On the other side of the battlefield, Nelliel and Harribel had chosen the Second Tenkaikekchū as their arena.
Nelliel swept her long blade in a single stroke, deflecting the fireball Momo Hinamori had launched with Tobiume. In the same fluid motion, she thrust the sword forward—and stopped it less than a centimeter from Hinamori's throat.
The icy killing intent radiating from that tip snapped Hinamori out of the distraction Soifon's distant battle had caused. A full-body shiver ran through her, and cold sweat soaked through the back of her Shihakushō in an instant.
Hinamori's eyes drifted slowly downward, fixing on the razor-sharp blade pressed almost against her windpipe. Her breathing stuttered to a halt.
"You really shouldn't let your attention wander during a fight, Miss Shinigami."
Nelliel's voice was warm and gentle—a stark contrast to the cold, lethal blade in her hand.
"You..." Hinamori's lips moved. She wanted to ask why the woman had held back—but the words never made it out.
"HINAMORI—!!"
The furious shout detonated from the side. Tōshirō had seen Nelliel's blade tip pressed against Hinamori's vitals. Hyōrinmaru erupted with a ferocious surge of frost energy, and he threw himself at Nelliel without a second thought.
But a brilliant amber Cero materialized out of nowhere, stretching across his charge like a wall of light, cutting off both his path and his sightline.
"Your opponent is me." Harribel lowered her blade. "Don't worry about what's happening over there. Nelliel won't go for the kill."
After all, from the very beginning, both of them had agreed—they would not destroy the Tenkaikekchū.
Not that 'won't go for the kill' was something Tōshirō or anyone else was inclined to believe.
"Get out of my way!"
Tōshirō ground his teeth and swung his blade at Harribel. An ice dragon roared forward, frost-white and furious—and was obliterated in the very next moment.
"First Dance—White Moon."
Rukia appeared silently beneath Harribel, and with the tip of her blade as the focal point, a ring of pure white ice pillars erupted upward in an instant, sealing Harribel within.
At the same moment, Rangiku Matsumoto seized the opening in the chaos, slipping past Harribel's interference. She called Haineko forward and drove Nelliel back from the position where the Arrancar's blade had been leveled at Hinamori's throat.
Crack—
Fracture lines split through the enormous, crystalline ice pillar from the inside out. Then came a sharp, clean explosion—and Harribel stepped free of the frozen prison without a single scratch.
Another fierce exchange followed. By some mutual, unspoken agreement, both sides separated and fell back to a distance.
In only a few dozen rounds of fighting, the four Shinigami had accumulated wounds of varying severity, and their breathing had grown noticeably ragged.
Nelliel and Harribel, by contrast, remained perfectly composed. Neither had come close to exerting their full strength.
"Listen..." Nelliel spoke up, tilting her head slightly. "There's no need to be so tense. Why not relax a little?"
Harribel gave a small nod. "The two of us have no intention of destroying this pillar."
---
Elsewhere, Renji Abarai and Shūhei Hisagi were having a considerably worse time of it.
Byakuya Kuchiki had been tied up by a grotesque Arrancar who boasted the 'fastest Sonído'—which left the two of them with no choice but to hold the line alone against the slight, seemingly frail figure standing before them.
"Surrender. There is no point in resisting." Ulquiorra stood with both hands clasped behind his back. "I will spare your lives."
The answer he received was two flashes of steel—without a moment's hesitation.
"Roar—Zabimaru!"
"Reap—Kazeshini!"
The two came in from both flanks simultaneously. Kazeshini's chain struck first, coiling around Ulquiorra's body in an instant, binding his upper torso in a vice grip as the curved scythe bit deep into his white uniform.
At the same moment, Zabimaru's blade extended like a constricting python, winding around Ulquiorra as well. The massive segmented blade and the chain together swallowed his figure entirely.
The sharp bone-edges and curved blades ground against the steel-hard skin and fabric with a teeth-aching screech—as if everything caught between them would be shredded to pieces.
