Monochromia Descends [Act IV]

“… Wait, why’s the light bending over me-“

He didn’t exactly plan to be involved in Tentō’s Kyokkō like this. Ranma’s initial plan was to have Tentō hide himself, so that the former could play decoy and allow his partner to get up close and get a better hit on one of the Hollow’s more… vulnerable spots? It was still just a floating eyeball, so at the very least, Tentō could use this opportunity to aim better.

… But he had to be decoy, so Ranma had to exit the veil of bent light with a red vein symbol on his face. “I was supposed to stay in the open, but fuck me, I guess – just lemme-“ Ranma groaned, his own physical form flying out of the smoke cloud in an attempt to draw the Hollow’s attention, while allowing Tentō to set up whatever he was planning to shove into that creature’s eye socket (if it had any).

Now, how the plan went in his head was that the Hollow would try and shoot a thinner, linear blast of Reiatsu towards the smoke cloud, be surprised that only Ranma was present, Ranma would assault it from the visible plane and confuse the shit out of it, making it panic too much about that darkskin Shinigami, thus leaving itself too open for Ranma’s attacks, which would in turn leave it open for Tentō’s attacks- but all of that fell flat once it decided to just carpet bomb everything.

And in a rush, his first move was to shoot himself to the side in order to evade the blast, but seeing its expansion as if covering the entire damn sky above, red judgement befalling onto them-

“Bakudō #39, Enkōsen!” Ranma panicked, not having any time to usher the full incantation and pointing both hands forward to manifest a spinning disk of his own Reiatsu, a useful defensive spell but not one he expected to tank the full blast. And lo and behold, the heat of a Cero of that size and caliber was agonizing.

“TENTŌ! TENTŌ! TENTŌŌŌŌŌŌ! For fuck’s sake! I thought my plan was obvious!!!” he roared, his nigh-sole focus to uphold that Enkōsen to the best of his abilities. Ranma knew he lacked evasive finesse, so defensive Kidō owned many days, months and more of training and practice. The force from the blast, however, still sent his back crashing into the city ruins below, while he hoped for the best.

The veil of smoke and bended light seemed to have worked. Their location was distorted and unknown from the hollows actions. But it seemed both that, that fact would not matter, and there was a misunderstanding from Tento's end. With his feather set in place and incantation almost completed, Ranma busted out from the red smoke. And the elevation of the hollow, Tento felt that things were about to get a bit…pressed.

And so he shunpoed, using a burst of speed to greatly increase his distance from his previous position from below. Aiming to still use the bent light to hide his energy and movement as he appeared behind the eye as it charged its Cero. And upon releasing his kido spell while the hollow shot loose its widening cero that threatened to evoke the lower sky in a red Mars hue, Tento's voice would be heard as his blade moved, “Hadō #78, Zangerin!”.

A large and frightening condensed amount of energy would shoot out from Shiōmaru as Tento slashed from behind, steel and energy blasting out in an echo as a yellow spinning circular slash with enough power to easily destroy a building, would hopefully, crash into the Hollow’s back before threatening to push it further below. Crashing into the area the feather was placed. A wavering tornado gust of wind threatening to be unleashed around it if it stumbled into the placed trap.

While this hopefully happened. Tento let Shiōmaru come back into a twirl. His frame overhead, eyes bearing down at the hollow while mentally he tried to get a feel out for Ranma's spiritual energ. A moment of concern flashing across his face for his fellow Shinigami's state of being.

Gone, it had erased the unsightly scene below in its gaze. Though it would not be much soon after it had done this that the feeling of an empowered blade slicing over the carapace of its rear would draw its attention to the one which had eluded it. A deep gash had been left over the eyeball's back but much like attacks from the side the spherical armour endured the shinigami's blade.

It was the optimal moment to roll around and fire at Tentou but self-preservation kept its gaze towards the ground below. Its blood red eye glowed a brilliant pink before cero would emerge from its entire body to fire off wildly in all directions. Rather than expose itself to look at its attacker, it would just fire blindly in an attempt to shoo him away.

With distance it would have a better advantage with sniping the attacker.

Beneath dust, sand and remains of rubble… HE LIIIIIIIIIVES!!!!

Surprisingly, that was… his capabilities with Kidō were average at large, but his preference for Bakudō shone through. Still, his fingers were reddened, and the front of his Shihakushō was burned away, while still smoking burns appeared on his chest. He quickly shook the smoke off and looked up, tightening the grip on Hōkamaru as Tentō’s slash hadn’t been able to hit its soft spot again.

