Worlds Apart

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Random Encounter

Hueco Mundo. Eternal night.

The sombre dimension of eerie Hollows, the wraiths that emerged from the despair and lunacy of fallen people. A realm of endless darkness suspended above the endless white of a barren desert. Desolate and sinister. That was neither Hell nor Purgatory but a dimension comparably grim and cruel to its twisted, bestial inhabitants. The land where survival of the fittest was the only rule accepted by everyone. Where the power of an individual was the only way to assert dominance over the others, to impose rules upon the unfettered or, more commonly, to prevail at all.

There were few points of reference to be found in that nigh-incomprehensible realm. So that somewhere, sometime, a particular figure appeared among the white dunes of eroded quartz. A very tall, somewhat lanky figure clad in a tattered and torn white cloak, complete with a hood that obscured the person's face. Unusually humanoid for a supposed Hollow, and with actual clothes, if worn, to further distance the person from the monstrous forms of his fellows. For that was an Arrancar, an entity straddling the line between a Hollow and a Shinigami, the ultimate form a spirit-eating wraith could achieve. And that particular Arrancar was arguably the ultimate of his own kind, at the very least during his own time, a thousand years ago... Because now, after such a long absence, he was visiting his old home, as part of an excursion, the first one after serendipitously escaping from the depths of Hell, finally as free and unbound as he used to be long ago.

"Haaah, it's so incredibly boring in here", the Arrancar sighed as he was looking around, swaying and striding across a dune. "Nothing's changed at all. I mean, if I bothered to remember the way those bloody sand grains were arranged, I'd wager that they haven't moved a millimetre in a thousand years. Booo-ring!"

Then, he moved his head to the right. Suddenly, there was a loud whizz, and several dunes seemed to explode, or rather vanish, in an instant. Within the following instant all that was left was a large wedge of nothingness carved into the white desert, and the echo of the phenomenon responsible for that new feature of the landscape.

"Nobody will notice, nobody will care. Where's everybody, by the way? A few new Hollows should've appeared by now... This whole place is fuckin' useless", he continued his casual monologue as he leant backward and looked upon the black sky high above him. "Huh?"

When he extended the range of his supernatural senses, he did sense something. Or rather, someone. A source of unmistakable ripples sent across the fabric of space. Peculiar, significant ripples. The Arrancar slanted his head to the side, taking a while to analyse that signature. Considerable, so that was someone strong. Not a Hollow for sure. A... Shinigami, perhaps? Most likely, even if he had not the opportunity to detect their presences since a long time. Except for those clueless blokes he encountered right after abruptly exiting Hell through a portal manifested by a fairly surprised wizard. Yes, that was probably a Shinigami. In Hueco Mundo?

Finally, there was something worthwhile to pique his curiosity. Definitely worth investigating. He was going to return to the Soul Society anyway, sooner or later, so the opportunity to converse with a Shinigami first was all the better. In consequence, he lifted his leg to move... only to vanish all of a sudden. Owing to his special ability, distance was a very relative term. One he could change as he saw fit, to traverse the vast expanse of the white desert and arrive at his destination point in a literal instant, for example. Effortlessly, casually, as always.

"What's that?", he inquired, tucking his hands into the pockets of his white pants, as white and torn as his cloak was, and partially exposing his supremely toned, if sickly pale, abdomen as a result.

"Los Anales", spoke Jaromira Dragan, a rather conspicuous visitor to the land of Hollows. Her deep scarlet hair stood out plainly amongst the endless dunes of sand, and her clothes made her look markedly Quincy-esque. The gargantuan energy flowing out from her soul however, made it more than clear what she truly was, a detail only the truly blind could miss given the sheer density of that energy. Still, though, she didn't stand out nearly as much as what she was looking at.

A ramshackle hut, covered poorly by a tarp and caked in layers of sand from years of being left untended. Jaromira had been told of it by another Captain, supposedly a gigantic underground archive full of knowledge dating back millennia, and ever deeper in was a gate that could traverse worlds with the strictest ease. Needless to say the woman, who had so recently been given a reprieve from her strict bondage in Muken, was curious. Skeptical of course, that Hollows could bring something like that to fruition by themselves, but curious all the same.

With a breathless sigh, Jaromira pressed forward. Pushing past the tarp and the broken wooden door behind it. A rather barren room stood before her, its corner lined by the blackened shadow of a descending staircase, which she was quick to follow.

It was a long walk through a particularly narrow passage, one which Jaromira couldn't help question. Her perception of Hollows were usually large and lumbering creatures. To have such a tiny pathway meant exclusive entry. An army of little tiny Hollows, a Vasto Lorde perhaps?, Jaromira questioned as she followed its steps.

Eventually she was deposited into a gigantic hall made out of pearly white stone. Its borders were lined with cylindrical pillars and in between each pair was a window bathing the room in light, though it was clearly a facsimile of some sort given how far down Jaromira had to have travelled. There was hope for something interesting after all, it seemed.

A door on the other side of the hall was the only way to continue, so it was that in search of something worthwhile, Jaromira made use of it. What she found beyond the door was hard to deny. Another obscenely sized room, one that was so vast Jaromira struggled to make out the end of any of its borders. Lining every inch of the place were bookshelves, made out of a grayish stone and every space was filled with books of all shapes, sizes and colour. Their spines rendered in many languages of varying ages. Some even stood side by side, one book in English and another in an older dialect of it. What stood before the young seeming woman was a labyrinthine library. A repository of knowledge ancient and modern. Rat-like Hollows scurried to and fro around the place, dealing with books according to some perceived system of their own making. Jaromira heeded them with only slight regard, and they ignored her utterly.

As she picked up a book she was met with another arrival. An Arrancar by the looks. She gave him a passing gaze with her single visible eye, then returned to the book in her hand which had started crumbling from centuries of decay.

"Oh, time does seem to pass even in this forsaken place", she remarked with far more interest in that event than the sudden appearance of the Arrancar. She had felt his power fill the room, and immediately wrote him off as insignificant.

Meanwhile, the newcomer, still with his hands resting in the pockets of his trousers and most of his body concealed by his cloak, looked around the room unhurriedly. He slanted backward for a while, then began pacing across the vast area at a casual pace. The echo of his footsteps was a steady rhythm.

"Some sort of library, huh? In here?", he mused, suddenly turning around and changing direction. "Why the hell would somebody collect books in an underground cave? And why the hell would you come here, Shinigami-chan? It's a dangerous place for little women like you", he added as he began marching toward Dragan abruptly, his pace unchanging.

The act of tucking his hands in the pockets was, in fact, slightly more than a nonchalant gesture. In doing that, he parted his cloak a little. Worn, tattered rag of formerly white cloth that was still capable of masking his spiritual pressure. With his abdomen exposed, a fraction of his power began seeping into the environment idly, quickly stretching out across the expanse of that peculiar ancient library. An amount sufficient to draw the Shinigami's attention, however briefly, it seemed. He was able to sense her own power, and was not really surprised she did not evidently feel threatened by his presence. Yet.

"Didn't your mommy teach you to avoid such dark, desolate places?", he asked whilst he was approaching her. "You might come across some sort of shady character, such as... me."

One moment, he was walking toward her casually. The other, he was standing beside her, leaning toward the side of her head. There was no sound, no gust of wind, no flicker, no immediately discernible transition. Even the motes of dust floating in the air did not seem to move at all when he abruptly changed location within an instant. Inching closer to the woman, his face was still obscured by the shadow cast upon it by his hood, though the shape of his mask was partially visible from beneath.

"What'cha reading?", he inquired.

Nothing, evidently. The book was rife with decay, its pages yellowed beyond belief. Whatever its words had been written in was so far past expiring that the entirety of the thing was illegible. The book drifted in the air, decomposing into scraps that themselves turned into particles. Perhaps more curiously was the lack of Jaromira's presence as it happened. The book had rested there in the air, crumbling on its own, and the woman that Sakaala thought he'd drawn so close to was nowhere to be found.

Her heels clapped against the solid floors, ringing out an echo from somewhere behind him, the red-headed woman soon appearing once more. She was already knee deep into the study of another book.

"Is this Cyrillic? No, Glagolitic but the script is mangled...", her hands ran down the pages and her tone almost shuddered with intrigue. She could understand some of the characters as they were presented, whilst others struck her as familiar but twisted from what she knew. It wasn't a mark of age, in fact the book looked relatively clean and well-kept, so she assumed it had to have been recent. Who would use a dead language so poorly? she pondered. Looking up from the book just in time to avoid stepping into a bookcase, she realised this was a particularly poor place to hypothesise. She clapped the book shut and lazily turned it in her hand where in the work of literature was swallowed by a tiny orb of black. Her Reiatsu flared ever briefly with the indelible signature of Kidō.

It flared again, and the woman leaped into the air casually. Landing relatively softly atop one of the stone shelves. She pressed herself forward, and placed her hand over her forehead, trying to see the back of the room in the distance. She let out a hefty sigh, not because she couldn't but because she had something else on her mind.

"I could have the Twelfth ransack the place", she remarked, twirling on her heel to begin pacing along the length of the bookcase.

"Hmph, Central 46 would see that as provocation I imagine", she postulated, having only recently been on the receiving end of the endless posturing of those idiots. Tirades upon tirades of endless rules and restrictions that were to be followed to the letter. She readily believed that they were given to her purely on the assumption that she would break them. They were right, of course. Jaromira's presence here in Hueco Mundo was already a violation. Not that she cared, they were unlikely to have the means to ever trap her in Muken again.

"Hm. Maybe I... No, that fool would grin from ear-to-ear and my heart would melt", the topic changed, but the strength of her tone suggested that this was what she had been avoiding. Her pacing came to a halt and she took a seat.

"Five hundred years and I know I still wouldn't be able to resist", these were the trials of the heart, or Jaromira had come to guess. It infuriated her.

Meanwhile, the Arrancar she kept ignoring was walking toward her again, as nonchalant as ever. There was no reason for him to feel any surprise. Firstly, her absent-minded behaviour was far from being strange, especially considering that his own behaviour was quite outlandish in general. More than that, he had seen many a lunatic or perceived lunatic throughout his long life, and he was not one to be bothered by such attitude in the first place. Secondly, as abrupt and unpredictable as she ostensibly was, the Arrancar was able to perceive every single motion she performed with crystal clarity. For, apart form the sharp senses one could expect of any high-level spiritual being, he had his own, rather unique ones, to supplement them.

In interaction with any other being, he was traditionally the one to surprise with his trademark casual capriciousness. That was the result of a little more than simple personality quirks, however. Conversely, he himself was prone to feel curious instead.

"A high-ranking Shinigami scouring an underground library in the middle of Hueco Mundo's nowhere, so lost in thought that she disregards the blade resting against her neck", he remarked in a tone that did not exactly sound threatening, more pensive and amused, rather. "Now that's quite a sight, even right after spending a whole millenium in the depths of Hell."

Eventually, he stopped in front of her, looming over the woman like some sort of off-white spectre with nebulous features and somewhat lanky silhouette.

"Anyhow, what's the matter? Are you heartbroken or something, Shinigami-chan?", he asked, only to tilt his head backward. "Ah, right, I probably should introduce myself before asking such a personal question."

With those words, he reached toward his hood and uncovered his head. He had a diamond-shape face with the unmistakble remnants of the Hollow mask, not unlike an opera mask, on the right side and four pink stars upon his left cheek. Styled in a braid, his platinum blond hair reached below his shoulders, and two eyes of vibrant green were fixed at Dragan. The pale lips of the Arrancar outstretched in a fairly predatory smile.

"My name is Sakaala, nice to meet you", he said, closing his eyes and widening his smile in what was likely supposed to be friendly manner.

Frankly, whilst his behaviour was not a façade, there was an astonishing degree of deliberateness to his casual attitude. One that would not become apparent for some time, particularly because of not a hint of phoniness to it and the lack of prior experience on the Captain's part. Actually, by revealing his face he coincidentally let a larger portion of his power to radiate off his body, saturating the vast room immediately. The rat-like Hollows did not even have a chance to react properly ere their meagre existences were extinguished by the fraction of his idle spiritual pressure.

Jaromira propped up her arm and rested her chin atop the palm, idly watching the small rodents disintegrating amidst a power far superior to their own. It had absolutely no effect on her, of course. She could barely be made to care about her own kind on the best of days, let alone a pack of lowly Hollows. More over that spiritual power that so easily crushed those same creatures had not been able to touch Jaromira. The air around her remained still and calm, perfectly clear of the influence the creature beside her had tried to exert on the entire area.

Her gaze fell upon him, but her eyes did not so much as look at him as they did through him. His presence, his power, to her none of it was worth even acknowledging. So, when she looked in his direction, all she saw was what laid beyond him. A door, in this case, to another part of this mysterious underground library.

"Hm... I suppose I'll take a look before I return", and like that, she had moved past him. A motion that couldn't have even been registered as such. She had simply gone from sitting atop the bookcase to walking the floors once more with no visible transition in between.

Sakaala smirked. He could not readily, or rather at all, remember any situation where he would be so thoroughly ignored by someone. In general, he tended to stay in the spotlight without any effort on his part, owing to his tremendous power and notoriety. Yet that little woman continued to ignore him as if he were air even after he addressed her directly and introduced himself. Perhaps in a thousand years people forgot about Sakaala the Unfettered King? Or became insane. But that was just a part of the reason.

Another was the way she moved. Seeing that she did not seem to pay any attention to him, that was unlikely to be a deliberate tactic to impress or intimidate him. Yet, she kept making ostensibly abrupt motions with what was not Hohō, Kidō, perhaps, in a manner analogous to what he himself was prone to do in the company of others. So cute. She could move as fast as light, much faster than that, but he would still be capable of perceiving her every single motion. All of his senses were augmented, Reikaku as well, and on top of that he had his own, "seventh" sense of sorts. Unobvious to people unaware of his special ability, unsusceptible to manipulation and extremely acute all at the same time.

To him, the vast majority of spiritual beings were torpid and restrained, like puppets moved crudely with a set of strings. The mysterious Shinigami woman appeared languid to him no matter what she did, though he was intriguied by the fact he had yet to notice her strings. What a peculiar specimen he had accidentally come across. Welcome source of entertainment after a full millenium of incessant fight for survival. Not that he had anything against fighting, though.

"Seems I'm not quite as interesting as those old books", he said in a raised voice, observing as she was walking away. "Knowledge is power, eh? Y'know, I've always preferred a more personal approach than reading. Learning from experience. All I ever needed was to watch directly and come to my own conclusions. After all, nobody can take away the knowledge I've personally gained, right? And all these tomes, written and collected by different people with different views... So vulnerable, fleeting, inevitably crumble to dust and fade away into nothing..."

All of a sudden, there was a booming noise, and one of the large bookcases disappeared in a cloud of dust together with its contents.

"Like this, or that", added Sakaala, snapping his fingers twice.

And with each gesture another bookcase was destroyed, a wealth of knowledge sinking into oblivion irretrievably. The time and effort of many unknown people rendered futile in a matter of seconds, as a result of caprice of a single person.

"And then, people who seek to learn from those books are suddenly left with nothing, their path to ultimate knowledge cut off by forces beyond the little control they have over anything."

