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The residual flares of Reiatsu faded into nothingness, their final embers dissolving beneath a sky already darkened by unnatural storm clouds that coiled low with ominous purpose.
Tsunayashiro Tokinada stood firm, one hand gripping a Zanpakutō wreathed in serpentine ribbons of bluish-white wind, each breath it exhaled unleashing a gust so fierce it ruptured the earth beneath his feet, the wind howling like a sentient predator, reshaping the battlefield as thunderheads thickened and collapsed into a ceiling of shadow that pressed down upon the wilderness with crushing weight. The color of the land drained away, swallowed by a monochrome abyss of suffocating pressure, and as golden lightning fractured the roiling canopy above, the monstrous form of the golden Ksitigarbha rampaged beneath it, a force of chaos and divine wrath crashing through shattered terrain.
"Woo... one..." Tokinada muttered, a soundless breath carried off by the howling gale, as though he himself wasn't sure what he meant to say, the words half-born from awe and madness.
"Kuchiki Moyu—so this is the power of your Zanpakutō?" he exclaimed, his eyes widening with a gleam that fused reverence and intoxication, a light overtaken by an ecstasy he could no longer restrain as he stepped forward into the storm. "It's intoxicating—this overwhelming power! If I had wielded this sooner..." he began, but the words broke off as if choked by greed, the ravenous ambition twisting his expression speaking louder than anything he could articulate.
Moyu, impassive as ever, kept his gaze locked on the violent sky, unmoved by the theatrics playing out before him, and untouched by the hollow fervor that bloomed in Tokinada's voice, his silence deeper than scorn, long since stripped of interest in the man's ever-mutating lies. To the public, Tokinada had peddled a fiction—that his Zanpakutō was Nine Heavens Mirror Valley, a Shikai famed for reflecting attacks like still water—but Moyu had pierced that illusion ages ago, seen through its façade like glass under pressure. Mirror Valley was nothing more than a partial manifestation, no more authentic than Ayasegawa Yumichika's Vine Peacock, the Eleventh Division's long-standing deception designed to conform to its battle doctrine. As long as a Zanpakutō's true name remained unspoken, its abilities would remain fractured, incomplete, and forever misaligned with the wielder's soul.
Tsunayashiro Tokinada's true Zanpakutō—Yanluo Jingdian, The Scripture of King Enma—was no noble relic, but a grotesque mimicry engine that allowed him to replicate the abilities of any Zanpakutō he had seen; though the imitation was always inferior and restrained by Reiatsu limitations, its versatility was horrifyingly effective. Yet such mimicry carried a brutal price, as each activation carved away pieces of Tokinada's own soul, draining strength and shaving years from his existence, but so far drowned was he in his pursuit of power that even the taste of death seemed a price worth paying.
As the unnatural wind shrieked and tore across the blasted plain, Tokinada's expression twisted into feverish glee, fully lost in the ecstasy of destruction, his aura crackling with a zealotry that made the air tremble. Even the slightest pulse of energy from the stolen weapon unleashed devastation far beyond what he had imagined, and still he stood, arms outstretched, basking in the tempest as if he had ascended to something divine. Every flicker of thought bent the wind to his whim, each breath shaping the atmosphere as though he were sculpting divinity itself, and in that moment, he truly fancied himself a god—master of storms, architect of ruination, destroyer of all that dared remain grounded.
"So this," he murmured at last, the hysteria draining into a calm too sudden to be real, "is the source of your power?" he asked as though in awe, though the arrogance lingered beneath his tone like venom in wine.
His voice cooled, smooth again, as if the unhinged exultation of seconds ago had never occurred—until it was cleaved by another voice, one far sharper than any wind, a voice as dry and corroding as acid, slicing through the storm's throat like a scalpel.