But that gut-churning sound lasted only a single, fleeting instant.
The next second, the color drained from Shūhei Hisagi's face. He felt an unstoppable, overwhelming force surge through from the other end of the chain—
At almost the same moment, every joint connecting Zabimaru's segments was forced apart simultaneously. The links snapped open one after another in a chain of sharp, rapid bursts—and the massive blade collapsed, section by section, uncontrolled, clattering to the ground.
A single slash had been cut across the chest of Ulquiorra's white uniform, exposing the pale skin beneath—and on that skin, a number in dark green ink: 4.
"Now do you understand," he said flatly. He had not drawn his blade. "The gap that exists between us."
"...Not yet."
The scattered segments of Zabimaru that lay strewn across the ground seemed to answer some invisible call. All of them rose at once, transforming into dozens of streaks of crimson light that came blasting inward toward Ulquiorra at the center.
Higa Zekkō—!!
Hmmm—
A deep, dread-inducing resonance tore through the smoke alongside a flash of dark-green light—hurtling toward the two of them at a speed that left no room to retreat, no room to advance.
"Dankū."
At the last possible moment, Byakuya Kuchiki's silhouette appeared at their side. A transparent wall of Spiritual Pressure materialized and intercepted Ulquiorra's Cero. In the same motion, Byakuya seized both of them by the back of their collars and flash-stepped them away.
Crack—
The Dankū barrier didn't hold long. The dark-green Cero punched through it without slowing and finally dissipated somewhere in the boundless sky beyond.
"It seems you've already dealt with Zommari," Ulquiorra said, retracting his index finger as he regarded the newly arrived Byakuya Kuchiki.
"So that one was called Zommari?" Byakuya stepped forward, expression impassive as ever. "I finished him too quickly to think to ask his name."
"Regardless—he was a member of the Espada."
Ulquiorra activated Sonído, appearing behind Byakuya in an instant. His hand drove forward like a blade—and pierced straight through the white Captain's Haori.
Utsusemi.
Like a matryoshka doll reversed, Byakuya appeared behind Ulquiorra in the same breath, driving his blade through the Arrancar's steel skin in a single clean thrust—running him completely through.
The blade drew back slowly. All three of them expected victory to be within reach—until they saw the wound in Ulquiorra's side, still seeping blood, begin to knit itself back together before their eyes.
"I see. A Captain-level opponent."
"I cannot allow you to obstruct Lord Aizen's plans..."
"Despair, Shinigami."
Ulquiorra pressed a hand to the freshly-healed puncture in his abdomen. His Spiritual Pressure began to surge violently. Above them, the sky split open with a downpour of black, ominous rain—a pressure so immense it was like the weight of an entire ocean pressing down from overhead.
Dark-green light consumed him entirely. After a moment, the radiance faded. The surging Spiritual Pressure began to stabilize—and the form that despair had taken stood revealed before them.
As any rule of fiction would have it: whoever transforms first is always the one who ends up eating dirt.
"This is the new power Lord Aizen has bestowed upon me..." Ulquiorra curled his right hand into a loose grip. A spear of pure lightning took shape in an instant. "Feel despair..."
Byakuya's pupils contracted sharply. With no time to consider, he activated Shikai without hesitation.
A torrent of swirling pink blades converged in a single surging wave to meet the lightning spear head-on—
The scattering cherry blossom petals dispersed helplessly. The green lance punched through Byakuya's Bankai without the slightest resistance, deflecting just enough at the last moment to drive the explosion away from the Tenkaikekchū.
Within the flash of the blast, Byakuya was sent flying backward and crashed hard into the ground below. He did not rise again.
Ulquiorra Sonído'd to Byakuya's side. The tail wreathed in green flame coiled once around his neck—and then hoisted him into the air.
"Higa Zekkō—!!"
A furious roar rang out. Renji Abarai had completed his Bankai at some point during the chaos. The serpent's head opened its massive jaws, and a blazing crimson cannon blast swallowed Ulquiorra whole.
"Meaningless."