Subsequently, there was another low-pitched, thunderous noise, and the entrance to the hall that Jaromira had been walking toward collapsed, burying it.

"And when that happens, will they disappear as well?", the Arrancar whispered into her left ear, now right beside her.

A whisper that was little more than wind, deafened and silenced by the hum that found itself emanating from Jaromira. The expression she held remained unchanged in the wake of the Arrancar's destruction. Of course it did, she was an incredibly self-sure woman. She wasn't a scholar of the world so much as she was the arbiter of her own rules and logic. A few hundred, even a few thousand of those books, could contain the secrets to millennia lost knowledge and history but it didn't matter. They would inevitably rely on the rules put forward by people that weren't Jaromira, so why would she care if they were lost? To have mistaken her earlier curiosity for something so trite as the Arrancar seemed to believe was humorous, but nonetheless unworthy of her attention.

She continued on undaunted, seemingly about to walk into the rubble that now barred the former entryway. As she came face-to-face with it, however, the broken stone and fragmented wood found themselves removed from her presence. As if someone had drawn down an eraser and rubbed out bits and pieces of the landscape. Everything that drew close enough to touch Jaromira simply vanished out of existence, perfectly and cleanly. The rubble out of her reach remained perfectly still, undisturbed by the act. Though the space had been removed, it almost looked like nothing had occurred, bar the obvious lack of physical matter in the area Jaromira walked through.

In the end Jaromira was a person bound only to her own rules, for Sakaala to destroy the knowledge and wisdom of others did nothing to her, for she would build it anew anyway as she always did. A rather eloquent thought she surmised as she found herself standing in an opulent throne room. A gigantic wide staircase that marched up to meet a throne far too big for anything short of a giant to sit upon without looking like an unfitting speck in comparison. Truly, the dimensions of this building were a sight unseemly. Jaromira scoffed, there was little to be expected from Hollow architects.

"So annoying", the vast room reverberated with the voice of Sakaala as he walked in. "All I wanted was to talk... but people either freak out or completely ignore me. I'm starting to miss Hell, for fuck's sake."

That was difficult to tell, how much of his behaviour was typical, genuine, and what part was fully deliberate in order to provoke a certain kind of reaction. Perhaps, the Arrancar himself was not entirely sure. If anything, those understated displays of his exasperation were symbolic rather than intended for explicit showcase of his power. After all, for the time being he wanted to convey a message, receive the Shinigami woman's attention. Words failed him, as did those more explicit displays, and he was growing weary.

In the end, he stopped a few metres away from her and took a while to nonchalantly look around the spacious room. The giant throne was quite appealing. The idea of an underground castle in Hueco Mundo was fairly intriguing of its own. Hardly adequate to keep him here for long, not with the untold diversity offered by the much more interesting Soul Society. Nevertheless, he could use a "home" of sorts, a relatively safe area to return to after a fruitful excursion to the realm of Souls.

"I might as well talk to an empty room", he added in a pensive tone. "I'm gonna claim this place for me, so be a good girl and disappear, okay?", said Sakaala whilst waving his hand at Dragan in a casual manner.

But there was more than met the eye to that seemingly casual gesture. Having observed her and analysed her spiritual pressure for a while, Sakaala unexpectedly unleashed a powerful attack upon her. Grieta, an inherently augmented version of the bog standard Cero, laced with his signature power. In short, a focussed strike consisting of specifically adjusted gravitational waves, customised for the sake of his unresponsive companion. And as the Arrancar's power spiked for the instant required to launch the attack, so it was surprisingly potent. The room shook in foundations, the air carried a defeaning hum, but there was no destruction, for the Grieta was concentrated upon the Shinigami woman to avoid collateral damage.

Sakaala smirked. He doubted he could destroy her with such a simple attack, but since he had put a tiny amount of effort into it, it was far from a light blow. In fact, a spiritual being of great spiritual power would still be unlikely to survive as the particles of one's body would be forcefully separated and converted into pure energy, disintegrating the unfortunate target in the blink of an eye. Hopefully, such a move would finally result in some kind of reaction from the red-haired woman, though needing to vent off his frustration, Sakaala did not intend to stop merely at that no matter the reaction.

(Im)mortal Combat!

The way Jaromira had transitioned from place-to-place, the means by which she caused the rocks to erase themselves from her presence, she had been clearly using Kidō this whole time. Though it was silent, and without motion to call its own, that residual sense, a niggling feeling at the back of the mind registered all of her actions as the undeniable results of spellcraft. A sensation that had yet to disappear after she had entered the throne room. Her body had been cloaked in magic, for her most natural feat was to embody the spells that she used. It couldn't be seen, for it was a spell that acted as little more than kinetic forces, but it could be felt. There had been an audible hum around her, as if something were radiating with life.

She had been in the midst of turning to face her predator when the Cero collided with that invisible force. It was Shō, elevated to such a point that its basic form for her was completely unrecognisable to those who believed its basic form was still a minor little push against something. It stood there, an undulating wall of pressure holding against the tide of opposing force brought on not only by the presence of a killer Reiatsu, but gravity as well. That attack would have won out too, but Jaromira had been receptive to the changes in her opponent, hence her own motion.

Her Reiatsu flared ever so slightly and in an instant the underground palace became host to her energy. Every step, every far flung nook, corner, and cranny now carried her presence. The force behind Shō scaled to match, erasing the attack that had crashed against it. It was like a knife on a chopping board, cutting through the outer most layer of the attack, catching the next and repeating the process until there was nothing left but severed fragments of Reishi. It was a feat performed so quick that it could only be measured in picoseconds, and in that sense, it was better to say it took no time at all.

"Hoh~", she remarked with an audible tic. Finally, for the first time since Sakaala's arrival in this place, Jaromira had come to regard his presence. And, as she always did, found him wanting. A Hollow, an Arrancar, dressed in that typical white colour scheme, though the leatherwork of his clothing did help differentiate him from those impressionable fools that had adopted the tastes of Sōsuke Aizen. She hadn't needed something like that to tell he was old, however. She could feel it in the air, his spiritual power carried that nostalgic twinge that one could only associate with great age. If she were to hazard a guess, he was probably even older than herself.

"It is the mark of someone inferior to react with vitriol when they are ignored", Jaromira remarked aloud, making some very acute accusations about Sakaala's personality. She had heard what he'd spoken earlier, but she hadn't listened. He hadn't been worth heeding, she wasn't sure he was even now, to be frank. "Pray tell, what gives you the right to waste my time?"

"Inferior, eh?", rather than comment upon the fact the Shinigami woman had finally acknowledged his presence at all, Sakaala decided to respond directly to her words. "In what way? Race, rank, social standing? Intelligence? Maybe... Power?", he asked a sequence of questions with a grin plastered on his face.

With those words, he unbuttoned the buckles of his leathery cloak and cast it aside with a swift motion, letting the full scope of his spiritual pressure manifest. There was a tremendous, profound vibration, a deafening hum whilst every single particle in the spacious room, from the material that composed the floor and walls, the throne, up to and including particles of dust, spiritual energy, air, quaked in the wake of his power unbridled, as if the whole Hueco Mundo shivered at the release of such ungodly spiritual might. And yet, that was just his idle spiritual pressure, the tip of the iceberg that was the power of one of the most powerful Arrancars in the entire history.

"Inferior is such a funny word", he continued, now striding about Dragan, not a hint of exertion or irritation on his part, just the usual laid-back attitude. "People use that word to make themselves feel better, introduce "ranks" and "tiers" to justify their perceived superiority and their deeds. But I don't need that. To me, "inferior" means people, because everyone is inferior to me. And I certainly needn't "justify" anything I do, which includes wasting your oh so precious time, Shinigami-chan."

Then, he stopped abruptly and spread his arms. His appearance, with his whole upper body exposed, straddled the line between impressive and grotesque. He was very tall, almost skeletal, but extremely toned at the same time, with his lanky silhouette wreathed in wiry muscles and no trace of fat upon his body. He had never attended an academy, he had never had a master or mentor, he had never read a scroll to obtain knowledge. Rather, he learnt from personal experience, observed as others fought, for decades, centuries, millennia, always strove to express himself in the midst of combat instead of assuming any sort of arbitrary "form" or "style".

And, after a thousand years of constant combat, a literal training from Hell, he was in peak condition, perhaps even more powerful than he used to be just before his death, that day when the stubborn one-eyed man somehow managed to overcome him. In the end, there was also the Hollow hole, a medium-sized orifice in the solar plexus region of his body, allowing Jaromira an unobstructed view of what was behind the Arrancar should she attempt to look through it. The unmistakable sign of his identity as one of the darkest spiritual beings in existence. Still in existence.

All of a sudden, there was a booming sound. Two swords appeared in his hands out of thin air, elegant yet predatory sickle swords known as ancient khopesh. The physical form of his sealed Zanpakutō, the majority of his power confined in two separate objects, perhaps because of its extent, perhaps as a result of yet another of Sakaala's caprices. The Arrancar twirled them casually, then pointed the right one directly at Jaromira's face.

"Y'see, from my perspective, you're the one wasting my time. But in the absence of most of those factors that let people such as you "decide" whose perspective's supposedly superior, there's only one way to determine that, right? Like my old friend used to say, words are meaningless, so let our deeds do the talking, okay?"

Sakaala changed the grip on the left khopesh to a reverse one, then vanished. Not precisely, but that would be the way most onlookers could perceive his movement. In fact, he reached out and warped the space around him, augmenting his inherently incredible speed even further, and began circling about Dragan, an indistinct blur, a cyclone of spinning death with two blades cutting at her an untold amount of times per second. Then, the Arrancar shifted the grip again and started thrusting at her with both of the swords, puncturing the fabric of space with every move. Subsequently, he unleashed several broad arcs of dimensional rifts upon her, each of them channeled through a swing of a khopesh, and leapt backward. Two more slashes, to release two volleys of Púlsar, hybrid metaphysical projectiles that combined spiritual energy with surprisingly potent spatial ripples.

Throughout that assault, he was smiling. Not a muscle flexed because of strain, no veins bulging out, no faint aura of exerted spiritual pressure. Despite the ostensible ferocity and undeniable devastating might of his manoeuvre, that was merely the opening, a way to test the Shinigami's defences. Sakaala had already realised she was a proficient Kidō user, and that entailed wards. The spiritual shell he had to crack in order to get to the tasty, fragile inside. As much as the wizards boasted about their supposed comprehensiveness and impenetrability, all wards had rules and limitations restraining their effectiveness, so all he had to do was to discover those of this particular specimen. That was going to be fun, no doubt, gradually dismantling defences of the arrogant woman to ultimately have his way with her.

He had more immediate concerns than the possibility of wards, however. For that force that had stopped Sakaala's first attack was still there. Shō. A spell of such limited nature in the eyes of the bookmakers that it had been labeled as Hadō #1. So limited in its capacity for destruction that it was considered more of a support spell than something meant to elicit the same effects as such spells as Shakkahō or Byakurai. To be present in a battle of this was surely an insult in the eyes of some, but there-in would they have been marked as fools. That spell that so handily eradicated Sakaala's malformed Cero could not have been anything less than an incredible expression of force, an utterance of Shō that had broken well beyond those preconceived notions. True enough, one would be hard pressed to realise that particular spell, as in Jaromira's hands it was almost something else entirely. She wore it as a shroud, an invisible cloak that could be acknowledged solely by that buzzing hum it created. And the power it managed to exude.

The scarlet-haired woman seemed to make no reaction at all within the onslaught arrayed against her. The slashes and strokes of the swordsman were far too fast to follow for the naked eye, and the forces they brought to bare were beyond the realm of even the greatest Shinigami swordsmen. One could have been forgiven for expecting her to simply weather the blows for better or worse, but her reactions were something more nefarious than that. Her eyes, usually a cold discerning silver had become a pure serene white, but they projected a demeanour of aggression, painting that same serenity with the ferocity of a white hot blaze. It was right to expect that Jaromira couldn't follow him with her eyes in the natural state. She had spent the last 500 years looking at nothing but empty space, a woefully lacking locale for training such a sense. But she wasn't restricted from following him at all. Her eye, just as her aura, had become Shō. She could see every single expression, even if they had only the most minute delays, so long as there was force behind it she could see it coming.

So it was that the swings of his blade were deflected not by whatever defenses the Hollow was expecting, but by a measured offense that matched them blow for blow. It wasn't enough to have just repelled the physical strikes however, as the beast's assault betrayed his powers. The very air split apart by attacks that sought to rip apart the very world around them on a metaphysical scale. The resulting clash could have been likened to a child playing with a zipper. The dimensional space was cleft open, splitting in either direction, creating a notable distortion upon the very perception of the world. Then, as Shō passed beyond it, pushing Sakaala's Reiatsu out of existence the tears found themselves closed, re-mended as those attacks returned across their own trajectory before they met an unkind end. A fate shared by those eery Púlsar bullets that hopelessly exploded against a kinetic force so much greedier than themselves. For a moment, Jaromira had to wonder if he would be able to notice the similarities.

"Hm? Everything about you marks you as inferior, the fact that you wish to argue the term is more than justification, it is proof", she responded in a tone that was clearly haughty. She had begun sitting atop her own proverbial high horse, and one needed more indication of that than to hear her voice echo throughout the throne room. It was slight, but the echo wasn't a natural one. The air had been contorted in such a way as to amplify the woman's voice. "Need I even mention that you are a person? Under your own definition you too are inferior".

A lacking clarity of language was also a mark of inferiority to her. If ones words could be twisted so easily to poke at holes, real or imagined, then the ability to call oneself superior was lost. After all, superiority implied dominance, and one could not be dominant if it were so easy to challenge them.

"There is nothing to decide, your actions thus far have been little better than those of a child grasping for attention", Jaromira was hardly content to simply sit still and watch Sakaala try attack after attack against her. No, she was a woman that preferred to be on the offensive. That is why, as she spoke, she continued to manipulate the world around them with Shō. Pressure applied itself to the back wall of the room, causing the stone to crack and shudder before giving way to a massive sea of sand. They were a great depth below the surface of Hueco Mundo, amidst sand dunes and earthen crags so it was no surprise to find that behind the labyrinthine halls awaited trillions of dusty grains. Pressure became wind, carrying that sand into a swirling vortex that rapidly consumed the room, concentrating on Sakaala of course.

"I suppose, if I must, I will be the one to discipline you", she declared. The sand had a twofold purpose, filling the room with it made it harder to move, no matter the speed of her opponent, so long as it was there it presented a hindrance. One that Jaromira did not share, given her relative unmoving approach thus far. On top of that, with so much of the stuff on hand, consuming the entirety of the previously stone-white room in a golden bronze, visibility was rendered minimal for them both. And though they could still sense each other, their actions had now become unclear.

Again, Shō changed. Wind became sound, and the air was filled with a deafening roar that muted everything beneath its cry. The crushing sands became a vibrating mass, further confusing the situation at hand. Then and only then did Jaromira unleash that which she would call an attack. Her gaze centered on where Sakaala was, conjuring forth the same power that had been hidden in her aura. Two imperceptible lances blazed across the air in the shortest of instances, erasing the sand, the sound, the very air as they shot forth intent on doing the same to that Arrancar.

"Ah, so you're one of those. How clever", replied Sakaala before the whole desert seemed to crash down upon him, rolling his eyes during that snide remark.

