatsu. The cero tore and burned through several metes of steel and sand before erupting right under the quincy with pinpoint accuracy.

Levi wasted no time in running through his new tunnel to face the quincy again. On the surface a crowd of monsters had gathered to watch the spectacle of power in front of them. Most of the hollows in La Colonia were exceptionally weak, with Zettai being virtually the only exception. They had never seen power like this, and most of them were cowering in fear, even as they refused to walk away. For them, it was like watching a tornado and a wildfire battle it out in the middle of their home. A home that Levi realized had already lost half of a building to the destructive force of his cero. Oops.

WC: 435
TWC: 2,489

If anything, feeling the spike of spiritual energy from Grisha’s blast was something to be anticipated. Rick knew that this fight wasn’t over, he knew that the hollow wouldn’t go down as easily as the rest.

“You are one resilient asshole!”

Rick was rather irritated at the fact that the blast was as tough as it was, it left little room to avoid because of the attempted underground assault. Nonetheless, the Quincy was resourceful enough to offer a proper return. Through the utilization of spiritual alchemy and his holy relic goggles, Rick’s counter involved a quick scan of the floor was filled with a replacement coating of the stuff that was there earlier with its soul synthesized counterpart.

It was an unorthodox way of defending, but what it did was make the floor not as easy to break through as Grisha intentionally thought. Rick had the experience and the means to reshape the playing field if he wanted to, even if it had its terminal points. However, it did its role. Instead of a groundbreaking geyser of energy, the floor was supporting up enough for Rick to promptly move out of the way before its imminent end, following Grisha’s exit. It was at that point that he started to notice something that alarmed him, prompting Rick to point his Quincy weapon at different angles.

He was surrounded by hollow breeds, in all shapes and sizes. Still, something was amiss. They weren’t attacking him, and he questioned why? Usually, hollows would go on the offensive, a good meal with high spiritual energy was something that he wasn’t expecting a hollow to pass off on. In accession to that, with the amount of spiritual energy that Rick has been asserting throughout his combat with Grisha came with the double whammy of excreting the special hormones of his blood.

The lure of darkness, the perfume of desire, it slowly filled the country with each fleeting minute. Rick had no say in it, he could simply be careful at best, but this was a hollow territory. They weren’t moving, but they weren’t attacking. Are they waiting for something?

“It’s so comical to see you monsters attempt to be civilized after killing as many humans as you damn well please! Huh?! What the hell is this about?! You like to mimic the lives that other human beings never got a chance to live because of you?”

It was laughable, but there was nothing comical about it.

“So you must be the hierarchy then, right Grisha? If I take you down, I’m guessing they scatter. “

Rick would say as he fired a barrage of spiritual bullets in Grisha’s direction. Nevertheless, the flight of the bullets was manipulated to a level of fine precision, all for the sake of obscuring the probabilities of where they might land. Each Quincy bullet was aimed at a different point of Grisha’s body, and it made Rick wonder if he can keep up with the high speed of the rapid rounds?

Even so, Rick still kept his eyes open for an exit point. He was either working to take down Grisha and break the fighting spirit of the hollows around them, or run away to whatever region of the world he managed to recover himself in through the first hollow cavity he saw.


WC 552
Total WC- 3317

Something was off. Levi had felt the Quincy’s energy manifest between him and the cero, but it hadn’t been his barrier. It was too quick for Quincy magic, and too weak for this Quincy’s magic. It also felt very similar to the layer of reiatsu that had been coating the inside of the warehouse. Was it just a quick coating of reishi, or something more advanced? He would have to keep his wits about him and try to figure that out.

Levi laughed a bit at the quincy looking all around him, flailing his gun about as he tried to pick a target. He was beginning to think this guy had literally no idea what he had been getting himself into. Could he really have just been after Levi’s gang, and stumbled across his secret by accident?

“All of you get out of here.” Levi ordered calmly as he stepped toward the quincy. He didn’t need anybody getting hungry and getting in his way. Or stealing his food afterwards, because this quincy smelled delicious.

Levi raised his arm the same moment the Quincy raised his gun, and Levi fired an instant later. If he had been relying on his eyes he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Using his Pesquisa however, he was able to pinpoint the pellets and match them point for point. Softball sized bala slammed into pea sized pellets, and both exploded from the force. Levi’s grin only widened as he realized he and his opponent were an even match.