Aw, to hell with distractions…

The Hollow seemed to agree as it began firing off Ceros in all directions, as if tired of being snuck up on by the two Shinigami. An all-out attack like that was perilous to try and evade, but Ranma initially planned for the eye creature to have its attention on him… right now, it just tried to push both away from it. That wouldn’t do!

He got back up on his feet again, shooting through the debris in an attempt to close the distance between him and the Hollow once more. His shin, his abdomen, his upper arm, his cheek, at many times did he feel the burning pain of the multiple Ceros fired off, incapable of evading all as he kept feeling a sour pain in his stomach from multiple uses of Shunpo in such a short succession. While not as impactful as its previous Cero, each of these random blasts collectively harmed him more, and his clumsy Shunpo evasions only allowed him to stay on his feet as he got closer to it.

N-Not yet… man, fuck this, can’t you act up a little faster, Hōkamaru? My head, my stomach, my legs, everything’s burning…

Being forced to rely on his least reliable competence in Zankensoki meant that he couldn’t aid Tentō right now. He was too busy tanking some partial hits from Ceros, for Shunpo could only take him so far - at least, the Hollow didn't focus on him when it shot so randomly, but it also backfired as its target areas were unpredictable. Just give him, like, one moment more… just one…

The ebony warrior's brow scowled ever so slightly at the sight of the deep gash on the Hollow’s rear carapace armor. Damaged but still enduring all the same, but not slowed down one bit it seemed in the afterglow of Tento's attack from below.

In a burst of glow more ceros would fire, wild rapid fire from all over the Hollow’s body. Shift movements to glide out of the way was Tento’s response as he used his speed and distance to begin evading. Internally he was starting to sweat with this Hollow’s reliance on cero attacks. At first it was easy, but it was growing harder and harder with how panicked and random they were coming. He had to back away. He wouldn't stop and play in the hollows hand though. Shiōmaru was great when it came to handling projectiles after all.

With gritted Tento in the middle of the blazing bridges of ceros. He focused. He couldn't let this hollow just keep doing this. Control on the flow of battle was one thing, but he was sure Ranma was having a harder time than he was due to the distance. He wouldn't let his fellow Shinigami get overwhelmed. With a spin, he took in a deep breath of air while lunging forward into the array of ceros. Letting Shiōmaru flash in a series of continuous slashes creating a torrent of wind in the shape of a horizontal cyclone as Tento made his way towards the hollow. Using his blade and energy with the combination of wind to knock away the energy attacks that he could and endure the pain of the ones that crashed against the incoming storm.

If he managed to make headway, Tenro would snap and vanish the moment he came out of the cycle of wind. Using a flash step to appear right on the hollow to unleash a rapid rain of slashes aimed at targeting the deep wound made. In the middle of his relentless strikes a course of wind would boom from Shiōmaru's sickle. A vacuum surrounded it as it sucked out the air around the hollow in a hopeful attempt to stagger and halt its attack.

“RANMA!!”.

It had successfully blitzed the area but the surprise of the dark one enroaching on it once more caused the hollow to spin towards Tento with its glowing eye. The translucent membrane shielding the fiery inside of it - it was ready to erase the dirty shinigami that was caught in its sights.

A poor judgement though. Its quarry was faster than anticipated and less damaged than it should've been for enduring the laser show. It had paid for receiving a large slash across the membrane of its eye and the hollow reeled back with an awful sound piercing the skies. An agonising wound that made it roll back around to face away and blindly try to launch itself at Tento as if it were a cannonball with its protective caraparce.

*DONK!*

Ranma used to fall face first into the floor back at the Shin’o Academy when he was practicing Hohō. In his humble opinion, many of those lessons felt so unbelievably jarring – he really only gave the proctors his full attention when it came to Zanjutsu or Kidō. All the Shunpo demonstrations, though? They all resulted in…

*DONK!*

*BONK!*

*SLAP!*

His face, reddened and bruised, intimately squashed against a flat surface. It couldn’t be stressed enough that he really only touched the bare minimum required to graduate the Academy when it came to Hohō. And due to not wanting to flatten his nose even further, he had been rather hesitant to even make use of Hohō at first… until life kept telling him how essential it was.

