["Alright, that's it."] Nelliel sheathed her Zanpakutō. ["Good thing I can still make it in time for lunch. If I'm late, Pesche and Dondochakka will worry."]
["Stop right there!"] Nnoitra staggered to his feet. ["I said this was a duel... You're supposed to fight me to the end..."]
["You mean..."] Nelliel tilted her head. ["Until I finish you off?"]
["Isn't that obvious?"]
["I refuse. Stop wasting my time."] Nelliel lightly touched the hilt at her waist. ["We were once humans who became Hollows, then became Arrancar and regained our reason. Those who possess reason need a reason to fight, and you don't have one."]
["A reason... Of course I have one!"] Nnoitra stared hard at Nelliel's cold face. ["I just can't stand you!"]
["That is not a reason. It's instinct."] Nelliel's voice remained calm. ["You're nothing more than a beast. I've never seen you as a warrior. And I have no desire to bear the weight... of taking the life of someone who isn't a warrior."]
She didn't want to bear the weight of killing someone who wasn't a warrior?
So that was why I spared you after you became a child.
Nnoitra's single eye widened in excitement as that noble figure reflected in it. "Now you're finally starting to look like a warrior, Nelliel!"
Her long, lake-green hair fluttered in the wind. From the broken skull mask atop her head extended the curved horns of an antelope, and her willow-colored cloak split into two sections, barely covering the full curves of her tall body.
Muten Natsu stared dazedly at the female Arrancar standing in front of him. "Nell...?"
"Muten..." Nell, no longer in a child's form, turned back and pulled Muten Natsu into her arms. "It's been so long! Muten!"
Muten Natsu immediately suppressed the Karmic Flame in his arm to avoid hurting Nell.
"I'm the one..." Nnoitra tightened his grip on his Kama and dove toward them. "Talking to you!"
Nell lowered her head, her crystal-clear lips parting as she moved closer to Muten Natsu.
While Muten Natsu was still at a loss, the icy Karmic Flame separated from his body and disappeared into Nell's mouth.
Nell took a deep breath, lifted her head, and shouted, "Hah!"
A rose-colored flash bloomed from her mouth. The dazzling torrent of Reishi completely swallowed Nnoitra, and the explosive turbulence of Reishi shot into the sky, whipping the air into a frenzy.
The scenery around Muten Natsu shifted. Nell had brought him to Orihime Inoue's side.
"Orihime..." Nell set the broken-bodied Muten Natsu down. "Please heal him."
Rukia Kuchiki stared blankly at Nell. "You're the one from back then..."
Back then, Rukia Kuchiki and Muten Natsu had only been able to leave Hueco Mundo because Nelliel had opened Garganta for them.
At the time, however, Nelliel had still been in the form of an antelope.
"Rukia..." Nell's eyes curved in a smile as she pointed to her damaged mask. "Because of my injuries, I forgot a lot of things. It wasn't until I reunited with all of you that I was able to come here and remember everything from the past."
It had been an ordinary evening. Nelliel returned to her palace on time, just as she always did. But what she saw was not Pesche and Dondochakka as they usually were.
They were lying in a pool of blood, their shattered masks forcibly torn away by Nnoitra.
Nelliel's strength had also been suppressed by Szayelaporro's device, and Nnoitra had smashed her mask.
"You don't have to hurt yourself to fight anymore." Nell raised the Zanpakutō in her hand and smiled gently. "Muten, leave the rest to me. I'll protect you, just like you protected me."
"Cero Doble... Now that's a familiar technique." Nnoitra's Kama tore through the drifting dust as his figure appeared again. "But you've been away from Las Noches for far too long. The Espada now are completely different from back when you were here! Nelliel!"
"So much time has passed... and you still haven't made it into the top three." Almost the instant Nell turned to look at Nnoitra, the smile vanished from her face, replaced by a calmness close to indifference. "Because you were never one of the top three Espada, you've always had the wrong idea about my strength."
"Nelliel..." Nnoitra's teeth ground together. "That's exactly why I've always hated you!"
"But now, you no longer have Szayelaporro's help." Nell held her Zanpakutō horizontally in front of her. "Declare."
A flash of fear crossed Nnoitra's eye. Then he suddenly rushed forward, trying to stop her.
Nell lowered her eyes slightly, and the Zanpakutō in her hand lit with a brilliant glow. "Gamuza!"
