What Do You Fight For?[Hannah, Solomon]

His expectations were defied instantaneously. An attack that swept by him retroactively reoriented itself, striking him directly in his back. Two bolts thought to be avoided by the skin of his teeth now earned purchase against his body, sending him flying a few meters forward onto the ground.

The impact of the attack was fierce enough that it threatened to subdue him right then and there, but stubbornly did he rise. An entire sequence of attacks had been compromised, but there was no use reflecting on it now, lest he suffer another attack. Uncertainty settled in, but this too, found itself rendered ineffective within his mind.

Logic no longer held precedence here. He wished to know something, wished to understand her purpose, what drove her to reach the echelon of masters. Work ethic? He drove himself to the bone. Mentality? He was uncertain? Willpower? Well, that was being tested here and now, and in his eyes, he still stood valiantly, in spite of how much she clearly overwhelmed him.

Gripping his sword, he slammed his foot forward, grinding his blade against the ground, sparking a circular arc of electrified reishi in preparation for a wide-ranging slash of energy. His body was faltering. Physically speaking, his legs were weakening, but he propelled himself through Hirenkyaku, aiming to reach her.

"If you won't tell me why your so strong, then... what drives you!? In spite of it all, you... Ghk!" Coughing roughly, he couldn't finish his train of thought. He was working his body to its limit, casting everything in favor of maintaining the adrenaline, an adrenaline that would therefore allow him to continue ignoring the injuries piling up on his body. Not yet. Not now. Keep going. Keep moving...

"Well, at least you are durable. I honestly thought you'd be dead by the time I cut you" Hannah would comment, idly playing with her hair. Watching him, she would see him grind his sword along the ground, and act in the same moment.

"Tsuzuri Raiden"

There would be a moment of confusion, as despite the incantation, there was no spell cast. No blast or energy, no billion knives from every direction to tear his flesh to pieces. That was, until an extremely potent lightning bolt silently shot across the ground and ran up his sword, to fry his body through the hand holding it. She really wasn't holding back, using all her power and all the creativity within that power to demolish the poor Quincy.

"Khgk... Kah... Haha... I'm not sure... if I should take that as a compliment when you put it like that..."

Solomon couldn't even register her praise about his durability. His aim was to ensure at least one of his attacks connected, to land a strike that would put her on the backfoot. Of course, his intentions were ruthlessly snuffed out as his electrical arc of reishi was snuffed out by a far more superior column of lightning, trailing forward through his arm to callously fry his body.

The stroke of lightning rendered him immobile, drawing out a pained grimace in his expression as he fell to his knees. The blood wasn't subsiding, the coughing grew worse... and yet he still persisted, as if the idea of death did not frighten him.

For all his bravado, however, he was clearly out of his depth, and it was showing with each sequence in this battle. Utilizing Blut, he forced his body to rise, but to ask him to attack so swiftly after receiving such a withering blow would have been cruel. His sword held shakily at his side, he stumbled forward with an unsteady gaze. To him, if he couldn't invoke a paradigm shift in the way he approached battle, in the way he faced his enemies, then he didn't deserve to live. He was well aware of the predicament he put himself in. To cry foul now would be quite unbecoming.

This sounded so much easier in her head. She killed him, he died, she brought him back to life. And it went on like that, speedrunning years of experience in a few hours. And yet, it was not going like that at all. He was just, still upright. With her reiatsu potency and Shadowcasting, she had barely tapped into the surface of what she could do, so she had a lot of longevity left for this fight. But he was just, a shuffling punching bag.

"Not entirely a bad style when you can match your foe" Hannah muttered, grasping her sword and channeling energy into it. She inhaled for a moment, coating the blade with a formidable edge, and preparing for it to be fired. It was a little trick she had picked up after mastering Shadowcasting's training style. She called it;

"Piercing Heaven!"

Overwhelmed within that wide-ranging arc of energy, Solomon felt a morbid reflection taking root within his mind, as though recalling a memory that had been forced away from the forefront of his mind. That bastard of an Arrancar - the one who nearly destroyed everything. Ichigo Kurosaki. That could not be. He wasn't fighting him. He was fighting Hannah. Was he... fighting Hannah? What was going on now? His physical body was inert, convulsing as it bountifully spurted blood from receiving the full strike of her piercing heaven.

It was now that, for all of his ability to rise up, he found that he could not in fact rise at all right now. Solomon's sword was properly shattered again, and though his hand attempt to rise up to grab and reform it, his hand felt numb. His mind was fading quickly, and his gaze never left the apparition formed before his eyes. A menacing apparition of a man that mocked him. Proving inferior even to the end... had that been all his life amounted to? A foolish man with foolish ambitions? One had to wonder... if at all really mattered in the end. His desire to ensure the safety of those around him... was this what it was worth in the end? To die alone with no one around him? Hahaha... a cruel comedy, surely. Slowly, ever so slowly, he choked out one word to offer his opinion on it at all.