Across millennia he had encountered and battled countless varying individuals. Most of them were unworthy of much attention, but some did pique his curiosity. The numbers accumulated quickly anyway, so he began devising mental labels for different types of people he had met. His nameless opponent was one of the self-righteous sort, the kind that would twist his every word and every action in a way they thought would make them somehow seem superior, no matter how laughable he thought they were in the end. In fact, his own attitude was quite similar, though he preferred a more nonchalant, friendly approach rather than verging so deep into the extreme of arrogance so as to appear as ludicrous as his peculiar companion.

He did not mind acting childish or being called as such either. People who were serious all the time were willingly putting on yet another metaphorical straitjacket upon their minds, in addition to the many layers imposed upon them by birth and culture. He acted whichever way he wanted, he did whatever he wanted, and all those smug or stilted people could yammer as much as they liked to, ignorant, choking on their own idiocy with every word. Ultimately, that would not change anything. Especially their inevitable fate.

The spacious room was ruined. Whatever. He used to travel across the whole Soul Society during his glory days. That meant he would simply resume the old habit. Nevertheless, there were more immediate matters to resolve. His poking at the woman's defences was about as ineffective as he had expected, ostensibly, for the real purpose was to get a better feeling of its quality. What had transpired was not the doing of wards, but some active means. Presumably, a Kidō spell. Suddenly, a vortex of swirling sand, an incredible mass of quartz surrounded him from all sides, but did not quite reach him. So he stood there, suspended in the air, musing about the situation. Then, the sand began channelling potent vibrations, so he focused slightly to maintain a lock on his opponent with the use of his seventh sense. Then, he perceived two disturbances among the mass travelling toward him, very fast.

Fast. How funny. He was not the physically strongest warrior, neither the toughest, nor was his stamina inexhaustible. But his agility and perception were unrivalled. Various warriors measured their speed, attempted to outpace and outclass others, climbing ever higher tiers. But to race with Sakaala was to automatically lose. The moment somebody challenged his overall nimbleness, the moment one readied oneself on the starting line, they would soon realise he had already waited for them at the finish, if realise anything at all, before he would cut them down. In general, his casual attitude even in the midst of battle could be explained shortly: he had already won, it was just a matter of time for the world and the enemy to realise that. There was nothing to worry about in such a case, was there?

As such, acting with reflexes that not even the speed of light would be able to match, he shifted the invisible shroud of Urdimbre protecting his body ever so slightly, condensing the spatial distortions precisely on the two points the incoming attack targeted. In consequence, the two piercing streams did not quite pierce his defences, but continued onward, just in different directions, away from his body. His own initial attack was hardly impressive, but for the high and mighty Shinigami to follow up such a speech with such a strike was... pitiful? Amusing? Perplexing? Probably a mix of those.

He wondered what was the purpose of all that sand around him. To crush him? Nah. To impress him? Nope. To offer a nigh-insurmountable obstacle between him and the Shinigami woman? Please. She had yet to discover, however, that terms such as "distance" or "obstacle" meant next to nothing to him. Not from his perspective. Usually, he was the one to dictate how did such phenomena work, if he was willing to let them work at all. So, for him, there might have been as well fresh air separating him from the opponent.

Effortless attacks would not achieve anything, that much was obvious. So, that was the time for normal attacks. With the use of his dear, versatile special ability. The one that had consumed so many lives, so many grand warriors and famous prodigies that he could fill a sea of crimson with the whole of their blood. Thus, he swung both of his khopesh, and the space in front of him parted. That was not a strike that "travelled" toward the target, but happened. Within an instant two dimensional rifts opened between Sakaala and the Shinigami woman, paying no heed to the masses of sand, distance or time. Not that wards would amount to much, not most of them from what he knew, though he suspected she would not die to a single strike like that. So, naturally, he followed up with another one, this time piercing the dimensional plane with the tips of his twin sickle swords, causing the blades to travel through a miniature wormhole and hopefully strike directly at her, through her, perhaps. Both attacks were virtually instantaneous, so frankly there was simply no time to deploy any countermeasures, bar pre-existing ones. Yes, that was a more sensible way to test her wards, instead of bouncing off some sort of makeshift interference.

And only then did he swing one of his blades to the side, swiping a giant portion of the sand vortex away, removing the visual obstruction between the two combatants nonchalantly.

"Heyo!", he exclaimed with a smile.

Amidst an ocean pouring in constantly from the broken wall, his attack served to do little more than carve away at space that immediately refilled. Allowing Jaromira to hear a rather muffled exclamation through the gathering walls of grain and quartz particles. There was the faintest twitch in her bored expression there, her lips contorting into a brief smile. The sound that reached back to her, garbled as it was had been rather amusing to hear. It was followed by an inward chiding, her sense of humour must have dulled after so long in Muken. Pitiful.

In the midst of that action. That tiny little gesture of expression, all manner of combat actions had taken place. As before, Jaromira could not see the attacks that took place before her. She felt them. Those eyes, altered by their inheritance of magic, could perceive the force behind Sakaala's actions. She did not have to see the attack themselves, for her response to them remained the same as before, with that imperceptible field of energy that hugged itself tightly around her body. She needed to do only one thing, command it to stretch outward, to intercept the oncoming blows. She could not see them as they happened, but she knew their number and that, that was enough. In that space of time known only as an "instant", a slim variable where very few actions could be utilised, Jaromira had thrown her hand into play. Her expression little more than thought combined with the minimal distance that her aura could expand in that timeframe. What mattered however, wasn't the distance the field covered, but the fact that it was moving forward at all.

Shō was force in all its forms, on a conceptual level, Jaromira wasn't fighting with the grandiosity that the Hollow believed it had. She was merely pushing at gatherings of Reiatsu and Reishi, impacting them with a force so intense as to erase them from existence. As those atomic forces collapsed so too did their outward forms. This was how she re-affixed space by crushing that which should have severed it, this is how she caused even a wormhole to collapse upon itself. Jaromira was not bothered by her "opponent"'s desire to attack at a lightened pace, ever increasing the force he expressed as things went on, but she had not entered the fray with the same mindset. No, when Jaromira fought, she always brought out the necessary strength to make her enemies useless. A wall that could weather any blow, a wave that could consume any defense, that was Shō to her and it was something that she best expressed herself in. There was no point in providing a lesser means of offense or defense, these pointless battles would cease as soon as her opponents discovered they could no more strike her as defend against her. This one would too, given time.

She wasn't beyond testing someone, that's what the environment was for after all. Those sands were a handy means of probing at her foe. No matter what he decided to do, his reactions were telling. And given just how much of it there happened to be, she could continue making use of it to test him further and further. But for the moment, his attacks had failed. Shō flooded out to meet them and as they expressed their powers against each other, the latter fell short. Pure force against dimensional cuts and spatial distortions was not a conventional match up, no, in any normal sense the force should have been swept aside. But these were conflicts of Reiatsu, of expressed power. Jaromira won then, because she hadn't deigned to hold herself back.

The next step was offense then. Shō continued to stretch, obliterating all of the sand that was currently in the room, breaking those grains down into even tinier forms as bondless masses of Reishi that were quickly consumed and used as fuel to expand Shō further. It was an act that took no time, despite the weight of the effect, happening in the very instant after the clash between Sakaala's attack. The room was consumed by an incredible crushing force, space was layered and warped, bending all around as gravitic forces started to alter the principles of the very air. When the sand again rushed into the room, it filled up in odd ways that quickly turned the place into an abstract painting. For an "attack", it was relatively simple in nature, far more intent on seeing how Sakaala would handle it. Would the altered space slow him down? Would the fact that it was now aspected to Jaromira? Would he be simply crushed under the weight of it all? She was intent on seeing what would happen.

Meanwhile, a wide grin formed on Sakaala's bemasked countenance.

As silly as she was, he had indeed discovered a rare gem in the midst of Hueco Mundo's endless white desert. He was an extremely perceptive individual, and exceedingly quick-thinking as well. Her demeanour, manner of speaking, all the little displays of her magical prowess and the peculiar sensation exuded by her considerable spiritual power were indication of her unique status. She was one of them. One of the few beings that were more than insects crawling at the Arrancar's feet. One of those few he did not squash like bugs they were whenever he felt like it, but an intriguing being with power sufficient to offer a challenge.

Power against power. Skill against skill. Resolve against resolve. A contest of wit and prowess. Without the burden of making the encounter entertaining himself, Sakaala was free to enjoy himself to the fullest. There was no need to hold back. Usually, most of his opponents tended to fall apart the moment he decided to flex his muscles. But not this time. This time, he could tap into his bottomless potential genuinely without being afraid that his temporary toy would break immediately afterward. Ah, he so cherished those rare opportunities to display his ungodly might in all its glory...

Nevertheless, there was an attack incoming that he should take care of. If not for his astounding perception and reflexes, he would have probably ceased to exist without even realising what had transpired. However, the fact his reaction times and speed were unequalled in the first place was the primary reason for his tendency to act recklessly, and the affordability of such an approach in the face of such a potent enemy. An interesting attack, one that consumed his previous one and threatened to crush him instantly. Somewhat similar to a showcase of his own signature power. But there laid its main weakness. There were traits of his that many people proved capable of exceeding, and then there were traits of his that none could hope to match. Such was the case with spatial manipulation, a conceptual ability permeating his whole existence so profoundly that his usage thereof could be deemed divine, alien in extent and magnitude, dumbfounding and incomprehensible to the vast majority of spiritual beings no matter their own power or skill.

Effort. Sakaala did not like to strain himself, not in general, but this situation was more than worthy of active participation. So that he outstretched his spiritual pressure in all directions, across the room, the entire underground structure, through the ground and beyond, toward the sky. Unbridled, his spiritual power tinted everything with a distinct pink hue. Then, he made his move. The tremendous Shō expanding toward him was stalled, then stopped, only a couple of metres from reaching his body. Because what good was a single grain of sand against the whole desert? Even as they reached toward the fabric of existence, people were slaves to deeply ingrained concepts that forever limited their performance. Sakaala controlled space, all of it. Space was everywhere, it was everywhere, and he had no reason to fear such a tiny bubble. In fact, he could make it burst like a bubble with comparable effort to the more literal example.

The walls cracked and collapsed, the desert flooded the area, even the sky was warped toward the Arrancar and his unnamed Shinigami counterpart, a colossal spatial distortion that surrounded her spell from all sides and attempted to crush it, crush her, with the weight of a celestial body. A single impulse, an implosion of tremendous proportions, with Sakaala safe within that tempest of horrible devastation. Ready to continue. He felt he insulted his opponent with the effortless attacks he had performed before, so it was time to recognise her skill with something of a higher magnitude. Or several orders of magnitude higher, in fact.

Thus, immediately in the aftermath of the gargantuan implosion, Sakaala tightened his grip on the fabric of space and began swinging both of his blades. For all intents and purposes they vanished, imperceptible to any mundane sense, as he showered the red-haired woman with dozens, hundreds, thousands of slashes and thrusts, weaving the severely concussive Púlsar projectiles seamlessly into his vicious assault. More, more, with each passing seconds the omnidirectional attacks multiplied exponentially, until it was no longer feasible to describe them with any immediately recognisable number. A gross overkill in basically any other instance, but not this time. If she were so superior, she would endure the implosion, endure the infinite strikes, somehow. But for how long?

The space around her last known location contorted, twisted and sunk into itself, abhorrent to behold to anyone but Sakaala himself. The constant whizz of spatial sword strikes and booming explosions of the Púlsar drowned the area in an incessant cacophony of dimensional destruction. Ever escalating as he was wrapping more and more space around her, pouring more and more of his spiritual pressure and willpower into it, to emphasise the degree of control he had over it. To express better than he ever could with the use of words that single, simple fact that was the underlying concept behind the person that was Sakaala: the universe was his playground.

The introduction and the main body were already there. In consequence, it was high time for a proper conclusion. Without stopping the onslaught in preparation, the Arrancar spoke a single word, one the unnamed Shinigami was unlikely to hear given the current situation:

"Grieta."

One last swing and it was a colossal gravitational wave that erupted from the curved blade. Tremendous wave vibrating at frightening frequency, grounding every single particle on its path into pure energy before causing all forms of matter within range cease to exist, carving deep into the geological crust as it did so and introducing, if for a brief moment, a perfect vacuum in the middle of earth. With that, Sakaala rapidly warped himself back to the surface of the white desert... because he did not want to listen to the ensuant noise as the surrounding ground began collapsing upon the hole he had punched into it. The faint aura of pink spiritual pressure outlining his body faded away, and he assumed a relaxed pose, wondering if he did not overdo that assault. In the end, he had a feeling he would see the peculiar woman fairly soon, if somewhat worse for wear. He snickered at that thought.

He was right on that count, but wrong on the others. His assumption that Jaromira's Shō was something ever so localised was foolhardy at best, as it represented an expression of the entire concept of force. Just as space was everywhere so were the myriad forms that force could take, in fact, space was just one of many things that fell under its purview, so easily expressed in a way that could crush whatever stood around it, as Sakaala himself had been demonstrating. To treat her spell as something small when it was in fact so much larger than could ever be physically expressed was a flaw on his part, and one Jaromira was all too happy to take advantage of. Her Reiatsu was unleashed, and in an instant, Hueco Mundo had found itself a God. There was no expression of an aura, no her Reiatsu very much still possessed the qualities of her Shō, rather it was perhaps best noted by the dimming of Sakaala's aura's effect on their environment. Her power rang out for a distance spanning entire countries, a hum that could cover the entire Seireitei multiple times without issue. Stretching on and on to a point that it was impossible to tell just how far it had went. Perhaps it had even covered the entirety of this spiritual realm.

The aura that sat tightly around her body expanded once again, becoming a bubble that stood in the way of Sakaala's imperceptible onslaught. There was no feasible way for her to block that armada of sword strokes and dimensional distortions in any sort of way that could be considered conventional. That is exactly why she chose such a time to eke out a bit more of her power. Her Shō did not physically halt any of the attacks coming her way, but rather it "consumed" the force behind them, halting their momentum so that the effect of even a sword stroke was rendered inert. When the bombardment of attacks met their end, the results were much tamer than one would have thought. The surrounding desert, in its confused state of elevation was relatively unharmed, for the effects of those myriad attacks had yet to actually happen. They would do so of course, Jaromira had no intent on stopping them but she had a mind to change just where this happened.

She finally moved for the first time in this back-and-forth, performing a gesture as if to cast off a cloak. Her aura, the Shō that covered her as a barrier opened outward like a bag being turned inside-out, enveloping the numerous attacks that were still "held" in place by it. Jaromira stood a few paces behind the eventual point of calamity now, observing what was now an incredibly localised space. She could cast another Shō, dominate the skies and bring down titanic forces of her own in order to pummel that tiny little space, and all of its attacks, into nothing. That would have been a needless exertion on her part, however. She had already escaped the possibility of injury, so long as she maintained her current expression of the spell. She decided to use another spell this time, Tsuzuri Raiden. Embodying it so that she could move at the speed of a lightning bolt. Nonchalantly she appeared not far from Sakaala and behind him his attacks finally erupted to their intended effect, spilling out of that tiny dimensional space that her Shō had turned into. Its power was added onto the effects, in addition to causing the area to collapse and reveal the deepest parts of the earth, a severing shockwave was unleashed. A wind that erased an entire layer of the desert beneath their feet, leaving the two beings standing a little lower than they were before.