“Hierarchy, huh? Well I guess you could say that.” He said as his Manos Fantasmales creeped into position, fanning out and slinking toward the quincy. “I guess I haven’t introduced myself, have I? I must have forgotten my manners after you broke into my home and blew up my stuff.” He crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes as he spoke, as if the Quincy warrior before him was just some teenage vandal deserving of a lecture.

“I am Levi Grisha, head of the Desenmascarado yakuza.” He thought about introducing himself as the Segunda Espada as well, but decided to play it safe. Someone who lived to be as powerful as them had to be able to get out of sticky situations. Levi was going to make sure the quincy didn’t get out of this one with any sensitive information, and the fact that Las Noches was so desperate for Espada that someone as weak as Levi would be named Segunda, definitely qualified.

“And this is La Colonia, a collection of all the hollows that actually don’t want to go around eating people all the time.” That was at once a gross simplification and exaggeration. Hopefully it would mess with the quincy’s head though. “So who exactly is the asshole quincy that would just bust into our peaceful little town, and start blowing shit up?” He asked with a grin on his face, as if he thought the whole thing was a friendly prank.

It was at about that moment that Levi realized something was wrong. The hollows were still there. All of them.

“I thought I told you all to get lost.” He growled at them. When they didn’t respond, he knew something was wrong. On top of that they were acting strangely. They were staring at the quincy, not fearfully but hungrily. Some of them were even drooling. That wouldn’t be strange for an average base hollow, or even for most arrancar, but the denizens of La Colonia were a congregation of weaklings, cowards, and intellectuals. They were far from average.

Hollow bait. Understanding struck Levi like a bala to the gut. That delicious aroma he had been smelling all this time, ignoring all this time, was hollow bait. When had he used hollow bait? Why had he used hollow bait?

That complicated things. Levi had intended to get everyone to leave and rebuild whatever he and his enemy destroyed afterwards. They wouldn’t leave now, though. Worse, it was only a matter of time before one of them did something stupid, and then they all did something stupid. If things went as Levi predicted, La Colonia could be wiped out in this one battle.

It couldn’t be helped. Levi wouldn’t be able to run them off or herd the Quincy out of town without letting his guard down and risking death. There were two options in front of him. End the battle before the hollows lost control entirely and committed suicide by stupidity, or use them as a distraction and finish the fight then. He would call those plans A and B, respectively.

WC: 767
TWC: 3,256

“Consider me blowing up your stuff as a warning shot, as well as a cleansing of the soul. You think any one of those transactions were clean deals? I’m surprised that there are hollows that deal with real-time crime and are not solely dedicated to eating the souls of the innocent, no, that’s not enough for you. Right? So instead, you add to its corruption by taking advantage of your immortal circumstances as a chimeric devil. Every piece of crap that you kill will be nothing more than a snack for you as you continue your crimes, did you think I would be ok with that? You are quite the ripple effect, but there’s no point in arresting someone that can outlive their sentence. “

The man actually introduced himself as Levi Grisha, which made Rick scoff a bit.

“Is that the person in charge? You picked a good name for yourself. Choosing to take a male body and all? Grisha, you are just the one lucky soul of many, with every other victim in the compiled clump of spiritual slavery that you call a body. It’s funny that I actually give a crap about what their names used to be, it’s also funny that you chose yourself to be a family man. Or am I wrong? So, what was that about? Going to sacrifice them soon? Hollowify them? With every passing second, as I witness how easy it is for you to manipulate people, you give me more of a reason to kill you that I never needed before."

Was this place called La Colonia? A place where hollows can live out their lives with the idea that they didn’t have to eat people all of the time? If anything, Grisha’s explanation was a mistake. What he should have stated was that La Colonia was a place for hollows that didn’t want to eat people at all. If that was the case, and it also seemed to be a place that was sponsored by Takua, Rick might have listened.

“My name is Rick Rogers, I’m certain that you already recognize that I’m a Quincy. Through my own investigations into your little Yakuza group, I came here of my own free will. However, fostering a town of hollows will soon turn into a city, hard to handle if you monopolize into a militant group and present a threat to the world like the last incursion. But look at them, if all they wanted was peace, would such a binding hunger fill the whites of their eyes at my presence? Well, no matter, I suppose we spoke enough. ”

Rick then quickly dropped a black mechanical device in the shape of a base, which started to foam a bit of smoke of some kind. In addition to that, Rick constructed a connecting air filter that completed the second part of his goggles. The thing about being good at holy relics was the fact that you had to be resourceful with your bag of tricks, and this particular item was no different. Not only did it cover about 50 feet of vision, it also contained an anesthesia component that was particularly effective on the spiritual beings that were exposed to it. The effects were temporary, and maybe Grisha would fare better against it, but the induced drowsiness was made to deter the fighting capacities of the adversaries. If their reaction time was even at least a second slower than usual, it gave Rick all the time he needed.

