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]

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 graze her skin as the merged form turns around to face monsters, attracted by the racket and the heat. A chain clinked, the same chain wrapped around their right arm and connected to the also changed Tensa Zangetsu.

Ichigo. This form is our Resurreccíon. It's still imperfect. I don't know how long we have before it ends. So... Ikou ze!

These monsters didn't have a chance.

[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' through their shared consciousness as their body turned side on. Still standing over Rukia like a pillar of black fire, and white death, Shiro leaned forward a little to point the scimitar-bladed horns of their mask at the oncoming horde, and charge up a nuclear red, and white cero...

[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!

Turning her back to his...theirs...whichever, Rukia levels her hands before her, calling up her power into a familiar form. Against the drone of ravenous spiders and the howl of the hollow hybrid behind her, Rukia's voice chanted out a steady meter. The mantra complete, she unleashes a Soukatsui to the left and the right of her at polar opposites. The flames catch on wood and spider alike, turning some into writhing, curled up corpses and making others flee from the flames that lick up the trees and into the dry, brittle limbs.

What? Did you expect her to stand in maidenly awe as you cut down spiders all night?

[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 Teneka, and the Cero shoots forward, incinerating the arachnids a they sweep their head from one side to the other, energy pouring out from between the two, razor-edged horns. Where the Cero touches the ground, it explodes. In comparison to their other attacks, this one is slow, tedious.

But so amazingly powerful.

They turn to look over their shoulder just in time to see Rukia's spell explode into a conflagration of blue flames. A smile tugs at the lips behind the mask, from both parts of the whole. Of course she wouldn't listen. That's why they liked her so much.

[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 long, sunfire hair whipping around them. The blast radius was far below, and completely incinerating everything in it's path from spider, to tree, to even rocks, and the top soil itself.

[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 down to the barren rocks beneath the soil.

Rukia, hanging from their arms like a sack of potatoes (you still need to work on your women-holding skills), her jaw seems to have the same idea. That level of complete devastation...she'd never seen its like. With minimal effort, a mile long radius of woodland had been scorched to nothing. Even the ashes evaporated into their particulate structures, the sheer saturation of power making it impossible to hold their forms. As the fires devoured the frozen mount of the broodmother and her mate, a spectacular pop was heard as the water in the ice - actually her own reishi - turned to vapor in a second.

Unbelievable.

She prayed, very quietly, that it was only spiders that died in the inferno down there.

[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 Rukia land on her feet, they still kept a wary distance from the horned mask, and the sheer heat their reiatsu was radiating. Power so intense, Ichigo did not know how to control, and Shiro didn't care to.
Safe now...safe....

Merged as they were, there was no insecurities to trip them up. No worries about who would see, or what anyone might think. The petite woman's hand is given the most delicate squeeze, mindful of sharp talons...but the other hand rose to push that horned helm up just a little bit. Just enough to show the lower half of the human face beneath. Without a single other thought, he ( Ichigo, Shiro, both. Myself. ) leaned down just enough to press a careful kiss against Rukia's soft lips.

Wanted to do this for a long time...see? She's not scared at all.

[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.

She pays even less mind to the way her fingers have woven between the taloned fingers and returns that squeeze. Even if he had the whole situation under control, the adrenaline of a fight is still filtering out of her system. The touch of a hand, even one as hot as his, was comforting.

And the road is quiet, deathly so. They were near the market, she realizes from the scattered shards of crates and the sundered heaps of stalls sitting on the sidewalk. There are no bodies around, but plenty of dried blood. The monsters had more practical uses for corpses, after all. She turns to him as he lifts the mask, wondering if he's going to dispel it, and attempts to ask him - them, both, one in the same - if they were alright when his face bends down to hers, the knuckle of his other hand tilting her chin up so their lips could meet.

Its just a simple press of lips at first, his lips are so damn warm and soft and the bluster of his breath against her cheek is warm too. And he waits there as she stiffens in surprise, her hand coming up uselessly, pawing at the air awkwardly as she realized what he was doing.

He was kissing her.

They were kissing her.

Wh-Why? He's...they are...that time before... one part of her brain races with questions, confusion. Why, of all things and all times? Why did they do this? Was this Ichigo? What about Shiro? Would she be hurting Shiro by doing this?

But the other part of her brain emphatically tells the other to just shut up.

Her hand falls on his shoulder finally, a brace as she tilts her head up to him - they, if that was the case - back with a gradual opening of her lips against his. Permission, invitation... and acceptance in one tiny gesture. Uncaring of how that wall of reiatsu closes in around her like a pair of arms, or how the edge of the mask rests against her cheek and nose like a burning brand, a sensation all its own.

[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.