"My, but you are incredibly straight forward aren't you", she spoke casually. It didn't come as much of a surprise really, he was an Arrancar true to form. And Arrancar rarely showed themselves to be possessed of... imagination. They were cunning predators, that she couldn't deny, but they were hardly inventive killers. For a race of beings so given to causing fear and torment, it was rare to find one that could use their powers in ways best befitting that nature. As it stood Jaromira was woefully underwhelmed. Sakaala was strong, there was no denying that, she would even go so far as to call his power profound. But he did so very little with it thus far that she could hardly be expected to express an interest in these endeavours. She cast her Shō once more.

Not as an aura this time, but as a projection. A tiny little sphere appeared in front of her, hanging there, floating. The air, the very skies, pulled down toward it. The earth rose and it quickly became apparent that space was distorting, compressing itself in this tiny orb shaped focal paint. The world was quickly becoming a caricature of an abstract painting, and before anything could be done about that the orb exploded into an incredible beam, a gargantuan projectile that covered the gap between itself and Sakaala instantaneously. It was a red, monstrous construct, that could have easily dwarfed a being as large as Yammy Llargo. It almost looked like a Cero, though its nature was far more akin to its blood-twisted cousin. The world, stretching into untold miles was pushed forward, distorting and collapsing all around Sakaala as one part of space pushed out another and so on like an eternal cascade of dominoes. In its wake, everything turned to black, creating a dark, empty gap that grew and grew every step of the way. Within that void there was nothing. No light, no air, no space. It was an empty nothingness that poked a hole in the very fathoms of Hueco Mundo. Needless to say, a beam that could create such a massive crevice of such a nature was powerful. Almost wastefully so.

The world was perfectly normal on the other side, however. And very much within Jaromira's influence. So it was that she created a multitude of Shō that each exploded in size, latching on and becoming the wind. It blew at Sakaala's back, a veritable hurricane of pressure, transcending wind to become gravitic forces and spatial waves of their own. As the creature had so enjoyed doing up to this point, Jaromira presented her own omni-directional attack, which in its wake, the world was torn asunder and the sky had begun to fall. A poetic, if inelegant, play Jaromira thought. She would force this creature to show her the very depths of what he could do, and if this happened to be it, then she would simply crush him and go about her business. Even this expression was but an inkling in the end, for she consumed years worth of lifeblood in seconds.

Sakaala observed the situation unfold, not precisely in the way he had expected. However, with his ability to process substantial input in an amount of time unfathomable to anyone else resulted in, once again, not a trace of surprise expressed from him. He was already suspecting he had encountered a unique individual, and all the lack of effectiveness of his recent assault and the inevitable retaliation did was to further support his theory. Casually destroying scores of supposedly strong enemies was rather tedious. This time, he had the exceptional opportunity to experience the thrill of actual battle, keep wondering about the opponent's next action, feel refreshing uncertainty. Not too much, of course, for the outcome could be only one.

All that changed was the fact that the path toward his victory was not as straightforward and short as it used to be, most of the time.

There she was, attempting to use space and gravity against him. Hardly surprising. She seemed to be of the especially arrogant sort, and those kind of people liked to torment others with displays of powers similar yet greater to their own. Unfortunately for the unnamed Shinigami, that was all futile. In spiritual combat, factors such as power, experience and proficiency were some of the most significant ones that determined the result of the contest. But he could forever rely upon outstanding affinity to supplement all of his other traits, so that he would emerge on top against any shoddy simulacra of his signature power, such as those that were pounding upon his defences.

Urdimbre. To compare the ability to Hierro was to compare a lantern to the sun. At all times, a shroud of spatial distortions was protecting his body, subtle, imperceptible, flexible. Sakaala watched the crude spectacle unleashed by his opponent and adjusted Urdimbre accordingly, manipulating the notion of distance, an inherent element of space, and emanating gravitational vibrations to cancel out otherwise exceedingly powerful attacks raining upon him. Vibrations of untold frequencies, absorbing the hostile ones. That kind of power was impressive indeed. Perhaps, if she had fought any other opponent, that would be the end of the fight. But for him it was a rather peculiar endeavour of hers, to surpass someone at the person's forte without the precious few qualities absolutely necessary to succeed in such an extremely difficult, all but impossible, task. He acted deliberately, efficiently, defending from the onslaught with the least amount of effort required to ultimately emerge unscathed.

"Yeah, pretty much", he replied eventually, now that he was able to continue their conversation, if for a short while. "By the way, you seemed to be confused earlier on. So, I'll explain my notion of superiority to you."

With those words, nonchalant as usual, he turned toward her and assumed an outwardly relaxed pose. In the meantime, his own spiritual pressure was permeating the surroundings. It did not precisely fend off or otherwise overcome that of the woman. No, it did not even have to. Just as his power, his ability existed in a metaphorically, or perhaps almost literally, another dimension from those of everyone else. His resource was space, so he assumed control of it, stretching his presence toward the horizon and beyond, once again granting the whole of Hueco Mundo a distinct pink aura. He continued to expand his area of influence, fluently, effortlessly, like he had been doing for three millennia.

"Y'see, I am Sakaala, the Unfettered King. I don't listen to anyone. I don't care about orders, warnings, requests or suggestions. I do what I wanna do, always, forever. But what about you, Twelfth Division Captain?", he asked with a smirk, tilting his head to the side. "Superiors, colleagues, subordinates. Role, duties, tasks", he listed, twirling one of the swords as he was speaking. "But you ain't just a soldier, are you? What about family, friends, acquaintances, servants, mentors, students, lovers?"

Then, he reversed the grip on both of his khopesh and lifted the arms so that he could make some gestures with the fingers.

"All those bonds, wrapped around you like barbed wire, injecting the venom of doubt, hesitation, concern, subconsciously affecting your every action, every thought, every word, every choice and decision you make. Restraining you in countless ways, binding you to this world, the people, and their arbitrary rules. So that you end up a puppet, dancing on the strings of your bonds. Do you think you can question my superiority? Do you think can do anything without them letting you?", he bared his teeth in a wide grin.

He felt power coursing through his body. The faint outline upon his body expanded, until it formed a flickering sphere around the very tall Arrancar. He had already made up his mind. Casual attacks not strong enough? Nigh-instantaneous strikes not fast enough? Comprehensive assaults not complex enough? Good. Very, very good. He could use a nice workout. From this point onward he would show her his genuine fighting style, his power and imagination unbridled, shifting the burden of maintaining her existence to solely her own prowess.

"You're cute", he added, the area around him undulating visibly. "A puppet deluding itself, thinking that it's a real girl. Dance, dance, little puppet, before I cut off your strings and you collapse, never to stand up."

His stance changed slightly. His eyes shone with the glow of his power. His presence could be felt across the whole of Hueco Mundo. Sakaala, the Unfettered King, had returned, and he was ready to smite anyone who dared trespass his territory. He was ready to teach the foolish girl a lesson. He was ready to play around with a magnificent toy.

The introductions were over.

Faster Than Light

"You won't even notice when that happens."

He could perceive, think, and act faster than light. Much faster. Faster than anyone else was able to perceive or react. Whilst not obvious, that was one of his primary assets. The reason he could afford to act nonchalant in the midst of battle, lean toward and chortle at powerful warriors struggling to strike him, escaping unscathed time and again. That was fairly impressive, of the unnamed Shinigami woman to perceive and react to his former attacks. Most opponents would have already perished by now, but she was there, acting high and mighty. Unfortunately for her, there was really no set limit for how fast Sakaala could go.

To exceed light was but the first step.

His nervous system was wreathed in minute wormholes, allowing him to perceive, react and move at velocity substantially higher than the default limit for all existence, in his normal state. But that was merely a passive boon, one of his inherent traits, and like any aspect of his signature power, he could actively tweak and magnify that trait to reach new heights, unheard of before, incomprehensible to some of the greatest spiritual beings in history, yet par for the course for him. As long as she had the time to react, his opponent proved capable of doing just that. All of his previous assaults were rendered futile, whether casual or with actual effort put into them. But what if she were unable to see his attack at all until it had already transpired? What if he were to fight at his full capacity? He was curious to discover the answer.

The world stood still.

That was a peculiar feeling. Normally, everyone seemed sluggish and awkward to him. Abrupt actions were telegraphed, ambushes obvious, fast attacks inching toward him like a glacier. But now that he focused his perception, time itself seemed to stop. He had transcended beyond the limitations of physics. With the shroud of Urdimbre enveloping his body with spatial distortions, he could move physically irrespective of the universal limitations, warping himself faster than stimuli received by his enemies travelled to their brains, not to mention allowing them time to think and respond accordingly. He felt good, with all that power awakened, coursing through his physical vessel. Now, he wanted to express that power, display it in its unbridled glory, make the whole world shudder in its wake.

First, there was a singular charge. Sakaala passed by the woman, performing two strikes. Then, a shower of slashes and thrusts, leaping about her like a crazed animal, deleting and inserting space interchangeably with every swing. Faster, stronger. He did not like to exert himself, but to appear ineffective against her? One could say he was insulted by the facility with which she defended from his onslaught until then. So, he had to put more effort. More. So that he contorted the fabric of space around him, projecting his presence across several locations and increasing the amount of attacks performed severalfold. A pack of one, pouncing upon a single prey. All of a sudden, he retreated, once again one person.

He had something else in mind. Perhaps she was adjusted to countering displays of spatial manipulation? One of the main aspects of his special ability was its remarkable versatility. There was no end to the varying feats he could pull off with the usage of his Aspecto. He liked that thought, so that he poured his spiritual power into the curved blades of his twin khopesh to overcharge them. Subsequently, he struck them against one another, repeatedly, to unleash tremendously augmented "sparks" that were more like bolts of horrendous lightning. Unable to control them directly, he employed spatial manipulation to lead them toward the enemy from a variety of directions. Then, he turned to friction, one of the many inhibitions he tended to overlook, and used it as a source of power. As a result, when he swung his blades afterward, the horrible friction upon them caused scarlet flames to erupt toward the Shinigami woman. One, two, three torrents, than a sideways swipe to wrap them around her, two more swings to enlarge the column of incinerating fire and one final swing to create a veritable wall of fire to sweep across the area, instantly vapourising the white sand around them as it moved onward.

And throughout that rapid onslaught, there was a wide, almost painful to look at, grin plastered on Sakaala's face. What was the last time he had met such a powerful entity? Few, if any of the many opponents who dared challenge him in Hell could compare to her. Was the last time... back then? Was it the same as fighting the only person in all of history who genuinely defeated him? No, not yet, but still... only time could tell.

"Oh, is that so?", she replied returning his words with a smirk of her own. Having embodied Tsuzuri Raiden, she had never bothered to dispel it, for it became an incredibly useful tool now that she had cast off her aura of Shō. Originally it permeated her entire being, so that she could move as lightning did, but after landing before Sakaala, she reconfigured the spell.

Though the spell she had embodied had seemingly been used up, Jaromira had not actually dispelled it. Instead she had reconfigured the lightning, so that rather than becoming part of it, the magic was now a part of her. It had been married to her nervous system, vastly increasing the ability with which she could act. Lightning moved at the speed of light, an incredible 299,792,458 metres per second. Jaromira couldn't hope to cover a distance such as that with her own mass, even had she wished to. When considering such a distance, she was little more than a speck within a speck, not even a mote of dirt in comparison. As a result, enacting such a force upon her nerves was a rather considerable trick. She was essentially operating under a state of "constancy". The very instant she thought of something, her body responded with no delay at all. Though time had essentially stopped in her opponent's eyes, Jaromira had reciprocated by becoming something beyond that failed state of measure. If time could not keep up with him, then she certainly would in its stead.

She was getting a little ahead of herself, however. Though her mind, and her ability to react were now on a level far beyond any mortal comprehension, her body was left to lag behind. She could act at the speed of light, augmenting her magic, she could even go far beyond that point. But her body was not something capable of handling such a feat. She spat upon the practices of mages, those individuals who stood still behind walls and formations of spells by fighting at the fore. Weaving her spells into the motions of her body, as such. But in the end, she repeated the folly of her fellows. The motion of a punch was a springboard for the ejection of magic was little more than a difference of method, and left the body performing those punches largely unhoned in a physical sense. Her accuracy was perfect, her motions well trained, but the muscle behind them were limited by their inability to reach their targets themselves.

She moved as he did, but her body was unable to match her actions and she was significantly slower for it. She dodged to the side, Sakaala's initial stroke passing by her, but nevertheless they nicked at her imperceptible wards. It reacted, a silent shattering that could not be seen nor heard by anyone other than Jaromira. The energy emanating around her made it almost impossible to sense their loss either, after all how could one perceive the minutia hidden amongst an endless and waking sea?

She would land a step away, a ring of sand shooting away from her foot, signifying the use of another spell. Sōkatsui had been casually molded into form beneath the earth, melting the sand around it before swiftly propelling the scarlet haired woman into the sky. She was continuously beset by her opponent, of course. His massing storm of deleted and renewed space, that gave way to a blazing sea of fire. She didn't try to avoid it at all, instead set on lifting herself high into the sky. There was no need to dodge of course, not whilst her wards were active, and in a way, she would consider this a form of praise. Three of her wards had gone silently to the void, upon them a slight, but growing, intrigue.

The flames that followed after her, surrounded her, were met with a sudden but dominating adversary. Būdoha. A massive bubble that carried enough mass to look almost monstrous, sitting there in the sky. Its mass defied any logical sense in this lifeless world, but the red-tinged hue permeating the liquid made it very clear where its source lied. It did not expand as the flames set in, but rather awaited them. The first blade of fire to make contact stirred up a reaction. Steam, at first, but then an explosion. The bubble burst, spilling forth into wave upon wave of water. It was as if an ocean had been opened in the sky, and it swiftly quenched each and every utterance of the blaze that Sakaala conjured. What remained of the water became rain, pouring down upon her foe and the vicinity. As they touched the sand, the grains found themselves erased, melting in the presence of acidic water, revealing their true colours.

Further still, the rain hid another trick, within those droplets was each an iteration of Shakkahō, brimming with the light of miniature stars with explosive power to match. Like depth charges, they detonated from beneath the outermost layer of sand, attempting to mutilate Sakaala from above and below.

"The 'unfettered' king? A rather ironic title, don't you think?", Jaromira beckoned unto the air, hardly caring for the aftermath of such an attack. Its destruction would be unfathomable still, even in a shape meant for something so precise as a lunge, but she was very much sure her foe was going to appear again, somewhere. "A king is bound to their people and their state, with no land you have nothing to govern, with no people you have nothing to rule. A king without fetters is no king".

"But it is hypocrisy then, to believe that you alone have no leash, if you can be a king with no land and no people, then what prevents me from being Captain? I have no superiors, if that were the case, I would not be here, and all those under me are little more resources to be used as I see fit", she had always held a very dim view of authority. It was central to her practices of magic, in fact. The philosophy that guided her was a simple elimination of any and all rules stipulated by others. Be they fundamental laws surrounding reality or those conjured by society to reign in its populace. None of them mattered to her in the slightest. It was no wonder then, that this battle that had so hinged on twisting the laws of physics, of space, of force, and even time meant absolutely nothing to her. Just another exercise of might. That was all Hollow were ever good for.

