A heroes purpose [Shio,Steiner]

The young man's eyes went wide as he realized the shinigami was struggling and at that very moment he realized that he had just put himself in as a distraction to nothing. He tensed up visibly, his whole body telling him that if he even moved an inch closer toward the fight that was going on that he would be put down like a dog, and that he needed to be careful now that he was out in the open standing before a being that had not only overpowered a shinigami, but had absorbed the Quincy's shots like they were nothing. For a few seconds all Steiner could think of was running, but something kept him from doing so. Was it a shallow sense of pride that had overcome Steiner's own survival instincts telling him to run away? Was it a foolish belief that maybe this was just how things were meant to be, with him staring down the maw of a beast that could swallow him whole if it wanted to? No, it was simply Steiner's Heroic Aspirations. To be a hero you had to do the dirty work, you had to stare death in the face and spit in it, and right now Steiner, as powerless as he was, was not going to allow some Hollow to get the best of him.

Staring at the helpless shinigami and seeing the pain on his face as the creature's acid began to cause internal damage and external damage, Steiner knew he had to do something. He had to stop this madness before it escalated any further, before anyone else got hurt by this mad beast standing before him looking to do nothing, but kill and eat. He clenched the hand which held the sword he had borrowed for this battle, took a deep breath, and began to assess his options. In truth he had set himself up for failure by appearing before the large Hollow who had a great deal of weapons at its' disposal instead of going for a quick sneak attack to level the playing field. But now he was just standing there in plain view looking at this thing with no way to defend himself if he decided to go in. Sure, he had a sword, but one sword could only protect from so many angles, and he doubted that his reflexes would help him defeat something like this. Especially if a Shinigami who could use shunpo had been caught in this creatures trap.


Yet with every passing second that Steiner stood there evaluating his plan of attack he knew the Shinigami was losing blood and even more so the will to live was leaving the shinigami. He had to act and he had to do it soon, any more waiting around, and more than likely there would be nothing left, but a pile of corpses on this street where the three of them had once stood. Right before Steiner was about to move in he heard the yelling of the female Quincy, causing him to look up as she flung the sword at him. For a second, Steiner thought that maybe the Quincy was trying to attack him, and kill him dead for some reason or another, but as he realized what was going on Steiner reached for the blade. He would catch it by its' handle and experimentally swing it around as he did so, testing its' weight, and its' length to make sure that the blade's full potential could be used.

For a moment, Steiner closed his eyes and began to drown out all the surrounding noise, and allowing only his heartbeat's steady beating to be the only thing he heard. After a few seconds of this, Steiner opened his eyes which were now no longer blue, but the color purple, and then charged forward toward the creature. It seemed as though Steiner was possessed as the Hollow's natural instincts began to take control, it lashing out with its' tentacles trying to hungrily assault the young hero of honor. However, Steiner's reflexes seemed faster than before, and he felt lighter as well as his arms, seemed to by instinct, come down with quick blows using the swords to cut through the hollow's weapons. The beast screamed, releasing black blood over Steiner's body as it did so, but Steiner was dead-set on cutting his way to the shinigami, all other things were fundamentally shoved to the back of his mind in favor of pure swordplay, true swordsmanship.

If one were watching from the outside of the blood bath, one would assume that the young man cutting his way through the Hollow's tendrils had powers of some sort with how he was performing, but there were no powers here. This was just natural, the fruit of years of dedication to honing the athletics and skills necessary to perform these actions with fluidity and precision. Tentacles would occasionally hit Steiner, glancing blows that left acidic slime on Steiner's body burning into his flesh with a sizzle, and causing steam to rise from his body, but Steiner wouldn't be denied. He would not allow the shinigami to die. Steiner was consumed with swordplay, he was his sword, his sword was him, and as he did so the hollow had no answer for a man who was totally in tune with himself. Steiner, for all the damage he was doing to the Hollow, however was taking a great deal of punishment himself, tentacles slashing through flesh, and burning him with acid at multiple terms. If Steiner wasn't in a trance, he would have felt it, and he would have more than likely backed down, but Steiner was his sword and his sword was not done purging the filth from in front of him.

After a while, Steiner bloodied and battered, arrived at his destination covered in the blood of the Hollow his eyes glazed over, and his mind blank from this unknown experience. Without a moment's hesitation he jumped up from a pile of dead tentacles deteriorating into nothing and slashed through the tentacles holding the shinigami in place. In that moment, Steiner just fell, and landed hard on the ground face first with a loud "thump". He was in the kill zone, but his body had given out on him and his eyes faded back to blue as he lay there unable to move, his muscles tired beyond anything he had ever felt in his life. The Hollow, enraged by the young man's assault turned to look at the fallen hero, and began to reach out with one of its' clawed feet to smash Steiner then and there. "Smile you son of a bitch...", Steiner said quoting the sheriff from the classic movie from so long ago.