"Finished your dramatics?" Kurotsuchi Mayuri, arms folded and spine erect with disdain, stood with narrowed eyes, his pointed sneer rising as he continued with cutting pragmatism, "That anomalous Reiatsu field we deployed has a hard cap—two hours. If we don't kill Kuchiki before that window closes, then every captain-level Shinigami in Seireitei will descend upon us like vultures to a carcass."
The words cracked Tokinada's trance like thunder cracks ice, and his fingers whitened on the Zanpakutō's hilt as a twitch of tension distorted his face, the gleam in his eye shifting from euphoria to cold calculation.
"In that case..." he murmured, narrowing his gaze with renewed hunger as it locked onto Moyu once more, a glint sharp as madness igniting behind it. "Embrace your end, Kuchiki Yu!"
With one savage arc, his Zanpakutō carved through the sky and ripped open the atmosphere, the wind screaming into a frenzy as thunder shredded the heavens and a cyclone burst outward, clawing at existence itself. Cracks ripped across the earth like gaping wounds, while chunks of terrain were torn skyward, caught in the rising tide of a hurricane so wide it devoured a full kilometer of ground in a single breath.
And that, astoundingly, was just one strike.
Tokinada stared at his hands as though seeing them for the first time, disbelief giving way to euphoria so fierce it stole his breath. "Too powerful... With this strength, I will finally—" he began, but the words dissolved the moment his eyes returned to Moyu.
Because the tornado reached him—and simply ceased to exist.
With nothing more than a flick of his palm, Moyu cast aside the storm like swatting a leaf from his shoulder.
"That's not how wind is used," he said, voice calm but honed like a blade, the weight of those words sliding beneath Tokinada's skin like a razor dipped in frost, not merely contradicting his power but dismantling the illusion that power had ever belonged to him.
Tokinada's mouth opened and closed, lips trembling with disbelief, utterly incapable of processing what he had just witnessed; the assumption—that this mimicry granted him dominion—was pulverized, the illusion collapsing like ash against a hurricane.
"Idiot," Mayuri snapped, his contempt sharp as steel. "Kuchiki's Zanpakutō wasn't even at full power. You copied the Golden Killing Ksitigarbha."
Tokinada glanced down at his blade, hand trembling with reluctance as he felt the intoxicating force radiating from it, but even he could no longer deny what had become obvious.
It wasn't working.
"We end this now!" Mayuri barked, leaving no room for further delusion, and with a violent sweep of his arm, the golden Jizō he had summoned launched into the stormy sky.
"Woooo—" The dreadful roar shattered the clouds, and despite its titanic mass, the grotesque childlike creature banked and dove toward Moyu with astonishing velocity, its jaws unleashing a wide arc of acidic poison. A moment later, claws burst from the mist, slashing downward with lethal intent toward Moyu's throat.
Shunpo erupted.
The ground beneath the near-miss fractured violently, forming a crater nearly a hundred meters wide as the golden Ksitigarbha lifted its infantile head, scanning the poisoned air with gray, lifeless eyes that reflected no thought.
The miasma swirled, thickened, and darkened until its toxicity stained the sky itself.
"Behind you, fool!" Mayuri snarled, shoving his will into the beast and twisting its massive body around with the fury of a puppeteer slamming their marionette into motion.
Moyu hovered midair, expression unreadable. He raised his blade in perfect silence—and in the next instant, another roar split the heavens apart.
A second golden Jizō fell from the sky like judgment.
Identical in size, monstrous in form, and steeped in the same bloodthirsty aura, it mirrored Mayuri's unholy craftsmanship to the last corrupted detail.
"One against two now," Tokinada whispered, voice unsteady as pallor overtook his features, the repeated use of Yanluo Jingdian visibly fracturing the seams of his soul. Duplicating such a complex entity tore rifts through his spiritual core, and if this continued, death from recoil would claim him before Moyu even needed to raise a hand.
Below, the poisonous mists deepened into something thick as ink, bleeding from violet into jet-black, and the air grew heavier as drops of acidic liquid began to rain into the Thunder Garden like curses from above.