Within the contents of the gray smoke, as well as them being exposed to hollow bait, it was possible that mistakes can be made with them being tricked into eating each other with the thought that the individual was Rick. In the meantime, one after another, the hollows that were closer to Grisha fell down with a thud as a reishi bullet went by and went straight through their masks. Two blasts also came his way, in which he could defend in any style that he wished, but it wasn’t the point.

Rick was maneuvering around La Colonia, taking advantage of the smoke and making it hard to pinpoint his location. But where would he strike next?

WC- 701
Total WC 4018

“You’ve got me all figured out, don’t you?” Levi said with a dull tone and a slightly raised eyebrow. This guy really seemed to like the sound of his own voice. Either that, or he actually expected Levi to repent of his crimes after hearing how bad he was. Or maybe, just maybe, the quincy was actually talking to himself. Maybe he actually did feel a twinge of empathy for the hollows around him, and needed to drown it out with a speech about his enemy’s evil?

If so, learning Levi’s name must have made him desperate, because the rest of his speech was so bigoted and ignorant that Levi couldn’t even respond. His eyebrow just rose a little higher with every line, and when it could rise no more, his head started twisting to the side as if half of being carried by the eyebrow’s efforts.

By the time Rick finished, Levi’s head was turned almost completely sideways. “Honest question, are you actually getting all this from somewhere, or are you just making it up as you go along? Cause you have no goddamned idea how hollows work.”

The quincy continued with his heroic speeches, and Levi finally had to facepalm when he gave his reasoning for why these hollows had to be evil.

“You used hollow bait! You are literally drugging them for... Uuugh, whatever.” There was no reasoning with someone with that kind of reasoning. “Let’s just cut to the chase.” He said as he pointed at the quincy and started charging a bala. Rick was quicker on the draw though, and before Levi could launch his attack he found himself blinded by some sort of smokescreen. His smiled dropped for only a second as he closed his eyes, and then returned wider than before. A smokescreen was a serious advantage against most, but a master of Pesquisa like Levi hardly needed his sight at all.

“Nice try!” He laughed and started charging another bala. Then he stumbled as he was lining it up.

Why was he suddenly so tired? He hadn’t used up nearly that much energy in the fight? Oh. Duh. The smoke was a sleeping gas. Clever. And no doubt Rick was immune to it, or had a gas mask.

Levi still had enough awareness to feel the chaos around him as hollows and Rick all went berserk. A handful of hollows around him were killed by the quincy’s reishi bullets, and Levi himself just managed to create a bala barrier before two blasts could hit him. The yellow wall cracked under the force of the first shell, and completely shattered with the second, allowing the reishi to pepper Levi with shallow wounds. They had been slowed down enough that the damage wasn’t severe, but the pellets still buried themselves in his skin. Levi instinctively stumbled backward, which in his current drowsy state ended with him falling flat on his back.

This gas had to be dealt with. Immediately. Counting on the colonial hollows to distract Rick, Levi focused on gathering energy for a cero as he struggled to stand up. That proved to be beyond him, but he did manage to crawl onto his knees. It would do for the moment.

Levi spread the cero around his whole body, trying to hold his breath all the while. He had no idea what was going on around him at this point. His mind was much to fuzzy with sleep to use his Pesquisa. Finally, the cero was ready. With a roar, Levi exploded in yellow light. The cero burned away all the smoke, and everything else within 80 feet. He hadn’t been able to measure well. Hollows, buildings, and hopefully Rick, had all been caught in his blast.

Levi was still on his hands and knees, breathing, coughing, and trying desperately to wake up enough to find his enemy. If he didn’t focus now he would be gunned down, he was sure. That though was probably what saved him. It gave him a shot of adrenaline that waved away the fog of lethargy and let him hone in on Rick’s position.

Still trying to regain his composure, Levi just started firing bala from his Manos Fantasmales, hoping to distract Rick more than actually hurt him. If he could just keep the quincy at bay for a few more seconds he could fight off the poison in his veins and come back in earnest.

And when he did, he was going to destroy Rick Rogers.