Hollows could swipe across the air at supersonic speeds. Braindead Armina, herself, didn’t hold back when she was obviously struggling with that skill as much as he was. And super-fast fuckheads were omnipresent… I mean, just look at the sentient eyeball there! He really shouldn’t have been struggling as much with keeping up with it…

Noharu, you sssssssssexy motherfucker. You might have thought it a quick jab at Shura back then, but that term… a 4 out of 4 Shinigami… perhaps Ranma ought to actually take it more seriously now. It was easier said than done at this instant, however, since he was being gunned down by blind-aiming Ceros, but he was still happy that he tormented his breakfast and lunch still stirring within his belly to push his Shunpo this far. Even with the bloody wounds he had to explain to Erica later…

… A loud shriek suddenly emitted from the Hollow, and Ranma’s focus returned to Tentō’s achievement – he managed to cut it in the eye! “A-At fucking last! Bullseye!” he jubilated, closely watching the Hollow turn around in wringing pain… see? Stupid Hollow design – Ranma knew all along that being a floating eye was a combative fumble.

Right on time, Hōkamaru!

Right when it charged at Tentō… a deep-blue saturation spread out from Ranma’s Zanpakutō, a few feet from the sword itself before he swung it forward. Just as before, a blue wave of Reiatsu in the form of an arc shot towards the Hollow’s front, intent to trap it within a cage of slowed time once more.

Technique used:

Tento's call out to his alley gave him pause after the first wound was given. Instead of the hollow finding himself stunned as the sound of an ear piercing shriek filled the battlefields air. The torrent of wind surrounding the hollow dying down to a mere mouse's squeak in comparison seemingly having no effect. Strange and strange the anatomy of this hollow was a pain to deal with. Its physical shell as a shield, its pure physical speed, the reliance of ceros coming out of its weak spot, and now the sudden factor finding that it did not need oxygen. He was banking on to take the air out of its sails for Ranma to get out of hot water.

But it was only him that was gonna get put in the sauna!

The eye Hollow’s body turned away before bursting forward like a rocket. It's hard shell carapace an artillery. Stopping the twirl of Shiōmaru within Tento's hand as the ebony Shinigami brought his arms up in a forearm guard, swinging the reaping sickle blade clashing with a quake as Tento felt his body slide as being pushed back. With a grimace Tento tightened the grip on his blade and tried his best to force the hollow back. The veins on his arms beginning to grow and pump blood through his being as he gritted his teeth in an attempt to halt any further movement.

In the middle of this Tento saw a form of color. Ranma came into view with a deep blue saturation to his blade. With a deep breath and thinking quickly, Tento braced himself to shift his right arm, allowing the shell of the hollow to slam into his chest and ribs giving an ache to his body straight to his core. With a flick of his wrist he swung Shiōmaru, hoping to wrap its length around the hollows body as an anchor as he settled himself down after being flown back. Hoping to allow Ranma to land whatever he was planning to land.

It had successfully launched itself into the offender that had dazed the hollow. The large cut along its eye making it unable to see clearly, which had left it blinded and vulnerable. The chains of Shioumaru coiled around its spherical shape to leave it suspended in its position and unable to move or roll. Even if it could see the oncoming wave of blue that suspended it in slowmotion the hollow had no perception of how fast the shinigami could be moving relative to it now.

Spent of its energy, this would be the ideal time to try and flee but there was no way to navigate or evade to escape. So it struggled as it looked towards the shape of Ranma with its damaged eye staring down the shinigami seeing a requiem frame by frame.

Tentō didn’t dodge. Ranma had expected him to dodge out of the way, but he didn’t. Instead, he got hit pretty hard, though he used his arms as a shield for a moment – either way, his Yone landed on the target, so Ranma had done his part. Now, Tentō just had to fin-

…

F U C K!

Tentō was hit straight in the chest after Ranma finished blinking twice, his Zanpakutō swirling around the Hollow to chain it down. DOES THIS FUCKER NOT KNOW WHAT SETUPS ARE- you know what, you know what, it’s alright… it’s alright, it doesn’t bother me, it’s all cool… Ranma calmed himself down before violently making use of Yone’s properties to slice at the Hollow’s slowmotion-chained, actually-chained, vulnerable and already injured eyesocket.

And he sliced again… and again… and again, again, once more, and like a million times more. Whether Hōkamaru’s ability slowed down the Hollow’s perception of time too or not – which, honestly, was still up in the air, victims rarely voiced what it felt like – Ranma was slicing into its eyesocket ravenously, until his form almost caved into the damn Hollow itself- and he didn’t stop! He had a few things to unwind, and his slicing dicing sword almost worked like a shovel at this rate!

“I TOOOOOOOOLD YA! TERRIBLE CHARACTER DESIGN – TRY AGAIN BACK IN THE SOUL SOCIETY!!!”

Clenching his free hand into an iron fist, he found it refreshing to land a last, super-powered punch – a Super Spirit Punch, if you could call it that – to try and shatter a hole through the soon-to-be husk of a Hollow with the expulsion of force through his temper tantrum of a punch.