"The fact that you wish to 'explain' anything proves that you have no idea what superiority truly is, and that is why you remain among the rabble", though she would deride him, Jaromira was not of a mind to explain her own notion. Matching her words, that would dispel the notion that she understood superiority herself. To her superiority was innate, it was something that you had, a mark that could not be mistaken for anything else. After all, a king did not need to tell someone that they were a king. One need only look upon the lands of that king, look upon their people, their country and their court to understand that it was all centered upon one individual. A God need not explain that it is a deity, for it would be an immutable fact to everything around it that that being was the pinnacle of its origin whatever that may be. So there Jaromira stood, superior, not because she claimed to be like her opponent but simply because she was. The mere attempt to explain himself, to argue the notion of superiority ultimately locked Sakaala off from that ideal to her and any notion to the contrary was simply delusion.

She did not sit still as she blathered on, she fully expected her opponent to survive her attacks. The defenses he exuded practically guaranteed it. She had begun manifesting a great many javelins of Hyapporankan, forming them into an array behind her that numbered some several hundred copies. Like a wave, a black ink colouration washed over them, twisting the luminous indigo glow of the spells into a dull and muted dark.

Once again, Sakaala found himself actively adjusting the spatial shroud of Urdimbre to survive the enemy onslaught. Whereas that did not require a significant amount of effort, the sheer fact he had to do that was testament of the unnamed woman's prowess. Urdimbre was most effective against displays of raw power, no matter how immense, and for her to dish out such amount of said firepower that he had to consciously alter the distortions to redirect all of it away from his body was remarkable, to say the least. What was also remarkable was the fact she had been able to actually react to his faster-than-light feats, if not exactly keep up with him completely.

The moment her assault was finished, Sakaala blew away the resultant cloud of dust with a single thought channeled through his spiritual pressure. The spherical aura of spiritual energy emanating from his body was still present, a sign he was serious. Relatively serious, that is. And, right afterward, he employed his spatial abilities to augment his voice, so that it resounded across a vast area and reached the Shinigami Captain as if she were right in front of him, deep and crystal clear.

"Oh, so you don't like the irony? I thought it was amusing", he said, narrowing his eyes slightly, referring to his title.

In fact, he had noticed she was preparing to carry on the fight. Talking could wait for a while. There was no hurry. She could attempt to twist his words and present peculiar arguments to disprove his points, alleged and actual alike, all she wanted. At the end of the day, he simply liked to talk. Talk, and provoke. He wondered whether she would cease arguing with him at some point, finally realise that what he said was a fact rather than some subjective truth to be disputed, or snap and lash out at him with a few high-level spells in a fit of fury.

But that was a secondary matter. They were engaged in combat which he had been enjoying more and more as it was escalating. Owing to his extraordinary perception, even for a powerful spiritual being, he had noticed the Shinigami woman had trouble keeping up with his speed, and that her wards had been withered down slightly. How many out of how many did collapse, though? What was the exact reason for their failure? That was too early to tell, but the next few assaults would provide additional information for him to consider.

The time came for the next phase.

Suddenly, he swung both of his blades toward the Captain. Great masses of sand were lifted into the air from across the white desert, concealing the black sky from his perspective. At least, as far as his sight was concerned. Then, he unleashed a volley of modified Púlsar. Contracting space in front of their mostly spherical shapes whilst expanding space behind them, they were propelled through the shroud of white quartz with incredible speed, collecting matter upon their contorted spatial surface. Afterward, they stopped abruptly, launching all that accumulated matter toward the Shinigami with the speed of light and the ensuant momentum, hundreds of deceptively small yet devastating projectiles converging upon her from a multitde of directions. Next, was a powerful swing of his right blade. Warping space around it, his arm moved faster than light could as well, though this time without artificially adjusting the motion to be swift and nigh-imperceptible. The result was a tremendous shockwave, a gust of wind that could erase a large mountain from existence. And then, the Arrancar poured his spiritual energy into the curved sickle-blades of his khopesh and scraped them against one another. In consequence, an exceedingly potent bolt of lightning burst forth, guided toward his opponent through minute spatial distortions that rendered its path far from linear and its aim perfect.

She could already tell, even in the midst of the assault she was to endure, that her opponent had escaped unharmed. That was annoying, but not at all unexpected. It was why the array of blackened rods hovered behind her after all. At this point she had been doing as he had, testing the defenses. Seeing what worked and what didn't. Raw firepower held little effect against him, a saddening truth as it meant things would take longer. How droll, she thought inwardly. There were matters to attend to, however. His mastery over momentum was on display once again, though this time the advantage was on Jaromira's side.

She loosed a single of those hexagonal rods to intercept the oncoming mass, but of course, owing to its speed, the black javelin had barely even gotten in front of her by the time it had arrived. The clash was brief, and the outcome was obvious. A single rod of hardened light? It stood no chance against such an object especially moving at such a speed. It shattered with clear fragility, but thereupon revealed its true nature. The long rod, shattered into a large swirling black, a hole fit to consume the entirety of Sakaala's attack until nothing was left. Kyūnyūkō, a defensive spell that proved an excellent counter to something such as this. Though there were more than one, and they surely came from different angles, all of them found themselves broken upon the swirling wall that stood ahead of her, obscuring the woman from view in its defense.

She stood there, finger outstretched as her spell faded and the next attack came. The wind was subdued by a casual cast of Shō. Its momentum halted, and then its entirety devoured to fuel another spell. Tenran. Jaromira became the wind, for a brief burst of motion that saw her form dissipate like it was made of mist before appearing on the ground near her Arrancar competitor. The bolt of lightning he had unleashed missed her entirely as a result, but ripped through several of the amassed iterations of Hyapporankan, which, as before, exploded into black holes that saw fit to consume more of their number. All in all several dozen had been cast into the void, though in the span of hundreds, Jaromira saw no reason to mind.

Her hand jutted forth and the surrounding environment turned deathly cold. Reishi pooled in her hand and cast out in a lightning quick mass of sleet that lunged after Sakaala from all directions. Surrounding him in a veritable blizzard that hid away everything else from view. The way it had been gathered and moved, there was no room for doubt that she had begun appreciating the battle as something more than a trivial excursion. She had gathered the Reishi quickly, clearly dominating it with effort fit for someone engaged in battle. For its part, the spell was unleashed quickly, and precisely with no visible flaw in sight. These were the steps of a master taking the appropriate steps. Escalation, in other words.

Her hands clapped together after the sleet had fully left her grasp, and upon the alien echo of her gesture, several walls of Dankū made themselves manifest within the sleet, not for the purpose of defense, but offense. Should the snow encounter any problems, they would find themselves exploding into another form; that of the splitting void. Interstitial walls that would manifest from tiny clumps of white to split and sever whatever was laid before them, be it the elements of space itself. It was no mere offense made paramount through might or firepower, but an attack made true by introducing a blockage, a wall that prevented manipulation on either side of it in an instant. So focused on space was her opponent that she had no doubt thus far that even his defenses were constructed of some twisted malform of it. She would see it crack and break, one way or another, before things were through. Of course, an attack from all sides wasn't complete unless it has a ceiling. Like precarious icicles deep within a cave, her Hyapporankan were finally loosed and themselves rained down upon Sakaala. Would his defenses be split? Would they be consumed? She was eager to find out.

For all intents and purposes, nothing bar select few types of special abilities could reach Sakaala when he was serious about his defences. Conceptual distortion-type ability was a severe threat, time-type ability - an equal match. To use spatial manipulation against him, however, was a highly risky move. Should the willpower behind it prove lacking, the magnitude inadequate, the form of the attack ill-conceived, he could easily wrest control of the fabric of space and make it his own. But should the enemy prove exceptionally proficient, it was possible to harm him that way, and that was exactly what the Shinigami Captain had accomplished with her latest onslaught.

The blizzard would do no harm to him, but the panes of split reality that emerged from the cold storm were a different matter. They sunk into the shroud of Urdimbre, not without resistance, but potent enough to inch toward Sakaala and ultimately converge upon his body, leaving several perfectly straight incisions upon his pale, wiry torso. The Arrancar could not help but smile, observing the effects of his opponent's attack within the instant between the first phase and the shower of Hyapporankan descending upon him. She was able to reach him, on her own at that. What a splendid toy he had come across.

With the power of his Aspecto, Sakaala contracted his body on a dimensional level and flung himself into a microscopic wormhole, escaping from the vicinity of the unnamed woman in what was shorter than an instant. Then, he reappeared abruptly a fairly large distance from her, trickles of blood flowing from several grazing wounds. Be that as it may, he was still smiling, still nonchalant, watching her with an unnerving glint in his emerald eyes.

"Speaking of irony, you point out my alleged hypocrisy only to provide some of your own within the same sentence", he said, once more using his ability to propagate the sound of his voice toward its destination, floating gently in the air without the use of any readily discernible high-speed movement technique. "You're shitty at arguing, you know that? And you did not even address all of my points. Did you spontaneously come into existence as a full-fledged Gotei 13 Captain, or do you happen to have a family? Parents? Siblings? Cousins? Don't you have any friends, acquaintances? Boyfriend, girlfriend? Maybe children, huh? Did you truly distance yourself so much from the "resources", or you simply chose not to mention those inconvenient facts, eh, Shinigami-chan?"

He did not intend to wait for a response, after all, she could struggle for her survival on her own. As such, he immediately moved on to retaliate. With his presence outstretched across multiple kilometres and her recent attack giving him an idea, he decided to collect and condense water vapour from a vast area. The clouds swirled into a large mass. Then, he pressurised the water immensely with spatial contractions and sent toward the opponent through warp tunnels, allowing them to gain momentum only to pass them through miniature wormholes to drastically improve their speed as well. The result were extremely lethal water whips lashing at Dragan from a variety of directions.

The remainder of water he rapidly cooled down in order to obtain ice, laced with his spiritual energy to reinforce it beyond the brittle natural state. Subsequently, he formed a volley of icicles and fired them through spatial distortions, once again turning displays of nature into deadly means of offence. And, to finish the assault properly, he tightened his grip on the fabric of space only to force the dimensional plane around the Shinigami Captain to collapse upon her, implode with astronomical power. One, two, three, four times, every instance more potent than the previous one, exertion of tremendous crushing force followed the elemental-via-proxy attacks.

"Points? Hah, you must be mistaken, you never made any worth heeding", with a flick of her wrist Tenran had been conjured into being, acting as an augmentation for her voice as Sakaala's powers did for him, ensuring that she would not go unheard. The wind danced briefly, but the spell had been altered to such an extent that its form was now that of a pulsing light emanating around her throat. She began walking in his direction, a stride that brimmed with confidence, which only became more evident in the wake of her success.

"But if you'd rather bore me to death, fine, we'll do it that way", she replied once more, seemingly unconcerned for whatever Sakaala had begun conjuring upon his retreat. Indeed, those manifested whips of water that swung at her, carrying such momentum as to be blade-like in their deadly efficacy found themselves doing no harm to the woman themselves. One and then two, three and so on and so on. She didn't attempt to dodge at all, though only the first of these whips seemed to have any kind of effect. It had taken out a ward, maybe even more than one, it was difficult to say as the translucent shield collapsed around her. It was visible, if barely, unlike its earlier incarnation which first suffered a blow, as well its destruction was far more palatable to the spiritual senses. The rest of these winding watery armaments hit against the wards that remained and found themselves utterly devoid of success. They didn't fail, at least in any outright sense, but no harm was rendered and not another ward fell.

"I don't know how much you realise your own past, but you began as Human, just as I did — it is more correct to say that I had rather than have parents", her nonchalant stride, accompanied with a tone of derision made her stance more than clear. Nonetheless, her origins hardly mattered, in the end Jaromira had been like a wolf even as a child, she lost her parents as a girl and ended the life of her foster father with her own two hands. To treat those things as if they were resources was hardly untrue to her, the first served as a means to bring her into this world before an untimely passing, the other worked to provide her the means to survive on her own only to be discarded. Familial bonds, beyond that of blood and genetic relation were hardly something one needed to recognise, after all if that were the case, the Human World would be privy to far less broken homes.

"I was an only child before I became a spirit, and I have no need for anything more than my subordinates. They live and die by my word, just as resources are consumed by my whim. Is that not the way of Hollows? Or do you mean to tell me that beneath that uncouth, barbaric exterior beats the heart of a romantic?", her words flowed forth at the cessation of the first attack and the onset of the second, continuing through it even as javelins of ice speared through the air at paces unpredictable. The result was the same, however. The first of them managed to strike at a ward, detonating it in a superbly explosive fashion was the barrier not only briefly tinged red but shattered like glass, flung away and dispersed under the duress of that glacial lance. The rest pelted her form but found themselves with no success.

She came to a halt as soon as it was over, not particularly closer to her prey, but some distance had been closed at the very least. Her right hand raised and her muscles visibly tensed when she conjured up a spell. The obvious blue flames that could belong only to Sōkatsui.

"Fire, lightning, wind, water, ice", she went through a short list of things Sakaala had conjured, and with each element that she spoke of, the composition of the flames began to shift. At first they gained an electrical aura but it was quickly diffused in favour of making the flames look... ecstatic. Rather than flicker it jolted and seemed to vibrate in place, hovering just above her palm. The flames then turned white, becoming cold and fluid, then it began shifting from the flowing flame to liquid water to frozen ice and back again. Jaromira was a practiced master at combining her spells, such that she could very easily do so again and again until a single spell became so utterly bloated that its origins would indiscernible. For whatever reason, she rarely combined more than two spells together. Today, however, she had made an exception. Hidden within its confines, she laced another Dankū into this ghastly combination before unleashing it with a swipe of her hand, not unlike a throwing gesture. What was unleashed was an incoherent yet surprisingly fluid onslaught. Torrents of water, wind, and flames, spears of ice and lightning. They flew out individually, but continuously shifted forms, bleeding into one another such that it was impossible to tell which was which at any given moment. All of them however, were little more than a delivery system for that severing wall that she wished to use upon her weary victim.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me", uttered Sakaala in response, the result of a far-reaching conclusion expressed without a few intermediate steps being addressed.

He did consider the situation. However, with his thoughts travelling at faster than light speeds, he was able to analyse various things exceedingly fast, and did not necessarily feel like describing the entire process. Sometimes he surprised people with that. Sometimes, they were too dumb or preoccupied with something else to notice. That did not matter. He did not succeed to provoke his enemy. That did not matter either. It was an idle talk, little more than the way he tended to converse with others in general, deconstructing their beliefs and rules they adhered to, attempting to incite anger or despair in those puny self-righteous beings he encountered. He noted the fact the woman carefully avoided addressing some of his words and twisted others to emerge on top at every step. Where he was nonchalant, she was extremely arrogant. So similar, yet so unlike one another.