WC: 750
TWC: 3,806

It didn’t really matter what the hollow said, using the fact that hollow bait was used also turned out to be an irrelevant statement in Rick’s case. He couldn’t help it, that was who he was, whether he intended for its purpose or not. It simply goes on, and when it does, people perish. So, in a way, Rick felt like home, it was a fair playing field of the enemy’s territory, but it was an environment where he didn’t have to care about collateral damage. He didn’t have to worry about the humans near him that might be hurt because of his competitiveness. Rick was free to run wild, and in a sense, he was a bit shaken. He never necessarily had a chance to fight a hollow that was close to him in strength like this before. At times like this, he wondered if he could gain ground if he was ever put in a position like this. It answered a greater use than a fight simulation.

On the other hand, if the combat simulation kept on sending out mindless hordes with sluggish movements from the toxin, it only made this situation appear more like a living dead film.

“Hey, stop that!”

In a sense, they seemed to move slowly, but surely make their way over to Rick. He kept killing them, showing off his amazing accuracy and breaking their masks with each and every shot. Still, with every one hollow that he killed, it seemed as if three more took its place.

“It was supposed to mask the smell with the anesthetic, has it gotten that much stronger?”

Maybe it was because Rick was in hollow territory, but perhaps his special condition has become more potent because of where he currently was. Still, that wasn’t the only alarming thing that was brought to Rick’s attention. It seemed that Grisha was trying to plan something.

“Oh no you don’t!”

Taking an aim in Grisha’s direction, Rick was trying to find a good shot in order to at least break Grisha’s concentration in regards to his Reishi gathering. Nevertheless, the hollows kept getting in the way. It almost turned out to be a fatal miscalculation when Rick’s reiatsu perception was catching on to the peak of Grisha’s energy gathering. Right now, Rick had to think fast before he was blown away with the rest of the hollows. Keeping in mind of his own creativity, Rick’s countermeasures and mastery over reishi manipulation were honestly limited to his imagination and talent. It was a blast that was strong enough to blow all of the smoke away, taking quite a bit of Rick’s tactical advantage.

In this event, Rick saw the best means to protect himself was to get something akin to a man-sized turtle shell of soul synthesized carbon and hide until the attack was over. It wasn’t very grand, it was comical at best. Still, it got hold of the entire brunt of the attack, crumbling away from Rick’s large frame as he evaluated the site and checked himself for damage.

“Ha! It worked!”

A bit of a childish declaration that related to his success off protecting himself, but Rick spoke too soon. The repeated bala was sent towards Rick, leaving him to be a bit distracted with matching Levi blow for blow. With every bala sent, Rick tried his best to match it with his gunslinger capabilities. However, there were a few misses that ended up to be menial bruise and cuts with every near miss. It might seem like nothing, but all of that damage definitely accumulates.

“Tch, I can’t get any closer!”

WC- 605
Total WC 4623

Levi kept up his shameful flailing and coughing for what felt like hours. It was probably only a few seconds, but it a fight like this one that was an abysmally long time. It worked though. His attacks were barely able to do any damage, but they did keep Rick at bay.

When he was finally able to breath without coughing, Levi didn’t do anything differently at first. He stayed on his hands and knees for a few more seconds, still throwing bala around at near random like a panicking amateur. Rick probably wouldn’t even realize he had recovered unless he was really good at Pesquisa. That, or if he bothered to look behind him, and realized most of the bala had stopped in midair. The rest, Levi allowed to crash into something so that Rick wouldn’t so easily notice that some of the sounds of battle were missing.

When there were a few dozen bala floating around the battlefield, Levi finally shook his head and stood up. “I’m impressed, Rick. I honestly am. It’s not every day that I meet an enemy that can match me in both power and tactics.” Kirito in power, sure. Maybe that Shinsei Madarame guy in tactics. That was about it.

“But now I think it’s time I got serious.” He growled as he pointed a finger at Rick, and a small but unusually bright bala started charging and spinning at the tip of his finger. This was a new technique Levi had been working on. It was a specialized bala meant to deal specifically with barriers and armor, the kind of defenses Rick had been defaulting to throughout the entire fight. There was enough energy to charge three regular bala condensed into that quarter sized sphere of light, and the spinning motion further increased its piercing power.

Of course, Levi never used just one attack. Before he fired, he moved all of his hovering bala to surround Rick. He would probably think that the bala he was charging was just a distraction, and that the bala surrounding him was the real attack. In truth, those bala wouldn’t be able to do much damage at all. The satellite bala, as useful as they were, still had to travel a distance to pick up enough momentum to hurt as much as regular bala. A feat that would be impossible, as Levi had moved them all within two or three yards of Rick to fulfil their real purpose. They were there only to distract him and cut off any avenues of escape.

