Day 4 ☀ Digging through my own muscles for a clue

[savior_n_black]

Who: Ichigo ( savior_n_black ), Shiro ( holeheart ), Rukia snowwhitesoul ) AND POSSIBLY MORE LATER?
What: Ichigo, and Shiro's powers finally force them to merge back into a single soul.
When: Day 4, early
Where: Middle of the city
Warnings: Language, violence, minor body horror?

Comments

[holeheart]

I'm going as fast as I can!

The Hollow is feeling the effects, even if he's not showing them. Ichigo's soul, calling out to him, begging him to come home. Through his gorging, and their synchronization, Shiro could easily maintain his larger Hollow form, and he was running on all fours after Ichigo. It probably also spoke volumes that Shiro was conscious, and capable of rational thought while still in this form. Normally, instinct was his only driving force. But thanks to that chain, slowly becoming more and more solid, he found that his human mind was closer than it should have been. Or was it Ichigo's human mind? It was getting hard to tell. His appearance also reflecting their drawing together; his long white mane had streaks of tangerine, and the fur ruffs around his neck, ankles, wrists and on his back were no longer solid black. No indeed, each hair was now crimson red, fading to black at the end of the shaft. But neither commented on the physical changes in the other. It was up for debate if they even noticed.

Yer goin' the

[snowwhitesoul]

The past few days had been a long, hellish slog through nightmares and blood and pain. It seemed that for as many that were saved, so many more perished. They would be back, they would all come back, but it didn't diminish the horror, the acute, instinctual, gut-deep reaction of seeing sentient lives snuffed out as easily as candleflame. The ones that could fight, could resist? Even they were falling, one by one, to the nightmares.

They were cattle in this place. Only capable of resisting the immediate threat, but not stopping it. How long would this last? Till they were all dead?

Shirafune!The spider gave out a horrific skree of pain and began to trash and twist on its web as the tip of Sode no Shirayuki reformed right in the lobe of its brain and sprouted upwards, homing back towards the fractured white blade and rejoining it to make the sword whole again. The fangs, as long as her forearm and better, twitch and stab out, fat drops of venom splashing uselessly on the spindly spider silk around them. The predator turned victim

[savior_n_black]

Ichigo caught sight of that shimmering ice-web first. He could sense Rukia; her reiatsu was taxed, but not too badly, just worn out. And as he used another jump of shunpo to make it to a street lamp festooned with spider web only a few yards away, he didn't even have time to call out to Rukia before another of those massive arachnids was using the gap between the buildings to creep it's way in on Rukia from above.

With a wordless yell, Ichigo was rushing through the air at the stalking spider, sword igniting...and chain igniting. The chain from his chest to Shiro's suddenly flared to being fully visible. The spider shrieked at him, and used the front pair of it's legs to bat at him, and strike swiftly to stall his sword's headlong dive for it's face. Baring his teeth, Ichigo countered with a swipe of sword, once again unconsciously calling his hollow mask into place just as the spider dove to try and sink venomous fangs into Ichigo's chest.

[holeheart]

Shiro helps Ichigo get closer, throwing him into his Shunpo with a toss of his head.

RUKIA!

Eerily enough, the cry came in both voices, at once. Shiro could feel himself disappearing, vanishing into nothingness. No... not nothingness. Back to his real home, back to being one with Ichigo. If he weren't mid-panic, he'd probably be resisting this as much as possible. But no. This felt right. It was what their bodies had been crying out for. The large Hollow vanishes completely into energy, pouring into the chain and burning it up like a fuse until it reaches Ichigo's chest.

Then there's an explosion of energy, like the chain really was the fuse on a bomb. As if it were a typical Hollowfication, Shiro's reintegration causes white, thick goo to pour from his mouth and eyes, but it's not painful. Not this time. The mask formed when Ichigo called for it, but it was a different mask. More like a helmet, with two long horns. Claws on each finger, and red fur bursting from around his collarbone and wrists like flames. And where there were

[savior_n_black]

The darkness howled as it rose. A reverse-death rattle, and something white crawling over face, and hands; skin, and soul. Crawling, and obscuring those eyes, and yet the darkness saw. A nightmare howling it's way up from the pits of Hell, clawing itself into being with tongues of black fire burning chaotic ripples outward in wider circles - a slow motion explosion. Sifting, and billowing up, and around. Turning to solid, scintillating fingers that remade the two halves of the same soul into one.

Rebuilt from the heart up. From the mask down.