There was something far more interesting to ponder about. His most recent assault had managed to destroy two wards. Even a blind person could discern that. One for the water whips, another one pierced by icicles. So that was the catch. Functional overlap. Each ward, however many she had, was designed to protect the Shinigami against all kinds of damage sans one, which would immediately remove the layer upon direct impact. He had destroyed a few already... about one third of the total, he supposed, judging from the potency of the field still surrounding her. But she was still unscathed, in the end, whilst he had already received some minor injuries. She did not seem particularly tired, whilst he would soon experience the effects of fighting at full capacity for an extended period of time. He smirked, a trickle of sweat flowing from his temple.

She attacked, showcasing the remarkable versatility of an experienced Kidō master. She could conjure whatever element she wanted without resorting to multiple-stage processes and proxies. But there lay the weakness of any Kidō master, at least as far as Sakaala's point of view was concerned. They had access to so many different tools that they were unlikely to truly master any single one of them, whereas he chose to hone his inherent skill to an unbelievable extent, so much so that he could achieve almost everything they could with just the use of a single special ability. And through that outstanding specialisation he strove to trample everything else.

The woman discovered a way to pierce through Urdimbre. Surely, the ridiculously bedazzling spell cast upon him was prepared to exploit the same function and perhaps finish the battle there and then. But that would not happen. Against her versatility he intended to flaunt his single specialty. In a somewhat spectacular display no less, to offer her a glimpse at the true power he boasted. She had yet to realise with whom she had been dealing with, that was obvious from her behaviour, unable to perceive through the veil of arrogance wrapped around her eyes. That would be the first glimmer of despair to pierce through that veil, he expected.

"Agujero Blanco."

His defences were formidable. Where his body was highly durable the shroud of spatial distortions that enveloped it was nigh-impenetrable to a wide variety of techniques, regardless of their magnitude. That was more than enough to combat powerful opponents and emerge unscathed from vicious assaults, time and again. But for those precious few individuals capable of pushing him to his limits he had another technique in store, one of the two "absolute" displays of his dominance over the fabric of existence: the absolute defence. Agujero Blanco. A peculiar phenomenon Human scientists only hypothesised about. A dimensional sphere where none could enter. Nothing could enter. Fists, blades, magic, light, sound, thought. For a short while Sakaala completely disconnected himself from the rest of the universe. The esoteric onslaught pounded upon the warp bubble - futile. Fire, water, wind, lightning, all paled in comparison to space, and even a powerful, specialised display of spatial manipulation as performed by the Shinigami was utterly ineffective as well, unable to overcome one of the two greatest spatial manipulation techniques at the Arrancar's disposal.

For a moment, he was completely beyond her reach.

Unable to move or act otherwise at the same time, however. He did not like deploying Agujero Blanco, not usually, but in this case its usage was justified. He paid with strain in order to avoid sustaining any kind of damage no matter what she would throw at him and indeed she had used a similar spell to the previous one, the one that had managed to overcome Urdimbre. Better safe than sorry, he mused and a grin appeared on his face, together with another trickle of sweat.

But that was just defence. Passive stance. He had to counter, retaliate, with style. With something of equal magnitude. He was ready to do that, willing to do that, eager to do that. So that he swiped both of his thumbs against the incisions upon his chest and waved them forward, outward, propelling blood into the air in front of him. Then, he swung both of his swords, cutting through the trickles of blood with the curved blades...

"Agujero Negro."

The absolute offence.

Gran Rey Cero was known as a potent Cero variant exclusive to the Espada. So powerful, in fact, that its sheer existence caused spatial distortions to appear about its form. And what Gran Rey Cero was to a normal Cero, Agujero Negro was to Gran Rey Cero. Orders of magnitude greater, deadlier. A wound in existence, a puncture in the fabric of space, an impossibly black orb manifested in front of him and the whole universe seemed to cringe at its wake. Then, it was propelled toward the Shinigami woman, wreathed in a vortex of contorted space, sucking everything on its path with astronomical gravitational pull, ever hungry. The inevitable death, eradication so thorough so as to prevent reincarnation... and it had, like Agujero Blanco, just one weakness, one that Sakaala doubted his opponent would discover in time to prevent her demise. Now, or soon enough.

Such an excessive act. The result of the technique's implosion would verify his suspicions about the Shinigami's wards. If none of them would collapse upon hit, as ludicrous as that thought was, that would mean he had already destroyed a relevant layer. If only one would collapse, that would confirm his hypothesis. If all of them collapsed... there would be nothing else to consider, right?

With wards such as hers, Jaromira could have easily thrown caution to the wind in favour of delivering an all-out assault that would have shown Sakaala the error of his ways nigh immediately. But that wasn't how Jaromira liked to play. Her foe had made it clear from the onset that his abilities relied upon domination of space and from the first clash of their powers she had made it an imperative that she prove how little effect it would have upon her. Whatever else she had allowed to reach her, they had never done so in the form that was most true to form. Ice, water, even those garish khopesh he carried, though they originated within his field of manipulation or acted as catalysts for it, neither acted as their source did. That was key here. She could simply let this attack smash against her, for all its monstrous power it too would find itself rendered worthless against her defenses. Though not without casualty of course. As it stood though, she was not of a mind to let that happen for this Agujero Negro embodied a black hole in projectile form, one of the most obvious anomalies inherent to the stars above.

Her arms stretched before her, her hands out as if grasping at rain. She was the bearer of a most curious wound, a scar on her very essence that allowed Reiryoku to leak through as if it were a bleeding heart. A finite resource that was usually restricted on a daily basis for others found itself pouring out for her, a flooding energy that could only be described as harnessing years worth of energy in a matter of seconds. Time felt as if it was slowing down, the air became thick and heady with Jaromira's presence. All that power accumulated around her spread forth to intercept the oncoming assault. Gargantuan Dankū were formed around it, completely sealing it within their confines. A temporary measure at best as their form began pulling towards the voracious mass of darkness the moment they appeared, but they held a tenuous grasp on the earth for a moment.

Echoes rang out in the air, Jaromira's voice by the tone, but whatever she happened to be saying quickly became incomprehensible as words seemed to merge together as if she were speaking multiple sentences at a time so that words bled into one another. By the continued escalation of her power however, it could have only been an incantation. In response, the borders of the interconnected Dankū radiated with light before they, and everything they had surrounded vanished. Completely and utterly erased. Everything from Agujero Negro to the sand to the very air, to space itself had been sundered from this dimensional plane. What was left behind was a hole in the world itself, a tremendous and turbulent wind that tried sucking everything into it not unlike the black hole that had been there just a moment prior. She realised that it would have taken a power far greater, and far less timely, to negate Sakaala's attack in the truest sense and instead saw fit to simply cast it off elsewhere. Her Dankū would still fall, and the Agujero Negro would continue on its purpose so long as its master continued to power it, but it would not do so in the realm of Hueco Mundo. In effect, she had unleashed something not unlike his Agujero Blanco, completely severing the attack from this realm of reality in yet another measure of escalation. In the end it was all in service to vanity and her games of futility.

"Oh, how very Human of you", she remarked upon his use of the phrase, a snide grin on her face. All the more proof that he was a creature less superior than his claims made him out to be as she saw it. Though she had come to a point where she could not deny his combat prowess, that was only one aspect and a far cry from making anyone out to be truly superior. After all, unparalleled might was only dominant in the land of beasts. And those could be tamed by the mind.

The world had eventually filled in the empty void left behind by the abrupt severance, an odd picture of stretched out space that slowly returned to a more normal looking visage. The world at work correcting "errors" in itself. There many varieties of self-sustaining systems that held everything together, and though they had begun to encroach upon that territory, Jaromira doubted that they would have any real cause to worry about the stability of Hueco Mundo.

She did not make a motion to attack after all of this, or rather she couldn't. Though there were little to no signs of strain in a physical sense, the powers that had been in play still had their tolls to pay. So she stood still, waiting for a sense of looming unease to pass and in that time she did little more than create an aura for herself. A brimming purple light that radiated like fire.

Meanwhile, Sakaala descended gently toward the white desert beneath him and landed with equally natural weightlessness. He was gazing intently at his opponent, his face unusually neutral, almost solemn in expression. The wild pink aura enveloping his body faded away, the hum and vibrations ceased. He let out a heavy sigh and swiped the sweat from his forehead and temples with the back of his hand.

"My attacks were unable to overcome your wards, and my ultimate technique was thwarted", he remarked, ignoring the Captain's words; after all, his astronomical ego was impossible to dent with merely a scathing comment. "My own defences were pierced, and my body wounded. I'm growing weary, yet you still stand strong. You hold the advantage, and your victory is just a matter of time. My death is inevitable. That's more or less what you're thinking right now, isn't it?", he asked, twirling his twin swords idly in the meantime.

He agreed with Kentarō Akiyama on several things. One of them was the perplexing degree of delusion each individual and whole communities displayed at every step. And this particular specimen there was definitely a special case. Her attitude was perfectly understandable, however. With such amount of power it was easy to believe oneself a god, so far above everyone else so as to act with extreme arrogance and self-confidence even in the face of lethal danger. So easy to believe that by being more powerful than a thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand spiritual beings, one was more powerful than each and every one of them in existence... Oh, those fallacies the puny beings fed themselves with to sustain their meagre lives and carry on through the series of incessant misfortunes they were subjected to by fate. So amusing. So pathetic.

"Let's verify that hypothesis, shall we?", he asked, his signature grin creeping upon his face once again.

So stubborn. So defiant. Unable to comprehend that yes, they had indeed finally encountered someone substantially more powerful, superior, someone as beyond their reach as they were themselves to those nameless masses they called inferior to feel better, more important. Withstanding devastating assaults, retaliating with powerful blows that were able to get past defences that stood on their way, so cocksure, so witty, so ludicrous... Blind to the subtlety of Sakaala's demeanour, unable to see through his charade, taking what they were presented with for granted whilst tragically unaware of what was yet to come.

Because for all his power, skill and experience, no matter what he did, whether he was casual or serious, in his base state Sakaala was just one of them, a very powerful warrior, one of the strongest but one of the many, and for a select few a formidable opponent certainly possible to defeat. So they flaunted their releases, performed their ultimate techniques, belittled him and bragged about their alleged superiority, at the precipice of victory... only to ultimately realise it had never been within their reach.

So he bent his legs in the knees and leant slightly forward, crossing his arms in front of his chest and lifting the pair of khopesh straight toward the pitch black sky, his grin now very, very dark.

"Fall, Horizonte de Sucesos."

Supreme Overlord of the Universe

Currents of pink lighting enveloped both of the curved blades, only to converge into a gleaming orb of the same colour. Suddenly, the orb expanded to swallow the Arrancar whole. While his body was no longer visible to the mundane senses, his spiritual pressure grew more prominent than ever. Two times, three times, four times, it was skyrocketing at an alarming rate. Each time his power was multiplied a correspondingly more potent shockwave burst forth to sweep across the area, propagating horrendous vibrations across the sombre land of Hueco Mundo.

And with each such radiation both white sand and black sky were tinted a more vibrant pink, the dunes grew larger and curved, whereas the clouds and inverted moon vanished, supplanted by cartoonish lavender pink stars suspended upon an amaranth sky. The Arrancar's power grew, and so did his hold upon the fabric of space, twisting creation according to his own will. Five times, six times, seven times. The land around Dragan was undulating, as if she were hallucinating, but in fact it were the three dimensions attempting to maintain their regular form in the wake of such a release. Eight times, nine times. The vibrations quaking Hueco Mundo approached a level as if the whole universe was shivering, so potent that they were an existential experience rather than a feeling.

Ten times.

The hot pink sphere erupted, revealing the Arrancar within. With the full extent of his Hollow powers unbridled, he was now notably less Human than before. Animalistic, slender, with peculiar bone armour, protrusions and two empty spaces in his abdomen. The swords were fused to his forearms, becoming large curved claws instead, and a tail with a scythe-like spike was added to the roster of his elongated limbs. In addition, his Hollow mask seemed to sink into and merge with his skull, whilst its single horn rose higher in a number of spiral turns.

That was his true form. That was his true power. Shinigami, Quincy, Arrancar, powerful or not, experienced or not, skilled or not, could not hope to rival him. Sure, there was plenty of room for gradation between them, but Sakaala's power existed in a completely different dimension. He was an anomaly. A spiritual being born of misery and trepidation, a unique individual who had clawed his way toward the realm of divine might without being divine in the slightest.

"I hope it's been fun overwhelming a fraction of my power", said Sakaala, staring at his enemy with a slightly narrowed eye and a seemingly empty eye socket. "I'm afraid your alleged advantage has vanished into thin air, though. Speaking of, it might not be obvious but I've rearranged the battlefield a lil' bit. So, have fun!"

Indeed, while the perspective from which the Shinigami saw him remained unchanged, his voice seemed to come from different directions at different times, resulting in a hellish, out-of-sync, echoing bass. During his transformation, he had reinforced his influence, contorting and twisting all three spatial dimensions in ways that could not be properly described with words alone. For all intents and purposes, Hueco Mundo had become vestibule of Hell, an incomprehensible dimensional labirynth of garish shades of white and pink. That was his domain, and there was but a single speck in front of him attempting to maintain its independence.

"It has been fairly entertaining for an afternoon, I won't deny", Jaromira replied with no small amount of sarcasm. Her ears perked up at the resulting reverberations of her own echo, taking note of where and when her voice seemed to return from. She accepted inwardly that the feat was impressive, it had to be of course, as it was little more than an imitation of something she had initiated earlier herself. The sincerest form of flattery, is it not? she thought, rather amused at the idea.

For all the bluster and pageantry that she was forced to watch, Jaromira did little to seem phased by any of it. She could feel the changes in the air, the weight of it, the sheer energy being radiated by Sakaala's person. It was large, gargantuan even. But she could see above that still, where the power hit its eventual, distant limit. It was a shame really, and she surmised his hubris in the face of his transformation was because even now, he could not see where her power began or where it ended. She could not blame him for that, of course. She was anomaly, just as he was. Her energy and position came not from divine providence, but from a stroke of luck. A mistake with unforeseen circumstances that rendered her just a little different for it. As Sakaala saw it, they were deep within his dimension and she was but a mote surrounded by his power. In her eyes, those positions were reversed and so it would be necessary to show that point to him. Just a taste. Perhaps then he would see.

The azure raiment buzzing around her form began to billow and expand, before closing in on itself. Peeling from Jaromira's form to gather in the centre of her body. Its form shifted in the process, doing away with the flowing flames to be replaced by a radiant and pure energy that would shortly radiate its way through her to reposition itself in her hand. She gripped it tightly in amidst her fingers.

She breathed outward, a deep exhale followed by an even deeper breath. "A gathering of stones, sticks, and mud", she began. A passage that lacked context in the situation. Gibberish at best, but for anyone experienced in the ways of Shinigami, as Sakaala no doubt was, this was perhaps the most obvious expression of an incantation.

"Sea, cloud, and thunder, heed the voice of the storm for they portend the cry of the stars", she spoke in a manner that was trance-like, focused but distant. The air around her mimicked the words, creating a distinct reverb through the distorted space around the environment. The sphere in her hand reconfigured itself, its body shifting as if they were made of distinct and separate blocks rolling over into place to reveal something on their hidden faces. When it finished, the orb was now a cube of lustrous green that became black at its centre. Like an empty void threatening to swallow those that peered too closely into its core.

