If You Want to See Some Action [Open]

In the back of Ichigo's mind, there was a faint thought that he genuinely respected the effort in saving one's allies rather than simply striking back. Did it give him any pause? No, not really. But he already wasn't in any particular place to keep fighting against someone who was finished on the battlefield, and his attention naturally turned to the next issue at hand.

More people showing up, and they were only getting more irritating. Ichigo wasn't especially surprised by that, but he still felt no small degree of annoyance that these idiots had felt the need to start a fight with him. If they'd just gotten out of the way, this wouldn't have gotten to this point. But he was trying now, and his attention wasn't even on the blonde one who'd showed up and started working to save lives. Shikai, here? It wasn't Ichigo's problem right now. There was a much more immediate threat in front of him.

The moment he saw the woman throwing seele schneider toward him, he'd already begun to move. She clearly wasn't remotely prepared to match him in any capacity, and that was just fine for him. He was well past pity. Sonido not only masked his step, granted him all the more speed, but now he made one more gambit that he doubted this girl was nearly fast enough to catch onto:

An afterimage, looking for all the world like it had been caught in her spell.

The moment he reappeared, right in front of her, Ichigo reached out, his hand gripping her by the skull and lifting her as if she scarcely weighed more than a few sheets of paper. And then he threw the girl, the muscles in his arm tensing as he tossed her with no small amount of force further away from the fight. Throwing her right toward her comrade would have made things more difficult, after all. If the blonde man wanted to save his ally, he'd have to come right by Ichigo.

And Ichigo, naturally, was all too ready to swing with his blade, still wreathed in the blood-red energy of a waiting Getsuga Tenshou.

What exactly was happening? Sophie felt a moment of surprise when it looked like it had worked, she had not expected the monster to be so willing to remain still like he had for the previous combatants and then she realised the error in that thinking when the tremendous spiritually pressure bore down on her and she felt like her heart was in a vice. No breath escaped from her lips or brought much needed air into her lungs, she could barely move in his presence and the claw-like hand wrapping around her skull felt like it could crush it without much effort.

Shit.

Thrown to the wayside like a rag doll and towards the buildings which she barely had time to respond for. It was only when she had flew a few metres away and her heart started beating again that she could focus her reiryoku and sacrifice her own reserves to cast a Wolke to dim the impact.

She still went through the wall though at such a speed and coughed blood from the impact. Her bones broke and her organs felt like they had been damaged in different spots. Not that she could make an assessment of it though since there wasn't any hope of her being conscious amongst the rubble of the building and various crush injuries.

Frankly, it was entirely reasonable that she could be dead as far as anyone could tell based on the force that a person who was barely above a regular human's durability.

It would have been one thing had the blinding light simply been a matter of optics, but even pesquisa was barely helpful given the spiritual nature of the technique. For a very brief moment, Ichigo was prepared to unleash a great deal of reiatsu simply to push this light away. But it seemed he wouldn't even need to, as the opponent had come right toward him. The slash wasn't anything to sneeze at, but Ichigo's hierro was enough to prevent the injury from being too severe. The kick, however, had been much easier for Ichigo to match, and the nature of the impact made it fairly easy to discern where his opponent been going.

"Gran Rey..."

Reaching up to cut his hand open on his unbroken horn, Ichigo raised the sword that had already been covered in a Getsuga Tenshou, taking it firmly and tensing all of his muscles with such power that a shockwave echoed around him. But the crimson spiritual energy that had coalesced slowly took on a new color, blood red shifting to violet as it became more raw, unrestrained.

"Getsuga Tenshou!"

His blade swung sideways, the violent purple arc all at once erupting from the edge of Zangetsu and directly toward the direction his opponent had kicked off. If he'd needed to aim, that might have been troublesome, but the sheer scale of this moon-shaped arc as it flew outward gave him ample room for error, knowing perfectly well the extreme devastation it could cause. It cut through the blinding light, but Ichigo was done simply standing around, idling about and letting the trash in this city come to him. He was on the offensive now, and he took a blindingly fast step in the very same direction he had thrown that attack, fully prepared to continue pressuring his opponent.