The red light faded. Ulquiorra stood with his left hand loosely raised, wisps of white smoke still curling from his palm. His body was completely unharmed.
Then he lifted that hand—five fingers pressed together—and leveled it at Byakuya Kuchiki's chest.
From a distance, both Soifon and the Captain-Commander had been watching this engagement unfold. Both of them now wore matching frowns, each privately weighing whether to intervene and pull Byakuya back from the brink.
Soifon had just made to move—when she paused. One eyebrow arched upward. With genuine curiosity, she watched what happened next.
A black sphere materialized in midair above the battlefield, seemingly conjured from nothing. From within it, countless pitch-black chains shot outward and coiled around Ulquiorra's body, binding him completely.
"Bankai—"
"Kazeshini Musō."
Shūhei Hisagi hauled himself upright, breathing hard. Wrapped around his own body were the same Kazeshini chains that now bound Ulquiorra.
He looked up at the enormous sphere hanging above both of them, then turned his gaze to Ulquiorra. His voice carried a note of something close to reverence.
"What an extraordinary amount of Spiritual Pressure... So this is what we were fighting all along."
Thud—
Byakuya's body dropped back to the ground. Ulquiorra, for the first time, found himself facing something his knowledge and comprehension simply could not account for.
His Spiritual Pressure was draining. Rapidly.
"What have you done?!"
Before the words were even out, he flickered—appearing directly in front of Hisagi. His hand drove forward like a blade and punched clean through Hisagi's chest.
He pulled his arm free. Blood poured freely from the wound.
Hisagi looked down at the hole in his own chest and cracked a pained grin. "...That really hurts."
For the first time, an expression that could genuinely be called surprise crossed Ulquiorra's otherwise blank face.
Before his eyes, the massive, gaping wound through Hisagi's chest—one that should have been fatal—was visibly writhing, sealing itself shut at a rate too fast to be natural.
And at the same time, Ulquiorra could feel it with terrible clarity: his own Spiritual Pressure was hemorrhaging from within him at a horrifying speed.
Like a dam with its gates blown open.
On reflex, Ulquiorra slashed the chains connecting them—but in the very next moment, they came coiling back, binding him again, indifferent to whatever distance his Sonído carried him.
"What... what did you do?!"
The cold composure had left his voice entirely.
Hisagi straightened up. He brushed a hand lightly over the freshly-healed wound on his chest and said nothing.
Explaining your own ability in the middle of a fight was a bad habit.
The next second, Ulquiorra's Sonído fired. He appeared behind Hisagi in a heartbeat, his hand-blade striking with the precision of the sharpest edge—severing Hisagi's cervical vertebrae with perfect accuracy.
Fall. Heal. Rise again.
This was an attrition war of the most grotesque kind.
One side kept delivering wounds that should have been fatal. The other kept coming back to life—at the cost of both their Spiritual Pressures bleeding out in perfect synchrony, at terrifying speed.
In the end, Ulquiorra could no longer even sustain the Hōgyoku-empowered released state. He reverted to his base humanoid form. Hisagi, needless to say, had been on the receiving end of punishment the entire time.
Both of their Spiritual Pressures had been ground down to their absolute floor—like a candle guttering in a gale, not enough left to maintain even the bare minimum of combat capability.
"You wanted to know what I did?"
Hisagi lay spread flat on the ground, face-down like a carpet. With great effort, he lifted his head, resting his chin on the earth, and opened his eyes to look at Ulquiorra not far away.
"The ability of Kazeshini Musō—it links our Spiritual Pressures together. No matter how grievous the wound either of us receives, it will be healed by our shared Reiatsu... until there's nothing left."
"From the moment those chains wrapped around you—our ending was already decided."
As the words fell, the chain-sphere floating in the sky seemed to sense that both of them had reached their limit. It came apart all at once with a quiet, final collapse.
"Move, Renji." Hisagi turned his gaze toward Renji, the only one of them who still had any fight left. "We can't move anymore. Kill him."
____
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