Sssshhht—
Each drop hissed as it struck, burrowing into stone and soil alike with acidic ferocity, and Moyu required no further prompting—one touch would be fatal.
From opposite flanks, the twin abominations charged, claws whistling through the air as Mayuri's perfected Bankai warped reality itself, compressing pressure and malice into weaponized precision honed to an edge even madness could not dull.
"Tsunayashiro Tokinada," Moyu called evenly, voice stripped of emotion yet resonating like the axis of fate itself, "since you've borrowed wind, let me show you its proper usage. Wind, when mastered, leaves a path to return."
As if the phrase itself were a trigger, all motion across the battlefield stopped.
The wind ceased. The clouds froze. Even the black mist hovered mid-air like time itself had surrendered.
A silence, heavy and dreadful, fell across the land like a shroud.
Mayuri and Tokinada locked eyes for the briefest moment, and in their shared tension, both understood instinctively—
Something was deeply, irreversibly wrong.
Moyu raised his Zanpakutō. Lanyin pulsed once, a heartbeat from a different world.
Then came the gale.
It burst from beneath his feet, spiraling upward in a column that consumed all light and devoured the sky in a single endless scream.
In that instant, the gap between them—power, presence, fate—became undeniable, and Tokinada's face contorted in horror.
How could the same Zanpakutō feel so utterly different?
The wind silenced everything.
Only the storm remained.
"Mie Zhan Lie Lan."
Whooooom.
A wall of hurricanes rose from the horizon, towering hundreds of meters tall, each one a titan of annihilation crashing toward the battlefield with divine wrath. Against their force, the golden Ksitigarbhas—so massive before—now resembled mere leaves scattered across a typhoon's surface.
Mayuri clenched his jaw, pride and calculations at war.
He had underestimated Moyu. Again.
But he would not retreat.
"There must be... another way to shift the outcome," he whispered, eyes darting with desperation until they landed on her.
Nilu.
Still. Quiet. Watching.
A smile crept onto his face, dark and opportunistic.
"Perhaps the key... is her."
The wind howled, shredding the golden beast particle by particle until it vanished into the void.
Tokinada staggered, blood spurting from his lips as the spiritual backlash ravaged his body, his soul nearing collapse under the unbearable pressure.
Moyu stepped forward to end it—
"Stop, Kuchiki Moyu!" Mayuri shouted, voice sharpened by triumph and malice.
"If you take another step, this girl dies," he growled, standing behind Nilu, the curved edge of his scythe resting against her brow like a guillotine's kiss.
Moyu froze, eyes narrowing to slits.
"Very clever," he said, tone too calm, too measured.
Mayuri sneered, savoring his leverage. "You care about your comrades. That's your flaw. I order you to drop your Shikai—surrender—"
But a soft, unwavering voice broke the tension.
"Nilu hates this feeling," she said, her tone flat yet resolute, her eyes unblinking. She didn't move.
"Being used as Moyu's weakness. Being treated like his chain."
Mayuri's breath hitched.
Then the air changed.
A surge of emerald Reiatsu burst skyward from beneath the scythe, roaring with primal fury as it tore into the sky.
Within seconds, it twisted, swelled, and climbed—until even the heavens trembled beneath its pressure.
Then she emerged.
Her hair, green as seafoam, flowed down her back. Her body, slim yet radiating power, stepped forward with serene defiance. Across her brow sat a cracked white mask with twin horns, and beneath her cloak, the number 3 shimmered faintly.
A Vasto Lorde-class Arrancar.
An Espada returned.
"That Reiatsu..." Mayuri's voice withered in his throat, his vision blurring with the certainty of collapse.
He now understood what stood before him.
The evolved perfection of a Menos Grande.
His entire scheme fell to ruin.
The air itself now reeked of despair.
And Nilu, still smiling, took one step forward.
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