Muscle, and bone glowing with shadow, and the devil's forge fires. Sunfire bleeding into white hair until the two were indistinguishable. Behind a grinning death mask. A horned helm, with golden eyes. Raw power like millions of scintillating needles seething against each, and every single thing in it's immediate vicinity. But it wasn't just ambient reiatsu. It was the intent that sat within such a great, dark ocean. The burning needles were purposeful, focused even. In this case, focused on

[snowwhitesoul]

The weight of the bisected spider fell on top of the frozen cadaver of its mate, sending the web, both corpses, and the poor trees that were the pillars of support of the web tumbling down like a house of cards. It all crashes down to the forest floor with the groaning snap of wood and the visceral crack as the bulbous body of the frozen spider breaks open like a dropped watermelon.

Rukia, for the record, had seen the other spider coming. Or at least heard it. What she hadn't seen coming was the sudden scream of her name, the searing explosion of familiar reiatsu ripping through the air with such ferocity that the needle-fine, frozen hairs on the spider exploded under the pressure. Then the world was an centrifuge of screaming monster and falling then moving as if she'd been tossed about like a ragdoll. She keeps a death grip on Sode no Shirayuki as she tries to kick her legs to regain some bearing on what was going on around her. A splatter of gore hits the side of her face and hair and she gasps, revolted by the stench

[holeheart]

The body is theirs, both Ichigo and Shiro, together as one. A different sort of connection than even they had before. The Hollow wasn't stuck in the inner world. There were no sideways clouds and buildings. No, they were both looking out from those golden eyes, visible behind the mask. Superimposed, one on top of the other. Both aware, and separate... and yet completely re-integrated. When they moved, they moved as one, accessing slightly different centers of power.

A cool small hand on their mask gets Shiro's attention in particular, and the Transcendent creature looks down at Rukia. The eyes behind that mask are fearsome, powerful, but they see. They recognize and understand. This is not the same beast that reared its horned head on the beach, that day Shiro was torn free.

"Rukia...." The voice in her head was both Ichigo, and Shiro, speaking at once, "Stay here. This will be over in an instant.They set her down, carefully, tenderly on the ground, still keeping their reiatsu wrapped around her, protectively. Clawed hands barely

[savior_n_black]

The commotion, the heat, and most of all the energy rolling off the hollow ( human ) was so palpable that it was attracting more, and more spiders all around them. Some were so massive they could have easily felled, and eaten a horse on their own. Some the size of large dogs, and more still dangling from lines of spider silk as they lowered themselves from above what had once been the web of their mother, and her recent mate.
Hundreds of them, so many that the more they crowded close, the more the ground itself became a seething, skittering mass of legs, pincers, and hissing from the gathering of bloated arachnids.

Shiro ( Ichigo ) grinned beneath the mask, and standing over Rukia to make sure she was safely covered, Ichigo ( Shiro ) growled low, and feral.

Getsuga... TENSHOOU!!!

It wasn't even a single crescent that arced off the blade, it was two, no four! Because Ichigo ( Shiro ) was swinging the blade up, and over again in four separate strikes, but all moving so fast.
Behind us now! I leave those to you, Ichigo 'whispered

[snowwhitesoul]

The whole clutch. Of course they'd woken the whole damn clutch with the death of its matriarch. Thousands of tiny and huge spiders creeping out of the little caverns between the trees, under roots, and from the canopy of black leaves above them. They chittered loudly and angrily, the tiniest ones cluttering around the wreckage of the web and the dead parents, as if mourning the loss. The eldest creeping forward, raising their front arms and flexing massive mandibles at them in a threat display, taking aggressive charges towards them, only to be made into ashes by a swing of a black sword.

Against the clicking sussurus of the enraged arachnids, the layered, baritone voice calls out and swaths of searing black energy rippled out from them, burning and slicing all that came in its grasp. Trees fell with a languorous grind of wrenching timber, crushing some under the trunks. But so few, more clamoring over them to fill in the gaps, unheeding of how their brothers and sisters fell in droves.

We can't stay here forever, keep them busy!

[holeheart]

Right. I'm on it, aibou.

The spiders were pouring out of every crack, every crevice. Spiders ranging in size from small dogs to small cars. All of them angry, all of them dripping venom from their fangs and trailing web from their spinnerets. Of course, they had no idea what they were getting into. None at all. No spider could stand up to this creature. The smaller ones who get too close just keel over and die, unable to function under such extreme pressure. The larger ones are protected by their exoskeletons.

But then again, they weren't letting many of the spiders get close enough to notice.

Head lowered, Shiro took control, for a brief moment, as the Cero whined, gaining energy as it grew. It was slow, but brilliant, lighting up the area and giving them a real idea of just how many goddamn spiders there were. Red, and white energy swirled around in a globular, lava-lamp like way.

Pay attention, aibou. You might learn something.