"Fire, rage and molten, rise! Carve your principles into this blank face! Sunder the veil of Heaven, Dankū!", her chanting became an emphatic cry as the incantations intention finally laid itself bare. It wasn't the first time she had used it in this battle, though its impetus had been stolen away by the gravity surrounding Sakaala's Agujero techniques. It felt only fair that she give it the proper due now.

Her hand turned and, forcefully, she drove her palm into the waiting sand below. The cube of gathered Reiryoku, her spell, quickly began to suffuse the entirety of the surrounding desert, a mounting number of radiant splotches found themselves amassing as the distortion made it so that its spread could not happen in a manner that one could picture as straightforward. The energy coursed across the ground to the North but manifested over the East. It eventually became irrelevant once the spell had covered all of the ground, however. A large square had been patterned on the floor, hiding away the bumps and displaced grooves of the sand to create a perfect picture beneath Jaromira. It radiated outwards for quite some distance, eventually surpassing the reach of Sakaala's machinations. That was their point after all.

As her hands motioned in rise, so too did the outermost layer of the square, ascending into four clear walls of transparent sheets not unlike glass, though they were evidently removed from something so mundane by the ominous air they carried. Jaromira drew her hands in to clap, and the walls followed.

They were boxed in, completely and utterly and it took very little to estimate the effect of this particular barrier. The "Splitting Void" was a name of distinct relevance to masters of Dankū, as she had demonstrated already, having used it to tear away an entire block of space to prevent Sakaala's "ultimate" attack from reaching her. It could be used in more abstract ways too, and in this case what it had split was none other than Sakaala's effect on their environment. It was ready admittance that it was a danger, one that made accounting for attacks far more of a chore then she was ready to bother with.

There was a notable trickle of something blue and glowing in the aftermath of the spell. A droplet or two of something running from Jaromira's lip. She brushed it away with a flick of her thumb, an act which gave way to her arm shifting entirely in form. Its slender, feminine shape faded away into a garish, large construct of mismatched colours resembling a construction of small lego bricks. She tapped her other hand against it briefly before motioning for a strike at Sakaala. The mutated arm stretched, shooting towards the Arrancar clearing the sky in a blur of motion that was clearly unnatural for its size. More importantly, it did so with impediment.

Three digits on the end of the large arm opened to reveal a yellow glow held in its palm, though its purpose was not so immediately distinct. Sakaala observed the attack approach him, but did not bother to consider its potential properties. Instead, he flexed his muscles and clenched his fists. The emanations of his spiritual pressure intensified abruptly, enveloping his body with spatial distortions of a spherical shape. The result was not unlike the effect of a black hole suspended in front of a distant galaxy, twisting the latter's image through gravitational lensing.

He did not block or otherwise hinder the attack, so that he did not have to worry about any insidious properties thereof. All that was needed was to introduce a little extra distance on its way, causing it to take a turn about his person without quite reaching him. Now, in his Resurrección, his shroud of Urdimbre was exponentially more effective than before, so it would take a lot more than that to hit the mark. In the meantime, Sakaala noted that the full-power spell removed the ambience of his release, so that the vibrant colours and shapes were fading away, replaced with the ordinary white-and-black dullness of Hueco Mundo. He was not worried, however.

He noted the trickle of mysterious liquid pouring from the Shinigami's mouth, the effort put into the spell, the fluctuations of her spiritual pressure. All she did was remove a passive property of his release, which was bound to return on its own, sooner or later. So much wasted energy for a temporary gain.

"Not bad, not bad at all, Shinigami-chan... but so typical!", he sneered.

Her arrogance was obvious. There was no way to justify an attempt to beat the opponent at his own game other than the intent to showcase her perceived superiority. Such foolishness. She was strong, extremely so, but she had the attitude to match, or perhaps surpass, that very power. With such an approach she was doomed to lose in a war of attrition, and Sakaala would happily oblige her. Too bad. For a moment he suspected she might have been a truly outstanding specimen... anyway, he was going to enjoy this fight for what it was. Enemies of that calibre were a rare treat.

So he aimed both of his arms toward her, the tips of his claw-like blades pointed in the direction of her head. With a single impulse of power he unleashed a volley of spherical bullets, the Púlsar, to drown her and her surroundings in dimensional explosions. Purposely, he tweaked the projectiles in order for them to rapidly expand the fabric of space around her. Normally, that action alone would cause unspeakable things to happen to anyone caught within the area of effect, yet he expected her to endure that assault. After all, it was simply the opening strike. Immediately he rushed forward, submerging himself in the malformed space and speeding toward the Shinigami in spite of the chaotic rearrangement thereof. In the end, he plunged both of his blades at her, extending the altered surface of Urdimbre to erase portions of space her body was currently occupying.

Such understated display, yet substantially more potent than anything he had shown before. With so much power at his disposal, he had to take care so as not to completely erase their surroundings, the whole realm, perhaps, in a moment of recklessness. The secondary benefit was tremendous focus, rendering his techniques that much more effective. With that, Sakaala endeavoured to learn more about his enemy's peculiar defences.

To assume his defenses that had been so ever present in his base form has somehow lessened as he increased in power would have been the height of folly. Thus with her motion blocked by Urdimbre, and Sakaala's follow up assault it only became more and more evident that he was playing into her hands. A smirk had planted itself on her features the moment he had decided that the threat had passed when he redirected her arm. It trailed on in its aimless journey for a short while after, then made a sudden twist. The arm bent inward as if built on a hinge, clearly defying its more ridged appearance upon doing so. So far above, but clearly aimed for Sakaala's back was the spell it held now unleashed. Ōkasen.

An unbridled flame of bright yellow that lashed out before splitting into five fangs of liquid fury. They roared down upon the battlefield with a power only dwarfed by the radiating explosions and cries of space sundered by Púlsar detonating around the environs. The make up of the spell should have been obvious by now as they made their plunge towards Sakaala's defenses, one spell laced over another such that the liquid lances of flame were little more than systems of delivery for the unseen blade of Dankū.

On the fore, the story was plainly written. The Púlsar detonated in a raucous cacophony that shrouded Jaromira briefly under a storm of dust. That was blown asunder by the resulting impact of Sakaala's more intimate stroke. A flash of red, stronger, more harsh than its predecessor followed by the almost familiar chime of breaking glass. Jaromira had lost more of her wards, but remained entirely unharmed for it. She had planned to never allow that particular ward to fall, but sacrificed upon righting an earlier wrong. Tit-for-tat, she noted.

Now, though, Sakaala was before her. Close enough to touch. At first she gave him all the effort of a passive glare. Her mind elsewhere, briefly focusing on the epicentre of myriad explosions that had come and gone. In the places where the Púlsar had struck, Jaromira cast her influence such as to imbue those areas with her magic. Orbs appeared, then straightened into rods of a patchwork hue mixing black with a gradient of yellow, red, and orange. Short pellets of lava one could surmise. In truth the arrayed formation of spells were Shakkahō at their core, layered over with Kongōbaku to hide a more insidious array of magic within. There were near enough a hundred projectiles formed over the surrounding landscape, each one playing host to a random spell from a specific assortment. Dankū was an obvious choice, as was Kyūnyūkō, but others held a trigger for Rikujōkōrō, ready to explode into six imprisoning rods at a moment's notice. She could have hidden these spells simply by altering the colouration of Shakkahō from the get-go, but then their purpose would have been all the more clear. This way, she hoped to introduce at least some confusion. Though it wasn't her only method of doing so.

She drew closer to Sakaala. So close that one could almost feel the wards around her person, flickering in the background of the air. For someone ordinary, it would have been little more than a feeling of discomfort, but for Sakaala, with his senses so acute? Jaromira had no doubt that he could tell just how many of these wards still existed.

"It was very brave of you to show me your true form, Arrancar, as a thank you allow me to introduce you to... Gūjinkiyo", her words dripped with an ominous allure. After all, he had borne witness to the existence of her Zanpakutō as it was in some sense her entire person. Its name was the means to activate it and though it would be a short while before he met the full effects of the illusion, it was enough for Jaromira to know that it was now in play. Following the words, she loosed that gathered volley of magma-looking bolts.

Sakaala smirked in response. There was no need, no time for words for the time being. He suspected that closing in so suddenly would encourage the Shinigami to react properly. He was aware that the spell he had redirected a while ago was homing in on him, so that he knew the enemy had conscious control over her spells instead of firing them haphazardly in the general direction of their intended target. And while he was no master of Kidō, and thus unable to recognise all of the myriad techniques, he knew full well how to deal with them efficiently, and could perfectly sense the subtle spatial distortions of the particular spell named Dankū.

Their quantity did not matter. They might have been as well particles of dust thrown at him by the wind. He was the undisputed master of space, a fundamental aspect of the whole existence, and with his true power unveiled, he needed not concern himself with paltry magic tricks. He could trample them all with a single exertion. So that he jumped backward and lifted both of his arms in preparation. While the spells were converging upon him, the space in between his hands collapsed, forming a small Agujero Negro. With its colossal gravitational pull concentrated around his person, all of the impending techniques were sucked inward, one after another. The result was a warp bubble of sublime, ever-shifting colours and incredibly condensed spiritual energy.

"Free returns!", exclaimed Sakaala as he then tossed the projectile toward Jaromira.

Simultaneously, he moved backward once more, to escape the effects of the impending explosion. After all, he would not let the projectile simply hit its target. There was no telling what the Shinigami could do to it with her magic. As such, he purposely detonated the sphere, releasing its incomprehensible power over a radius that was the golden middle between effectiveness and a choice of not obliterating half Hueco Mundo just yet. Bedazzling spectacle of their combined might roared across the sombre land with its ungodly fury.

In the meantime, he was analysing the bits of information he obtained during the brief exchange. This time he was able to perceive the Shinigami's wards quite clearly. He compared the sensation of another two wards shattering with that of the former pair and estimated their total numbers. Apparently, he had destroyed seven out of a total of eighteen wards. And while he realised he was right about their function, he could not help but wonder just how perdurable each of them was. Normally, his attacks would have annihilated both the barriers and the wizard many times over, no matter their supposed properties. Yet defiantly they held, giving up only when struck with a particular type of attack, irrespective of power or otherwise anti-ward qualities. Most intriguing.

He landed, curious to discover the outcome of his most recent manoeuvre on the magical defences. He noted that his arms felt slightly stiff. Perhaps it was because of the fact he had not used his Resurrección in a while. Accustomed to effortless battles, his body might have been strained a little when forced to channel such amounts of power. Hardly an issue, though. Seeping into the environment, his spiritual pressure had been slowly turning the white sand light pink, and the black sky was slowly becoming lighter as well. It was just a matter of time for Hueco Mundo to become his sole property again, all the while he could consciously focus on the fight at hand.

The golden middle became something more than metaphor when Jaromira's Ōkasen blitzed across the sky in the aftermath of Agujero Negro's detonation. Followed by some several hundred pellets harboring Dankū and Rikujōkōrō still. It was a fine quality that he could see her Dankū even hidden under multiple layers, but somehow he had missed their blackened counterparts, or perhaps he didn't see them as a threat. To give him credit, had he not unleashed his attack prematurely Jaromira had little doubt that she could have only used the Kyūnyūkō to force a pitiable stalemate. But, with its detonation, she could play with it in other ways.

So it was that the Agujero Negro's explosion was more a perfect picture of chaos. A storm of swirling voids had usurped the place of its realm shattering power, swallowing up its energies and then attempting to do so to each other. Like piranha on a frenzy, black hole after black hole eclipsed at pulled at one another, distorting the world before them, but it was performed in such a way as to reveal itself as a meticulously controlled play. Agujero Negro was stopped and impeded, and though the holes seemed to be swirling out of control, they had instead been forced to act in ways that pushed them towards one another and at the same time, away from those other spells, leaving them protected and untriggered by Agujero Negro's aftermath. Thus Jaromira's spells were allowed to continue on their way to strike at Sakaala.

With her attack still in play, and a wild, unruly vortex standing between herself and her foe, Jaromira took her time drawing back the extended plastic construct that had been her arm, allowing it to shift back into human shape. Briefly, she contemplated using that, and a precise set of images flashed in her mind. A skull, fangs, the enemy of fear. Allusions to those that would be considered legendary in the realm of Hueco Mundo. She decided against it, however, at least for now. Her next steps would be more... familiar. She clad herself in a cloak of radiant blue once more, though the undercurrent of red stemming from her Reiatsu made it clear that this time she would use it.

At first, Sakaala was baffled. Not only did he take care to intercept all of the incoming spells, he clumped them together within the confines of the event horizon of a miniature black hole, which he then forced to explode with world-shaking might. For any spell to emerge unscathed and continuing to pursue its original goal in the aftermath was impossible, or at least that was what he used to think. Perhaps the Agujero Negro he had employed was too feeble? It was not blood-powered, after all. Still, he was baffled.

But the time around him seemed to slow down again. With the acute instincts of the apex predator, his reflexes triggered the micro-wormholes enveloping his nervous system to contract, allowing him to think drastically faster than humanly possible. And so he thought. He thought that he had indeed underestimated the opponent, who was undoubtedly formidable. That was not going to be the ordinary fight. Usually, combat was a balancing act for him, between the blatant effortlessness and utter domination over the enemy. In this particular battle there was no place for a casual attitude, whether he was in his sealed or released form. The intensity of his Reiatsu shifted ever so slightly.

The remaining spells were approaching him, but he did not have to hurry. Not in the usual sense of the word, at least. For someone with perception many orders of magnitude greater than that of a Shinigami Captain, even nanoseconds were plenty of time to analyse the situation and react accordingly. For a while, Sakaala felt the urge to manifest a larger portion of his power, to show the woman he had been merely toying with her... but he chose not to. There were better ways of defeating enemies of such a high calibre as the one before him. More gradual, subtle. Brute force alone was the means of those who only thought themselves strong. He, on the other hand, preferred a different approach. He wanted to savour this experience.

The space around him was already his. It might have been as well a portion of his own body. There were a few ways to deal with the assault he could think of off the top of his head. That was only a matter of a quick choice. He let the spells close in on him, whilst at the same time he expanded the radius of Urdimbre. Then, in a sudden flash of spiritual might, the assault was completely thwarted. Because in that instant the magic of his enemy was about to drown him, Sakaala twisted the space about him in a vortex of incomprehensible dimensional forces, drawing them inward and stretching them beyond this dimensional plane, until they were all gone. Not even a trace left. In fact, he himself was not sure where exactly did they go, as banishing them somewhere else was good enough for him.

With that, he ensured they would not annoy him again.

"I must admit, you're slowly pushing me to my limits", he remarked. "Makes me wonder, how far can we go?"

He noticed that the woman had been preparing something. Good. He came up with a plan as well. He could let her act first, that would not matter much. So, with a faint outline of pink energy enveloping his body, he simply turned away from her. Then, he began pacing in that direction, idly wagging his tail. That was one of typical displays of his, as even in the midst of difficult battle his nonchalance remained unperturbed. Behaviour that was both natural and deliberate.

Focus. He needed focus. Internally and externally, he prepared himself. Yet he was subtle about that. There was no drastic surge of spiritual energy, no currents of lightning, tremors or dimensional rifts. The preparation was almost wholly mental. And in the meantime he kept seemingly walking away from the Shinigami, further obscuring his purpose. He closed his eyes. His body was no longer a real vessel of power, more a simple source of it, as his mind commanded forces far beyond the scope and magnitude of a physical body.

