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 wrong way!! Shiro blurs into Sonido, grabbing the back of Ichigo's haori in his mouth and tossing him up onto his back. She's this way! Now hold on!

Because synchronization or not, Shiro is still faster than you, Ichigo.

[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 skittered and keeled to the left and to the right to throw her off in its death throes, but eventually, the ice that filled its brain cavern spilled up and over its skull, across the sparsely haired and swollen body and down chitinous legs until it and the whole web around them stood encased in glittering ice.

Wrenching her blade free, Rukia sits down on the frozen husk of the spider, panting. She was tired, her bones felt weary, her muscles so taxed that it was a wonder she could lift her sword. But she could keep going. She still had more to give. It was a pity her shihakusho had suffered so in the recent bouts, one sleeve was practically shredded to the shoulder and the skin exposed by it covered in filth and dry blood.

Still collecting herself, she doesn't move when a pair of slim legs gently step onto the icy web. The another, another and one more set. All eight legs tip toeing cautiously over the filaments. A brittle section of ice gives out under the mate's leg with a snap, but Rukia doesn't move.

[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 once two? There was now one.

"FUCK. OFF!!"

[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 decapitating the creeping arachnid, then quartering it's body before the head had even hit the ground.

Then the blur of white, black, and orange was gone, moving so fast that he ( Ichigo, Shiro, Ichigo, Shiro ) had scooped up Rukia to hold tight to his chest, and touched down on the ground below while the icy shards of frozen webbing, body parts, and viscera rained down on both.

[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.

Then, the tickle of something soft and feathery against her cheek and the bar of an arm holding her against something solid, smooth and radiating warmth. This close to the nucleus of that atomic explosion, those sentient, burning arrows of dark reiatsu did not prickle or pinch. Instead the shadow wrapped around her, hot and dark and protective like a blanket, a shell between her and the rest of the world.

Slowly, Rukia opened her eyes to see Ichigo's black bankai haori trimmed in fluffy red. Then up, to a bone-encased chin and cheek, the same smooth, lined visage that continued up and over his brows and the top of his skull. Skeletal, inhuman, crowned with two jutting horns.

Just wait here, Rukia. I'll clear this up now and we'll head back to the Living World. It's time to put an end to this stupid little fight.

It was like that mask, back in Hueco Mundo. But the horns, the teeth, the sheer power radiating off of him was unfathomable. It was...

...like that moment the dome of Las Noches exploded down in a column of red and green fire. Enough to melt the sand at the impact to glass, even from miles above. That moment when, from so far away, she could barely sense Ichigo's presence inside that firestorm.

Shocked, but not afraid, she reaches up to touch the very tips of her fingers against the angular chin. The sheer heat of it was more than enough for her to confirm her suspicions. A second press of her fingers - more solidly this time even if it felt like touching a fire-heated blade - doesn't flinch back. Because the power is familiar.

Sh...Shiro. Ichigo.

[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.