Whatever countermeasures these Quincy intended to take, he wasn't simply going to stand around and wait for them now.

When she had learned of the situation it made her heart pause. A name that was a relic of an era long lost was devestating everything she had worked tirelessly into Cyrus and furthering her goals of a return to halcyon days bygone where they were all just a group of friends smiling and living a normal life. Her only desire to create that lasting peace which was within their grasp and yet it turned to dust as quickly as it had showed the potential to grow into a flower.

For the first time in a century the woman that only existed by force of will after exhausting her soul by trying to undo and reject the breakdown of reality with her own power found a momentary weakness. Could she even bring herself to face this man?

No. And yet she still ran there. Casting off the guise of Seiran to get rid of the restrictions on her fullbring and discard the pathetic limp she'd become known for over the last years. She watched as they tried to fight and resist the overwhelming presence that faced them from afar. What could she do to stop him, should she stop him? Was that really Ichigo Kurosaki? It painted a familiar picture which twisted her gut to see him look like that.

After the noble sacrifices of the Vandenreich she found her resolve. Fight or not, win or lose. It was her responsibility to get in the way of whatever made him hurt all these people that had done nothing wrong. Even after all this time she couldn't muster the will to attack someone herself and hide behind her own will to help others. She could never be the executioner but she lived in denial of the fact she was the one that had indirectly dropped the axe over her time in the war and her rotting soul taking away more of her as time passed.

"Goten Zenshun!"

Five faeries assembled and no longer sealed inside of their spheres that formed Seiran. The large pentagonal shield appearing in front of her which made use of her healing and shielding technique, realistically it would've been more potent had she taken the Gran Rey Getsuga Tenshou herself but even from a ways behind Uriel the torrent of spiritual pressure was still massive.

The shield cracked under the impact despite her using all of her heart to stop it. Damage was rejected and converted into her power attached to Sōten Kisshun which would normally heal the person it was shielding but she had instead vented the effect around her through the edges and spread it over the immediate area to reject some of the effects of the attack. Some buildings and rubble had reformed into buildings - others which did not completely restore broke in places, individuals that were injuried around her healed just enough to be stabilised.

Still she fell to her knees after using Goten Zenshun. It'd been a long time since she'd used Shun Shun Rikka. It was like back then when she'd overexerted herself before and burnt herself out in the first place but she could never hope to ever replicate that error. She'd certainly die if she attempted that again. Her hands clenched into fists while she dealt with the turmoil of her emotions which had grown numb and atrophied after years of being alone and living with only memories and ghosts.

"Ichigo!"

There was a ghost right before her after all and she cried out to beg it to stop.

Ichigo could feel the energy he'd been moving toward coming closer. Was someone bringing him the Ring of the Dead? No, how would they even know what he'd come for? Someone just wearing it, then. He'd already begun readying another Gran Rey Cero to finish his most recent opponent. But as the smoke cleared, as he heard the voice ring out through the City of Lights, as he saw the world around him simply restructure itself and his attack's efforts become nearly nothing--

That was everything he had been chasing. His entire reason for coming here, for doing everything. It was right in front of him, and as he saw her there, he could do nothing but instinctively exit his resurreccion, the mask that had formed on his face crumbling away. He didn't want her to see him like this. But he couldn't leave, not when she was right there.

So he moved. He didn't care about anyone else in this city. He didn't care about fighting anymore. With one step, Ichigo moved past everything. The fallen buildings, his fallen opponent, none of that mattered half as much as simply getting to the woman that had driven him to this. He waved a hand, opening another garganta, and then grabbed her as if he would never let go.

"I'm sorry."

What else could he say? Nothing else would have been half as important. He took the woman he'd chosen to fight the world for, and he made to leave the City of Lights without another word.