“Dodge this.” Levi taunted, as he brought up his empty hand, fingers bent like claws. He gripped the fingers into a fist, and all of the bala shot toward Rick at once.

“Tiro remolcado.” And a quarter second later, the real attack shot from Levi’s finger.

WC: 472
TWC: 4,278

Impressed? Well, here I thought I wasn’t even on your radar Grisha, I’m touched. “

Of course, Rick would say this in a mocking spirit, not necessarily caring about Gisha’s approval. He had to get closer to him before the smoke started to wear off, he didn’t want to lose this chance to take out the hollow. There was a way that he could do so, and Rick didn’t want to use it too early, but he had no choice at the moment. On top of that, his reiatsu perception was at least a bit decent to get a feel of something strange going on around him. He couldn’t figure it out as of yet, but he didn’t like it.

On the flip side, being put in such a situation might be useful for Rick if he played his cards right.

“Anhäufer…”

Taking out his Seele Schneider, Rick began using the advanced technique that involved him gathering energy from the random Bala’s. If there was anything that was a bit more on the mark, Rick would of shot at them to keep it at bay. As a matter of fact, the gathering was also starting to siphon from somewhere else, making Rick turn back a bit slightly. It was a bit upsetting for Rick to realize that Grisha has essentially trapped him, the area was covered by quite a few Bala’s, lowering Rick’s maneuvering options. On top of that, the gathering effect of Rick’s Seele Schneider technique wouldn’t absorb all of the anomaly Reishi in time to make up the area behind him, much for the compliment of Grisha’s skills. At the very least, it was useful to gather as much as he could.

Still, what it wasn’t enough? What if it wouldn’t be enough to beat Grisha?

“Don’t give up, just keep gathering. Focus on a single section, that’s my way out!”

Rick thought that it was unwise to look anywhere else from Grisha, so he had to coordinate his gathering technique alongside his reiatsu perception for a sense of vision. Grisha might have already noticed what Rick was already doing or trying to do. However, he would have simply figured that Rick couldn’t absorb all of Grisha’s reishi in time to disperse the majority of the bala. Still, it wasn’t Rick’s aim to get rid of all of the Bala, he just demanded a little scrap to utilize as an exit stage.

Though, by the statement of Grisha, it seemed like the hollow was now playing for keeps. If he was starting to get serious, then Rick had to be as equally serious.


“Dodge this.”


“Watch me!”


The next few second happened like a blur, the Bala started to come in order to overwhelm Rick. Nevertheless, Rick was resilient. With the Anhäufer gathering technique that Rick was committing himself to, he managed to siphon enough for a clearing space. Using his Quincy weapon, Rick would generate a reishi blast, but it wasn’t an attack this time. For this particular situation, the Reishi blast was to propel Rick diagonally in the open space that he managed to make. It became something akin to a spirit propulsion attempt in order to make up for Rick’s low speed, which was successful to a degree.

However, the bigger problem was the more powerful Bala that Grisha had in store for Rick, leaving Rick at a pickle. If he was to use his Quincy weapon to stop the propulsion, he would be a sitting duck for the rest of the bala whole while he was dedicating his attention to the stronger blast. It wouldn’t be too much of a fair trade off if he did that, giving his body and stamina.

Then once more, Rick would bring all of the accumulated energy from inside of the seele and then concentrate on the vibrations that’s been brought forth from the spirit chainsaw cutter. With the utilization of the gathered Reishi from Grisha’s Bala’s , Rick increased the vibration properties beyond the highest degree as he swung the Seele in Grisha’s direction in a cutting motion, creating something akin to a small vibration Shockwave of blue streaks in an endeavor to trim down the shackles of the Bala and disperse the technique. Nevertheless, it was Rick’s first time doing this, and the effort lacked focus. He was successful in weakening the technique, but he didn’t break it completely as it hit Rick right out of the sky.

He shouted out in excruciating pain as the blow hit the correct side of his midriff, causing severe damage the pelt of his stomach and breaking two of Rick’s ribs. After being hit, Rick was falling down to the ground with a thud, Slowly getting up as he coughed out a bit of blood. It was a bother to breathe, Rick couldn’t stop coughing for a minute, with every cough, leaving to a sharp tingling sensation that almost became unbearable if it weren’t for Rick’s willpower alone. Right now, those were the two things that Rick was relying on, his willpower and his instincts.