The kiss is warm, tender, and loving, but short. They break it off, pulling the mask back down in place. But the eyes behind the mask are just as gentle as the kiss had been.

They look off back towards the direction of the clinic. Inside, Ichigo's mind is coming closer to the surface, and shoving the Hollow down. But he doesn't want any of that, so he pushes. No, he will not be shoved down. They're in this together. He keeps himself anchored to the surface.

There were more monsters to destroy. People to save. And right now? The merged form could do that. They could do that. They could save people.

[savior_n_black]

Have to protect. The rest. Others.

It's strange to hear the two-as-one voice through TENEKA no doubt, and it was even confusing for the dual set of conscious minds trying to keep an equilibrium with one another. But the kiss is what it is. There's important things that need taking care of right now.

Stay close, Rukia. Have to be stronger.

Which meant that suffocating sense of reiatsu increasing was only rising as the horned helm turned to look away toward the Clinic. The would clear a path ( burn them all, cut down everything in the way ) between here, and there. That place as Safe. It would stay Safe. They would make sure of it.
The clink of chain wrapping one arm, and the scratch of claws across scorched pavement are the only noise as Shiro ( Ichigo ) steps forward again. The muted sounds of buzzing were rising. Those few forerunners of another plague of locusts was fast approaching.

And a plague it was. So many, and so vast the bloated insects looked like a seething cloud of chitinous darkness as they flew, or crawled forward. Streetlights being obscured one by one as the horde moved in closer, and closer.
Bugs. Bugs trying to stop us.

Burn them all, partner.

[snowwhitesoul]

Oh, now hold on a moment here! Those lapels of the bankai haori get yanked down on by insistent little hands as he pulls away, dragging him down - mask and all - for another kiss, harsher and a bit clumsier but no less tender for the suddenness of it, before letting go. And maybe, just maybe she turns to deliberately press her lips against the mask. Because she understood, if only a little, that there were two men she was kissing right now. When the mask comes down to obscure their face once more, Rukia has already surreptitiously dabbed at her mouth and drawn her sword and called it to its pure white form.

Of course I'm staying close, someone has to watch your back after all.

For all her briskness, her cheeks are still flushed at the apples and that dab of blood right near her hairline has dried there. That tiny nick would eventually form a very pale scar, almost invisible except to someone who knew it was there. A tiny, particulate bit of hollowfied reiatsu would remain. She faced the on-coming swarm with a haughty, icy calm. Game faces on, it was show time.

But we are going to talk after this is done, just so you know.

Hakuren!

First kill is hers, boys. Too slow~

[holeheart]

The extra kiss actually manages to get an interesting response out of them; some characteristic undignified flailing, but just a little, almost too small a gesture to even be seen. Some twitching and movement of their non-sword arm. But even that little bit was so strange, coming from a creature with the power to defy Gods, flustered by something like an extra kiss. Especially when they had been nothing but serene, even in the face of destruction. The soft lips on the mask feel so interesting... the mask was incredibly sensitive, more sensitive than something supposedly made of dead bone had any right to be. It sent a non-physical shiver up their spines. But on the outside, the form remained calm.

The sword clinks as they stand back to back with her.

Our back will be fine.

Wait.

A talk? Crap. Aibou...

The icy blast of reiatsu snaps them out of it, and Shiro (Ichigo) opens the mouth of the mask, letting out a roar. But instead of forming energy between the horns, Shiro pulls on Ichigo's power and his own in equal measures, forming energy around their mouth.

And letting it loose in a center-of-the-earth-hot blast of hellfire, black and red swirling in chaos and flame towards the plague of dog-sized locusts. The fires consumed them, searing their wings and almost instantly boiling the innards of the insects. Unlike the Cero, the fire doesn't destabilize Reishi like a nuclear bomb, but it does feed on it, consuming the living creatures like a ravenous beast. The flames pour continuously from the Hollow-Shinigami's mouth as they sweep their head back and forth, engulfing the plague that had too much forward momentum to avoid the conflagration.

Between the ice and the fire, the creatures were done for. Charred and frozen, or both.

[savior_n_black]

Coiling against the heat of his power rising from him, wind stirs and rises from the sheer temperature differential. With Rukia at his back, it was a little easier to keep the focus needed to pull back the most extreme weight of his own reiatsu from putting anymore strain on Rukia's petite form than necessary.

But for the rest, he puts his extravagant power on display.

Lips beneath the mask pulled back in a snarl, the blackness is condensing, turning inside out, becoming more, and flowing over him. His sunrise hair whipping around him like a thrashing solar flare in the extreme shifts between hot, and cold.
Forming, forming--a sudden hiss that echoes oddly and his eyes snap open--burnished gold on black. The forming whiteness follows, surrounding the darkness of the Getsuga forming around his blade, merging with it, becoming it. The snarl at their would-be attackers is closed over by a death's head mask; horns, and a grinning skull with inhuman eyes staring out from behind it.