Then, the merged creature opens his (their) mouth and lets out a silent roar heard only over the

[savior_n_black]

That cero was devastating. Oh, Ichigo had seen Shiro use cero before, but never quite like this. It felt like the hollow half was subtly pulling on the part of Ichigo that created the energy for Getsuga, or maybe it was Ichigo who subtly pulled on his hollow half to do it? Whatever the case, the cero detonates far enough away from them that for a beat, the invading hordes don't realize the fire is spreading hard, and fast between each, and every single thing that had reishi in it; consuming it. The explosion was growing exponentially by the second, and all racing right towards them.

Without second thought Ichigo ( Shiro ) grabbed Rukia around the waist, and pushed off from the ground. Even at a vertical jump, the pushes of reishi, and slipping into Sonido made gaining a safe altitude happen in a few seconds.
With gathered reishi under their clawed feet, Shiro ( Ichigo ) looked down at the spreading fire, and rising mushroom cloud tinged red, and white. They were far enough away, though, that it was only the shockwave that set that

[snowwhitesoul]

With her back to them, Rukia only heard the synthetic whine of the cero charging up. Its probably due to that sound that neither of them hear it when Rukia looks out into the suddenly illuminated shadows and sees eyes. Hundreds and hundreds of sets of eyes staring back at them wrathfully, spinning a high web through the branches of the trees to hem them in.

Shit.Then the Cero is unleashed in a slow, lethal arc. The immediate backblow of such a tremendous release of energy burns across the back of her neck and Rukia has to snap her own reiatsu out to splice away the energy. Still, that was going to leave her neck inflamed and painful for a while like a bad sunburn. She doesn't get the time to turn and stare at the swath of destruction the Cero triggers before she's scooped up again and they rocket upward over the forest, the hollowfied form (What did she call this? Ichishiro? Shirichi? Portmanteauing their names seemed to be her only option) rest upon a platform of reishi, giving them prime seats to watch the forest below them burn

[holeheart]

The Resurrected form laughs over the Teneka, but only in Shiro's voice. Only Shiro found such destruction amusing. It was beautiful. The ground-level reishi had been completely consumed, along with almost every single spider. One that had escaped somehow lets out a pained screech, and Ichigo (Shiro) points a clawed finger at it, letting fly a smaller, faster, more compact Cero. It hits the creature in the head, and it falls over, dead.

"Are there more? I think we got them all."

And hopefully no other life forms... but Shiro didn't sense any other energies before, aside from their own. Finally, they set her down on her own little platform of reishi, protected from the chain reaction inferno by their reiatsu. They look down past their clawed feet at the chaos below. The fires seem to have burned out as quickly as they had come, but embers still glowed. Scorched earth at its finest.

Pretty damn impressive, if I do say so myself.

[savior_n_black]

He ( Ichigo, Shiro, I ) felt satisfied that the immediate threat of that whole area was now dealt with, and did not see the point in hanging around to watch, and make sure that every one of the spiders crawling all over that nest had been charred to ash. Instead, keeping a firm grip on Rukia's hand - mindful of the talons tipping their fingers now, the masked head nodded once in satisfaction.

Yeah...it's...it's good.

Now that the panic was ebbing away to be replaced with the blood-haze of fighting, Ichigo's mind was trying to reassert itself. Which felt strange in this shared form, but it wasn't exactly something he could control.

Should head back.

It was a fair distance away from the remains of the burning conflagration, but clear that Shiro ( Ichigo ) judged it safe enough.
But the monsters infecting the city were everywhere, and though some of the smaller locusts, separated from their horde, and scavenging among the wreckage of streets, and buildings, were the only things looking on as Ichigo ( Shiro ) carefully helped

[snowwhitesoul]

The ground still smokes and glows, and will still do so for hours and hours, but Rukia turns her head away from it as they glide towards the ground again, trying to blink away the afterimage of fire flash that still danced over her retinas. Setting her feet on the ground again, she finally puts the thin plumes of smoke behind her and looks around, giving the towering, monstrous form beside her no mind as she scouted the area

[holeheart]

She's not scared... I'm glad. I want to show her how I feel, too.

The Hollow side adds a little something of his home. The teeth of the mask, pressed against the small Shinigami's forehead, nip the skin there by just barely moving. Enough to draw the smallest amount of blood, right at her hairline. A Hollow's mark of possession. Proof that not just Ichigo, but Shiro as well, wanted her. Kisses, from both of them.

It was probably confusing. Shiro knew that Ichigo had only kissed Rukia once, in a heated state. He knew now, he could see it like it was him (Ichigo, Shiro, where did one end and the other begin) doing it