He said nothing to Grisa, hitting the limit of his witty banter. He needed to escape, but he couldn’t do that with Grisha being unscathed. Pointing his shotgun at Grisha, Rick would do something a little different, he would start to weave and combine his rounds together. As the Quincy symbol appeared in front of the shotgun, Rick fired out an astonishing blast of Reishi that looked quite similar to a Hollow’s cero. Nevertheless, this blast also had a sparkling hue to it that maintained a flow of transparency. The fusion between Rick’s eradication beam and glass shrapnel gave birth to a new approach, the eradication shrapnel glass beam. It might look like a mouthful, but the attributes of the eradication beam erodes Reishi on contact as an anti-spiritual energy blast. On top of that, if Grisha was to get injured by this attack, the glass portion would start to feed upon Grisha’s spiritual body in order to grow him into a crystalline state of soul synthesized glass.

The trick here was that Grisha probably thought he was going to simply block or match this attack with a blast of his own. However, feeling confident after considerably wounding Rick and thinking that he could take anything that the Quincy can dish out would definitely be his downfall. If the glass does start to viciously feed on Grisha, he would have to rivet all of his spiritual control to slow down or fend off the crystallization process, leaving little room to manage anything else. But it was probable, maybe Grisha had a plan to handle it?

WC 1109
Total WC - 5732

Levi hadn’t expected Rick to pull out a Steele Schneider. He had seemed like the long-range type, like Levi himself. Of course, Levi had learned to use his Manos Fantasmales at close range, so it wasn’t too surprising that Rick had taken similar precautions.

Even so, this “Anhäufer” technique was quite effective. It absorbed enough bala to give Rick an opening and then used the same energy to blast him through his exit.

But that had been precisely why Levi had waited before firing his Tiro Remolcado. To his credit, Rick still manage to put up an effective defense straight out of creating an opening and dodging through it, but that defense was not nearly enough to stop the bala. It did save his life, however.

Levi smiled at Rick’s obvious pain. At least until Rick pointed his gun at him again. He couldn’t say the man wasn’t tenacious. He had to have at least a broken rib or two, and just swung the weapon back up without a second through. That had to hurt.

Whatever he was charging would probably hurt too. Levi wasn’t exactly an expert on quincy combat, but it seemed logical that any attack that started with forming the symbol of their race in front of the barrel of a gun was going to be big. The strength and complexity of the reiatsu gathering inside the weapon supported this theory.

Levi wasted neither time nor words as he brought his right hand up to his mouth and bit a chunk out of his palm. “Gran Rey...” He cocked his fist back as he charged a trio of bala in his fist. People tended to use their strongest attacks when they were most desperate, and Levi was not going to underestimate Rick Rogers’ strongest attack. “Vórtice Bala!” Three Gran Rey Bala, swirling around each other like a drill, shot from his fist and directly at the barrel of Rick’s gun as it fired. He was confident that it would have the power to stop any blast Rick could fire.

At least he was confident until he saw his bala disintegrating in the blast. Levi’s eyes shot open, and with one last ditch effort he fired a hasty cero out of his already extended hand just before the blast hit him. It didn’t do much good. He kept firing the cero, even as the Quincy’s attack burned through arm, all the way up to the elbow.

When the attack finally stopped, Levi growled and forced a smirk through the pain. “Not... good enough.” He strained to say as he started regenerating the lost limb.

Why wasn’t it regenerating? Levi looked down at his elbow, and was shocked to see it was covered in some sort of glass, or crystal. “What the hell?” Even as he spoke it started growing up his arm, eating away at his flesh and turning his own arm into more of the reishi crystal. Trying to regenerate again merely caused it to grow out for a moment as it consumed his new flesh as quickly as he could grow it. If he didn’t think quickly this thing would turn him into a statue within a matter of minutes.

Luckily, Levi was the king of thinking quickly. He turned so that his right side was positioned toward Rick, and pointed what was left of his arm at his enemy. “Still not good enough!” He yelled defiantly as he started charging a cero inside his shoulder, mixing it with his blood as he did so. He had done this a few times with his fingers, and once or twice with his palms. He had never tried it as far up as his shoulder, and he could already feel the heat of his own energy burning at his tendons and nerves. This was going to hurt.

“Gran Rey Cero!” He fired the blast and obliterated his infected arm. It hurt every bit as much as he expected, burning away nerves and bone and flesh on its way out. It also burned away that accursed crystal, however.

The cero was especially wide. Levi knew he couldn’t aim from his shoulder very well, but his aim didn’t have to be perfect when an energy blast the size of a train was tearing through space to reach his enemy.

WC: 719
TWC: 4,997