Rose-colored Reiatsu surged out wildly, enveloping Nell.
His fierce charge was forcibly stopped by the burst of Reiatsu. Nnoitra swung his Kama to split apart the dust sweeping toward him, and his breath caught.
After her Resurrección, Nell held a sharp, double-ended conical spear in her hand. Her lower body had taken the form of an antelope. Her arms were wrapped in black cloth, while her collarbones, shoulders, elbows, and hands were covered in white armor. The twin horns once coiled around her skull mask had become long, segmented horns curving backward.
In her half-human, half-gazelle form, Nell twisted her wrists and raised the heavy double-headed lance above her head. She leaned her upper body back, lifted her front hooves, and stamped forward with sudden force.
Her armored arms blurred in an instant. The lance reflected the sunlight, turning into a dazzling beam as it whipped up a spiraling gale and sent the white sand on the ground flying.
The flying white sand formed a long corridor, extending to Nnoitra in the blink of an eye.
The six Kamas crossed in front of him shattered almost simultaneously. Nnoitra's body flew backward out of control, smashing through broken round towers one after another, until he was finally pinned to a ruined wall.
Only then did the air explode with a delayed roar, and white sand scattered down like rain.
Like snow falling from the sky.
Rukia Kuchiki stared at Nell's powerful back.
For a moment, she was lost in a daze.
["You don't have to hurt yourself to fight anymore."]
["Muten, leave the rest to me. I'll protect you, just like you protected me."]
Those were... the words she had always wanted to say to Muten.
And the words she had never been able to say.
Because she could not do what Nell could.
"Ngh!" Under Orihime Inoue's healing, Muten Natsu's lost left arm and shoulder had already been fully restored. Yet he suddenly cried out in pain, and the closed Hell's Eye on his forehead opened again, oozing crimson blood.
Orihime Inoue instinctively looked at the eye on his forehead. Its whites were pitch-black, its pupil scarlet, and as it shifted, she could faintly glimpse the Gates of Hell growing clearer within it. "Muten, you... What should I do?"
"Go to the Gates of Hell..." Muten Natsu covered the Hell's Eye, his voice hoarse. "We have to close the Gates of Hell right now..."
Nell's four hooves kicked up flying sand. She reached out, scooped up Rukia Kuchiki and Orihime Inoue, and placed them on her sheep-like back. Then she lifted Muten Natsu into her arms. "I'll take you there!"
"That way..." Muten Natsu pointed in the direction he saw.
"Hold on tight!" The white sand beneath Nell's hooves exploded with a roar as she charged toward the direction Muten Natsu had indicated, carrying all three of them.
"Wait... Wait a second!" Orihime Inoue braced herself against Nell's shoulder. "Muten isn't going to make it!"
"Huh?" Nell slowed slightly and asked anxiously, "What's wrong?"
"He..." Orihime Inoue looked at Nell's ample chest, bouncing wildly as she ran. Nell was far larger than Orihime Inoue, and with almost nothing restraining her, the movement was astonishing. "Muten is going to get knocked unconscious..."
His eyes had rolled back.
"Waaaaah!" Nell panicked and looked down, her small face flushing bright red with worry. "Saliva... If I heal him with saliva..."
Blushing, Orihime Inoue reminded her, "I think he'll be fine as long as you don't hold him."
"Oh, right." Nell placed Muten Natsu behind her as well. Only after confirming he really was all right did she speed up and sprint onward.
The Hell's Eye on Muten Natsu's forehead shifted, locking onto the group even closer to the Gates of Hell.
Pesche and Dondochakka... Why are they with him?
"This is..." Pesche abruptly turned toward a certain direction. "Nell-sama's Reiatsu!"
"There is absolutely no mistaking it!" Dondochakka jumped up excitedly. "Nell-sama has regained her original power!"
"Nnoitra's Reiatsu is gone!" Pesche sensed carefully. "Nell-sama won!"
"And she's coming this way right now!" Dondochakka happily waved his two large hands.
"It only ended just now..." Mayuri Kurotsuchi gave a contemptuous snort. "Barbarians, as expected." He turned to Yasutora Sado and Uryū Ishida. "How much longer are you two going to keep feeling yourselves up, ne?"