With one long turn, pivoting on one of his heels, the strange nuclear white, and swirled black energy gathered around his sword roared across ground, and sky to char anything it touched. From bricks, and mortar, to insects, or serpents, that strangely clashing, polarized fire was trying, inherently, to separate even as it consumed everything around it.

The two of them ( No there is only one. ) were coming apart at the seams. It was too soon, this was too soon! Neither Ichigo, nor Shiro were ready for what they were attempting to do here, and a very vital piece of this tripartite puzzle was still missing....

[holeheart]

It was wonderful. So wonderful. But more and more he began to think about himself as them... no, as separates, again. Why? Why was their energy separating?

Because they weren't ready for this. The broken soul of Kurosaki Ichigo wasn't yet ready for this level of power, not in any sustained form. And their third, he wasn't truly in on it. The Hollow being magically severed from Ichigo's soul in this place did not a thing to help with matters either. The reiatsus that had been so perfectly blended were starting to precipitate out like oil and water.

They weren't ready, and now they were going to suffer for it. One would soon go back to being two, the only way they were stable in this world.

Shiro suddenly became aware, painfully aware of his existence as another being, seemingly trapped in another body. Their endless cycle of energy creation, the nuclear power plant that was Resurrecíon was melting down. Shiro was out of energy and was being spit back out. Everything hurt, acutely, all over his body. His body, not their body. The still merged form brings their hands to their head, holding the mask, trying to stabilize even a cry of pain screeches over the Teneka.

But that's all. Their time was up. A huge crack runs through the mask, bisecting it longways. The two halves of the mask fall away, turning to black and white and red energy as they do. Then the rest; the fur, the sword, the claws, the haori... all melting away into energy.

Then, in the exact opposite way that the creature had formed, it explodes apart. The chain reforms, blazing to life with flame and shooting out from Ichigo's chest when the end of the chain touches the ground, something that looks like a little ball of that swirled energy bounces across the pavement, making pained squealing sounds with each bounce. When it finally comes to a stop, the chain flickers back out of view and the energy around the small creature flakes away like so much ash. Without the cloak of energy, there is a small, lizard-like creature. White scaled, with snow-white hair and a black mask... a familiar creature but in miniature.

Shiro, reduced to the most basic of forms, tries to get to his feet. He manages it, shakily, for all of about four seconds, before collapsing in a heap, completely drained.

And looking like a mighty tasty meal for a group of locusts that had, until just now, been keeping their distance.

[savior_n_black]

The mask cracked, but instead of shattering outward, it bisected into two parts, and no matter how those crumbling claws tried to hold it together, the energy was polarizing, and shoving itself apart. Whether Ichigo, or Shiro, or both liked it or not.

Pain sizzled throughout a body that was now, and distinctly his, Ichigo's, but everything from his bankai reverting to it's sealed state, to his claws, mask, hair, all of it was literally melting into pure energy, and coiling up like a hot blade spearing through his chest.
Ichigo screamed, and dropped both sword, and mask fragments as that soul chain ignited into being again; black fire welding the links together in a sudden flash. But the chain itself ends in another, tiny form of coalesced reiatsu...until even that burned away reveal the helpless, nearly-depleted, and most basic form of a hollow.

A tiny, lizard-like creature that didn't even have the strength to stand up.

Ichigo dropped to his knees, one hand scrabbling to retrieve the huge cleaver-shaped blade of his sword, while the other clutched his chest where the red soul-chain was fading out of sight again. Oh it was most certainly there, it was always there, but it wasn't always visible. That didn't mean that spontaneously having one ripped out of one's chest didn't hurt beyond belief.
Struggling, half out of his mind with the reeling loss of power, and equilibrium, Ichigo tried to use Zangetsu as a crutch to stand up.
Have to get up, have to get up, get to Shiro, have to get up.

But he only managed to stumble a little, and hit his knees again. Hard. Gritting his teeth, sweating, and breathing as though he'd just run three marathons back to back, Ichigo swung out wildly at the bloated insects eying the little white bundle on the ground.

Stay away...you stay away...leave him alone!

Half-dragging himself, and half-crawling in an awkward attempt at speed, Ichigo managed to get over to that little white bundle. On all fours, literally using his body as a shield, Ichigo raised an arm trembling so badly he could hardly hold his sword up, but nevertheless pointed Zangetsu threateningly at the multitudes of eyes starting to peer out of the darkness.