In this desperate moment, Inoue Orihime couldn't help but close her eyes. She thought of whether anyone would come to save them. A reliable figure with a slender frame carrying two Zanpakutō flashed in her mind. If Yuta were here, nothing should be a problem. But she reminded herself she couldn't always rely on him. After all, he was a Shinigami, a human, and not from her world. She had already owed him kindness twice and had nothing to repay him with. If she accepted his help again, how could she ever repay it? Better to let herself die here while protecting everyone else. At least then she would have no regrets in her heart.
"Inoue!" Kurosaki Ichigo shouted, his chest tightening as an oppressive voice echoed from deep within his soul. It whispered with a chilling clarity: "Give me your body… I can help you with everything." The tone was like a demon in his head, promising strength with a price.
The tension in the air broke as space itself split open. A dark garganta cracked open in front of them. From it, a pale hand stretched outward, slender and delicate like that of a musician-yet carrying a crushing weight of spiritual pressure that made the air vibrate. The space itself shuddered violently the moment that hand appeared. Both Yami and Ulquiorra felt their eyes narrow as their pupils trembled from the pressure.
"What…?" Yami muttered. The spiritual energy pressing down was overwhelming. For someone as powerful as him, an Adjuchas-class Arrancar, and Ulquiorra, who stood at the level of a Vasto Lorde before becoming Arrancar, the fact that a single hand could instill such dread was unbelievable. Arrancar stood at the boundary of Hollow and Shinigami, yet with just one movement this individual had shaken them both. A weapon hadn't even been drawn.
The hand shifted slightly.
With only a flick of force in the air-
Blood burst across the battlefield as Yami's entire right arm was severed at the root.
"Ahhhhhh!" Yami's roar shook the ground as he staggered back, his voice cracking with both fury and fear. "Who is it? Who dares to cut off my arm?!"
But his rage could not mask the unease running through him. He hadn't even seen the strike. How could his arm be gone before he realized it?
Ulquiorra's gaze hardened. "That was not a Zanpakutō," he muttered under his breath. It had to be something else. No blade had been drawn, no steel shimmered against the light. The attack carried precision and destruction without visible movement. The mystery only deepened.
The garganta widened further. A figure stepped out clothed in black, the wind fluttering loose edges of his cloak. A Zanpakutō rested at his side, its slender length secured in a white bandage that wrapped across his waistline. This was Yuta.
Feeling the presence of someone familiar, Orihime opened her eyes. Relief washed over her expression as her hands clasped against her chest. "Mr. Yuta!" she cried out with unmistakable hope. Whenever he was near, she felt no fear. Danger seemed to lose its grip simply by his presence alone.
Yuta gave Orihime a short nod before his arrival was accompanied by another figure. A girl stepped from the garganta behind him. She wore the standard Shinigami uniform with her Zanpakutō at her waist. Her black hair was styled neatly into a bun edged like petals at the back of her head. Orihime blinked at the sight and steadied her smile. "Is this… Mr. Yuta's friend?" she whispered softly to herself.
Yami's rage spiked again as he turned his fury toward Yuta. "Was it you who cut off my arm? How did you do that?" His voice boomed though fear lingered beneath his fury.
"Hinamori Momo," Yuta answered Orihime calmly without even glancing toward Yami. His tone carried no urgency, as though merely introducing the girl at his side. "That's her name."
Yami's fury boiled over at being ignored. He ripped his Zanpakutō from his waist with his left hand and charged forward at Yuta, his mask fragments and teeth bared in anger. But Yuta only looked at him. The next instant, Yami's left arm fell away at the joint, blood spraying from the second wound. His eyes widened in terror. "I… I can't be… How is this possible?" His steel-hard Hierro should have prevented damage from almost any attack. If struck normally, even a Shinigami's blade would shatter on impact. Yet both arms were gone like paper cut by a knife.
Fear surged in his chest as anger faltered.
Yuta met his gaze calmly. "When the difference is too great, what you feel is not anger," his voice carried flatly across the scorched ground, "but despair."
Ulquiorra's eyes narrowed as he forced himself to observe. His sharp senses finally caught something too small for most to see. At the moment of the strike, Yami's arm had dissolved at its root. Countless reishi particles had separated, scattering into the air like dust. The decomposition was so fine, so surgical, that it looked as if his arm had simply vanished. Ulquiorra recognized the implications immediately. To break down reishi to that degree instantly was not simply power-it was ability.
The precision went beyond erosion from the outer layer inward-it had started at a single cross-section as though reishi itself bent to his command. Ulquiorra's thoughts sharpened. "Could it be decomposition of spirit particles? To this level? This is something… only the Quincy King of old was rumored to achieve…"
Then his gaze lifted to Yuta's face. Recognition struck him instantly, the name surfacing from memory.
"You are that one… Hideki Yuta!" he said with a rare shift in tone.
He remembered the meeting in Las Noches. Aizen himself had stood before the Espada and shown them Yuta's image, commanding absolute attention. Seated on his throne, he had spoken with a solemn weight that few had ever heard from him before. "If you encounter this man in the world of the living," Aizen had said, "do not fight him. The moment you see him-you run. If you don't… you will die."
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