"Pa...thetic..."

And then his eyes closed. Silence accompanied the closing of his eyes. And his body simply ceased all movement.

There he went. It was more work than she was expecting, honestly. The last time she killed someone, they just died. Though, to be fair she wasn't tying to kill him exactly, just hit him till he was basically dead. There was a difference, after all. Exhaling gently, she'd release her Shikai for the extra grunt, and then use her Shadow Sutures to stitch him up.

Even after a person lost consciousness and was walking down the hall to death, there were a few minutes before they truly completely died for good. And so she would sit down, and hold her hands over his body, recovering him with her Kaido. She used Kaido rather than Gen-Kido so she could make sure that she was precise and forthright about it, rather than trusting too much on a power that had not been tested much on a near-dead person.

"Huuahhhhhhh...!"

Azure eyes shot wide open. Like an animated puppet that recognized its existence, Solomon's arms began to resume all movement and the extremities, once diminished of their activity, convulsed until they settled down. It was as if his body had been drowned in darkness only to be presented with light again. It was all so insufferably jarring. Turning his gaze upward at Hannah, Solomon gazed at the woman tending to his wounds. Did he actually die? What a frightening outcome. For a moment, he simply stood there staring at her.... speechless to the sequence of events that occurred just now.

"What happened...? Did I faint?"

Hannah would move out of the way of flailing limbs. Not the first time she had to deal with post-wound convulsions, so she was good with them. Once he was all fixed, she would seal her Zanpaktou back into it's sword state, and stand up, returning to her position.

"No. You died" Hannah would reply, strict and to the point. And then she would turn back to him. "Why do you fight, Solomon? You are not a fighter, you are a man in a fight. You have no tactics, no talent, no tricks. You just plough forward and hope. This is nothing more than the noise before defeat, the slowest route of suicide. Is there truly no other role in society you can take but this?"

"..."

Solomon rose up from the ground, assuming a seating position to get full glimpse of the woman's back. Crossing his legs, he slowly stretched his hands outward. The thought of death was frightening yet fleeting at the same time. Sudden. Everything was a blur and then it all faded to black. Even so, Solomon didn't necessarily agree with the woman's words, at least not inwardly so. He had emerged victorious in combat in the past, but he had never truly knew what it felt like to face opponents beyond his own category of strength. Those who were truly strong. Shaking his head softly, he placed a hand towards the ground.

"Of course there is. I have enough wealth that I could devote most of my efforts to funding donations and relief programs for those born into less fortunate circumstances in the world. I have a family I could return to and settle down with a woman of their choosing instead of my own. There are multiple roles in society I could take, but then..."

Solomon clenched his fist as his azure gaze radiated with the stubborn determination that had carried him this far.

"I realize that none of them would bring me any closure if I turned back now. People risked their lives so that I could live. I died just now, but in truth, I should have died a long time ago. That battle with Ichigo should have been my permanent grave, but people were constantly risking their lives to ensure others lived on that hellish battlefield. Maybe I don't have talent. Maybe I don't have tactics. Maybe I'm in over my head. I won't lash out with some foolish response and act as if you are in the wrong here. Even so..."

Solomon rose up from the ground, reishi slowly pooling between the gaps in his fingers.

"For the sake of those people, for the sake of those who believe in me, I want to learn. I want to reach that precipice. If I were truly a lost cause, that is where I would finally step away from the battlefield, but I don't. And I refuse to step away now."

"And what of the people who care for you, Solomon?" Hannah would ask, cocking her head softly. "There are those born for the battlefield. Your Captain Zaraki, your Mayor Auber and your King Hayden. Beings of violence, and fury, those who have mastered the art of murder so as to use it as it is needed in place of those who can not"

And then there are those who can simply fight. Urahara, myself, and you. Those who have powers but are not designed to be in the frontlines of every fight with teeth bared. You fight against who you are and upset those who truly care about you, for what sake?"

Hannah would cock her head for a moment, let him think, and then raise her sword, creating a kido at the tip of it.

'Sure, just use experimental Kido that has never been tested' Daisy muttered with a grumble.
'What's the worst that can happen, I kill him?' Hannah replied with a coy tone.
'You can't regenerate him from vapor, Hannah'
'That, is Absolutely Debateable'

"Hadō Musū" She would speak, drawing in ambient reishi into this black hole. The name - Innumerable - did not bode well in a system that had higher numbers for bigger booms. "Atomic"

Releasing the Reishi in one smooth sword flick, she would create a massive explosion of force within the barrier, ricochetting and reverberating to blast again and again, savaging everything inside the barrier. Hannah herself redirected the explosion that was going to hit her with her Anima Mea, meeting Force with Force. But Solomon....Hmm.