"Who knows what you secretly did to us!" Uryū Ishida nervously touched the spot where he had been injured, now completely healed. "Of course we need to check carefully!"
Yasutora Sado said nothing, but he was also silently sensing the changes in his body.
"What a thing to say. You should be grateful to me." Mayuri Kurotsuchi's golden eyes shifted. "I treated you for free. No matter what you turn into later, logically speaking, you should still thank me, ne."
"What kind of logic is that? Oh, thank you so much!" Uryū Ishida immediately caught the key point in Mayuri Kurotsuchi's words. "Wait, are we going to turn into something weird later? This isn't treatment at all. It's clearly modification!"
"Fine." Mayuri Kurotsuchi accepted the correction readily. "Then let's call it modification."
Uryū Ishida panicked even more. "Change it back to treatment!"
"Uryū," Yasutora Sado said in a low voice, "it's better not to get too worked up. We're near the center of Las Noches, after all. We might draw enemies here."
"No need to worry about that..." Mayuri Kurotsuchi led the group forward. Nemu, walking beside him, raised her hand, and light bloomed from her palm, illuminating the vast corridor covered in crisscrossing blade marks and scattered with severed limbs.
Uryū Ishida was shaken by the sight. "What is this...?"
"Do you really need to ask?" Mayuri Kurotsuchi pointed upward. "Obviously, it's the work of those barbarians."
Terrifying Reiatsu clashed above the dome, and everyone below could sense it clearly.
"The enemy seems strong..." Yasutora Sado looked up. "Shouldn't we go support them?"
"There's no need to help scum like that." Mayuri Kurotsuchi snorted coldly. "Once he steps onto a battlefield, he becomes a beast that's seen raw meat. Anyone who interferes will be eaten by him too. There's no stupider way to die."
Mayuri Kurotsuchi stopped. "Besides, we have something more important to do."
In the enormous space, towering stone pillars stood in two rows on either side, and the broad floor paved with white stone slabs stretched into the darkness.
There, white stone steps rose layer by layer. On the platform at the end, the pitch-black Hōgyoku extended twisted tentacles that coiled around a massive purplish-black gate. Embedded in it were two one-armed skeletons sharing a single lower body.
Six black objects resembling Zen staffs were driven into the white bones, and four chains were fastened above the gate.
The broken skeletons, one on the left and one on the right, reached out with bony hands and hooked their fingers into the crack of the gate. Their bones clattered together with crisp sounds, clearly trying to pull it open.
The scent of blood and fire seeped from the gap, adding an unsettling crimson tinge to the black space.
"Is this..." Yasutora Sado felt an indescribable pressure, and a prickling pain rose across his skin. "The Gates of Hell?"
Uryū Ishida frowned deeply. The Quincy Cross on his wrist floated up on its own, releasing a deep blue glow that enveloped him and blocked out the ominous aura.
"Interesting, interesting, interesting, ne." Mayuri Kurotsuchi twisted the screw-like device near his ear, characters flickering in his golden eyes. "So this is the Gates of Hell, the subject of so much sealed information. Nemu."
"Yes." Nemu opened a spindle-shaped device, revealing Szayelaporro fixed inside like a specimen.
Mayuri Kurotsuchi skillfully removed several long needles connected to wires of various colors from the spindle-shaped device, inserted them into different parts of Szayelaporro, and stared at the rapidly refreshing display. "Just as I thought..."
Uryū Ishida had no idea what he meant. "What is?"
"Your body has already reacted, yet your brain is still this slow, ne." Mayuri Kurotsuchi glanced at the glow around Uryū Ishida. "Forget it. I can't expect too much from inferior creatures. I'll explain it as simply as possible, using words even you can understand."
Uryū Ishida said, "...Can't you just start explaining?"
Yasutora Sado reminded him, "Then he wouldn't get to make himself look smarter than us."
"Does something that obvious need to be made clear?" Mayuri Kurotsuchi snorted. "Although most of the data has been sealed, conclusions can still be drawn from scattered records. In many accounts, Hell is compared to a hole or a pit, something that can swallow the entire world. But there are many kinds of holes and pits. For example... a volcanic crater is also a pit, ne."
Uryū Ishida raised his hand, sensing the glow enveloping him, then turned toward the Gates of Hell. A terrifying possibility surfaced in his mind. "So it's not that something will be sucked in, but that something will... erupt from inside?"