Her hands performed a downward flourish, positioned outstretched on either side of her, as if Jaromira was about to start some kind of dance. The flames that cloaked her form were abuzz with life, hinting at the growing power she had been feeding into it.

She would have been loathe to admit it, she struggled to even acknowledge the idea, but Sakaala had come far. She didn't place much stock in trials or barriers, but she nonetheless realised the rarity with which someone could come so close to her. He was far from an equal, no one could reach that lofty place she coveted for herself, of course, but he had done well to stir feelings and sensations that she had not felt in millennia. It was almost cathartic to her, to have so recently achieved her freedom only to be beset by waves of ages long nostalgia. Were she a different woman, she may have even thanked him for this, but instead she had decided to treat him to something else.

A World All Her Own

She mused once more on the back and forth that they had come to so far, a series of one ups that saw them both repeat the tricks of the other party. That was to come to an end, though. Jaromira had no limits bar her patience for idling inanity. Part of this demonstration would have been to evoke the idea of pointlessness, to strike a chord that her opponent would hopefully understand. That in the end, he was fighting against futility.

The flames surrounding her responded the moment she put a halt to her own inner dialogue. They flowed from her body, soaking into the sands. Bit by bit, the form of the radiant blue fire was swallowed up by the uncountable granules of dust. Then the flames exploded back into the fore, transforming the desert for miles around into an ocean of calm fire. Flowing as if it were liquid, rather than the audible roar and flickering of true flames. They did not burn, but the heat was an undeniable fixture that threatened to dim all the air around them.

The flames danced to an unseen pattern, and in moments a series of symbols and letters began to form. Their script unknown, and their meaning indecipherable from any obvious context. One could glean that they were ceremonial in nature, but that described little. The sea of flames trawled upwards now. They had swept across such a distance as to have reached the colossal Dankū that Jaromira had set up prior. Its own immaculate form being hidden beneath the blaze that was ascending to blot out the sky.

Energy flooded from Jaromira, ripping from her body through her orifices. A river of blue liquid, a form of Reiryoku so pure that it seemed glorious and yet alien both. It rose a short part above her, coalescing into an orb that to Sakaala's attuned vision would have been going through a picturesque formation of a star. It would collapse violently, radiating their environment in powerful but harmless explosions of light that dazed the senses. So advanced were his that, perhaps, they would have done more to Sakaala than it would others as sounds loud enough to court tectonic shifts roared across the area and light flickered so fast and so furious as to overtake that streaming from the moon high above. Then it all turned to red.

Moments passed in quiet silence as the world resettled into its new fixture. A landscape of black, charred masses. Dead. An empty landscape, somehow more desolate than the realm they had been in a moment before. Nary a thing in view, beyond the occasional tree made out of deformed clay. But despite the void that had been presented, there was air here. One could breath, and in turn feel the sensation that this world was... alive. New.

"Welcome, to my domain", Jaromira spoke softly in a knowing tone.

Sakaala stopped abruptly. He reacted with a mixture of feelings he noted as unusual for him. Instinctually, the Urdimbre contracted and condensed around his person, which meant his body subconsciously recognised the most recent development as a possible threat. That was far more significant than one could think at first. Far lesser enemies could harm him, but only because he let them. In this case, however, he felt a trace of genuine apprehension. That he could really be severely wounded, perhaps killed, even with his defences active, without his permission. That feeling triggered joy, for as a warrior, he appreciated a real challenge.

But there was more to that. Once again, the opponent interfered with his plans, inadvertently or not, putting a halt to his clever schemes. Once again, she presented him with an ability of even greater level as if to impress or intimidate him, completely unfazed herself. The forced change to his typical approach to battle was both welcome and annoying at the same time. After all, he enjoyed being in control of everything and plotting his own battles toward a satisfying end. In this particular instance, though, he felt control constantly slipping through his fingers, as if he were trying to grasp and hold sand in his hands. Thus, when a grin outstretched on his face yet again, it was a crooked, unpleasant grimace, indicative of an internal conflict.

"Your domain, huh?", he turned around to look at the Shinigami woman. "Seems empty and boring, if you ask me."

The stiffness in his limbs was only getting worse. Certainly, that was not the result of him fighting in his true form. He had not exerted himself as much, not yet. Was that... Gūjinkiyo? Some sort of illusion spell? A curse, maybe? That was annoying as well. He hated techniques of that kind, elusive and insidious, as he was usually unable to even detect them, much less resist or remove their adverse effects. A kind of cheating, he thought. He had some techniques in his vast arsenal he considered cheating, too, yet he preferred not to resort to them. Depending on what would happen next, it was possible for him to change his mind and make an exception especially for the arrogant woman.

"It's all very impressive, I s'ppose, but I don't feel exactly overwhelmed by your superior might", he remarked sarcastically, his tail now swinging like a whip. "You're havin' trouble swatting a lil' fly like me, or something? I'm still using only 80% of my power, y'know."

He was angry, but not furious. Even if he could not control the situation at hand, he could control himself. That was sufficient. Almost everything he did was on purpose. Even though they were locked in an actual struggle for dominance, even though she was likely to overpower him even at 80% of his potential... he had still much, much more left in store, much more than one could expect. There was no need to abandon his initial plan, a tweak would do. Whether she anticipated his move, reducing its surprise factor, whether she was able to repeatedly come on top... that did not matter. He was about to kill her. He was done goofing around, and all he waited for was the perfect opportunity to initiate her inevitable demise.

"I suppose you have a point, it is rather droll", Jaromira admitted, looking upon the landscape herself. Of course, she knew the reasons behind that and for Sakaala's sake, perhaps a demonstration was in order. With a snap of her fingers the world was miraculously reformed. A pure blue sky filled in the air, a sprawling cityscape of alien architecture formed behind Jaromira, filling with the hustle of life that could be heard by both parties some distance away.

But as soon as it had manifested, was it shown destruction as a comet appeared from nowhere, right atop the city's skyline. In an instant, it was engulfed in fire, the sky bleaching itself red in the chaos. When all was said and done, the world had returned to its deadened state as if nothing had ever happened.

"You see, I created this realm and I could do whatever I wish with it, but that would be obvious manufacturing", she explained, her tone plain. "I would prefer it to grow naturally, along its own vectors, an unfortunate fact that will take millennia to come to fruition. Thankfully, I intend to be here when that happens".

She snapped her fingers again. "You are correct, however, I should have no problem squashing such an insignificant threat, but I prefer... reaction", though the motion had no obvious results. What Jaromira had done was something profound. Affecting the powers of her opponent to fully alter their substance. Though he had planned to kill her, he would find that his spatial machinations were now little more than piles of salt.

"Contests of arms are little more than pathetic, petty squabbles, so to ensure that my opponent realises the folly of such action I treat them to a course in futility. Notice, Sakaala, that even with the majority of your power, you have yet to lay a finger upon me, where we have barely even scratched the surface of what I can do", she spoke somberly, not particularly interested in her own diatribe. Despite her ego, she wasn't fond of explaining herself, but he had earned that much.

"So, why don't you show me what you've got? Give it your best, I assure you, my realm and I can take it", she goaded, a rather mischievous grin taking shape.

Sakaala lifted his hand and clenched it into a fist. He noticed that it was covered with salt. Suddenly, he began sweating profusely, tears were flowing from his eye and a seemingly empty eye socket even though he was not exactly in a mood to cry. He swayed, briefly overcome with a powerful headache and a feeling of burning pain surging across his whole body. Then, he fell to his knees, supported his weight by putting one of his hands on the ground. With an unpleasant sound, he vomitted what appeared to be... more salt.

That feeling... he felt as if something important was excised from his being. Something was lacking. He felt as if he had shrunk, stupefied. The shroud of Urdimbre, the network of wormholes upon his nervous system, his Aspecto... they were all gone. No, they had been replaced... with salt.

"Oh", he uttered with a strained voice. "Is that so?"

He stood up with obvious effort, though once upright he strove to maintain that position. Veins were protruding from beneath the salt-covered skin of his face. His sharp teeth were bared in a grimace that could not really be called a smile. More of a furious grin.

"You avoid my attacks and cower behind your shields. You take away my realm, my mobility, my powers... and now you tell me to show what I've got? Now you feel confident enough to let me come at you?", he growled at the Shinigami. "You worthless piece of shit... Is that your definition of superiority? To take away the powers of the enemy with some cheap tricks and mock them once they're finally brought below your level?", he continued with his left eye twitching uncontrollably.

Afterward, he rose both of his fists and looked toward the sombre sky. An outline of pink energy surrounded his shivering body.

"Our battle's been interesting so far, I'll give you that", he said quietly with a raspy voice. "But I could've crushed you like a bug anytime. Did you realise that? Is that the reason for this magical farce? Perhaps you were afraid of me, unwilling to directly confront my full power. You pathetic, feeble whore."

He had wanted to combat her in a dimensional maze, to test the limits of his spatial manipulation in an attempt to bring down her wards, to overpower, outmanoeuvre and outwit her at every step in a vicious, devastating battle. But instead she thwarted, undid or anticipated his moves time and again, and afflicted him with curses or illusions he virtually had no way of defending from or resisting. Once again, however, Sakaala viewed the situation in a greater scope than what was immediately apparent.

"Congratulations. With your valiant effort you've just proven I was superior to you all along. After all, you wouldn't go to such great lengths to enfeeble someone weaker than you, right? But still... even in this sorry state, I am Sakaala. I am the Unfettered King and I bow to no-one, for I am the ULTIMAAATE!", he roared the last word at the top of his lungs.

Originally, he wanted to showcase her 90% of his power. Exactly the same amount he had last used about a thousand years ago, during his final bout with his archnemesis of sorts, Kentarō Akiyama. But in his current state, that would not do. He was humiliated, and he needed to make a statement. Instead, he would use 100%. Maximum power. For the first time, he would unleash the whole of his astronomical power in battle. And even without his special ability the results were bound to be cataclysmic.

His muscles were engorged, covered with prominent veins, as if they were about to burst. The aura of his spiritual pressure intensified and expanded, assuming a spherical shape. With a loud hum it extended across Jaromira's realm, a whitish glow with dark pink sparkles and currents of electricity raging within. It might have been only a one quarter increase in respect to his previous level, but with such colossal magnitude to begin with, the shift was truly drastic. The result of a mutation, a broken limiter, an anomaly in all its glory, a beacon of ungodly power shining brightly across an artificial realm.

"I'll tear you apart with my teeth if need be!", yelled Sakaala in the aftermath.

Immediately he propelled himself toward her with sheer strength of his legs, sufficient to begin his brief flight with a veritable explosion. And so did it end a fraction of a second later, the Arrancar having narrowly passed by his opponent. As the formidable shockwave, the consequence of his manoeuvre, was about to hit her, from behind he swung both of his blades at her: one glowing brightly with friction-induced heat accumulated during the charge, the other wreathed in currents of lightning produced by his overflowing power. No extension, no warped directions, just a plain, old close combat approach. As soon as the torrential gust of wind hit so did the two lightning-fast strikes. Shielded somewhat by her own body, Sakaala quickly proceeded with a barrage of physical blows.

She could withstand attacks that should have eradicated her many times over. She could send them away or thwart them, she could take away his power, but she would not intimidate him. Even without his limbs, even as an ant or a speck of dust, he would still lash out at her with all of his remaining might. Even if she could kill him, he would never let her defeat him.

In the state that she was in Jaromira could have easily have evaded Sakaala, even at this monstrous level he was playing in. She could have pushed him back and just as well smothered him into ashes as if he were nothing. But she didn't. She made nary a motion in response as the caricature her opponent had become flew at her and unleashed an onslaught of puerile attacks that were only matched by his weak attempts at an argument a moment prior.

The blows came hard. They came fast, and their impact was palpable. She weathered each hit, as if she were a pillar of stone amidst crashing ocean waves. A shockwave of terrible winds passed by, followed by fists that were as missiles with all the force that could imply. The ground rippled and shook as lightning and fire tore through it, the air audibly buckled at the stresses it was trying to vocalise; distorted representations of raw power.

One ward broke, then the next, and the next after that. There was a reaction at first, as they fell step-by-step. The sound of shattering glass, barely heard above Sakaala's rage, the glimmer of red light that was the wards physical form, and of course the liquid flickers as they melted from facsimiles into nothing. The reactions grew more intense with each that fell, until they had all been broken, four in all. But once they were gone, all semblance of success, any inklings of progress and triumph were lost. Jaromira stood there, pillar that she was, unfazed by Sakaala's attacks. For all intents and purposes they continued to land upon her form, and their effects could be seen all across the earth that surrounded the two, but to Jaromira it might have been better to say they weren't there at all. She couldn't feel the power behind his attacks, not even the slightest breeze evoked by the force managed to make it too her.

Finally, as the attack weathered on she began to laugh. Not a particularly loud expression, but one that was inevitably heard by her opponent as she willed it to be. The wind didn't matter in this situation, as her voice carried itself on more ethereal wavelengths. When she stopped, she glared the creature down, a look of disappointment to her features.

"You lose your toys and this is the broken mess you become? Instead of building yourself back up, or making use of your new gifts, you've turned into this infantile creature sputtering on in a pathetic rancor", she was clearly dissatisfied with the results of her game, though seeing Sakaala in this state had given her some amusement it had ultimately deviated from her assumptions. Though she would never admit that failing.

"Just like a child, you throw a tantrum when things no longer go your way", an eery otherworldly force exuded from her. Like gravity, but something else at the same time. It gripped at Sakaala to push him back and away from the woman he'd been trying to hard to batter into paste. "Fine."

She breathed a heavy sigh, and bit by bit the world around them started to become less... physical. It started to wave, smudge and smear, like a still wet painting. "When we return to Hueco Mundo I will have rendered myself temporarily vulnerable. No wards, no defenses, no evasion, we don't want you tripping on your hypocrisy after all".

She explained with a grin, remarking on the fallacies Sakaala had concocted in his earlier outcry. "No holding back, I want you to obliterate me", she said as if daring him to strike.

Just in time, too, as the dreary sands and moonlit skies of the Land of Hollows returned in full just like they'd never left.

Sakaala stood fairly close to her, panting, partly because of his fury, partly owing to the strain of unleashing his full power. He looked around, surprised to see that they were back to Hueco Mundo, just like that. There was a grain of truth in the words of his Shinigami opponent. So much more powerful than the vast majority of beings he had encountered during his long life, Sakaala was mentally unprepared to face an actual challenge. For the first time since a thousand years he was simply unable to play his usual game. The gap between them was too small, insufficient to let him dictate the course of engagement.

In fact, he was played for a fool. If briefly, his greatest asset was reduced to a joke, and he could not do anything about that on his own. That thought was both infuriating and frightening. He did consider the circumstances of his death at the hands of Akiyama. Sometimes, he determined it was because of him underestimating the opponent. Sometimes, he thought it was merely a fluke. But to think he could be defeated again, that there was actually another being capable of besting him... that was unacceptable.

"You... ghh-GHAAAAA!", he yelled abruptly.

With the artificial realm no longer in place the laws of the universe were back. And so were his powers. The salt excreted from his body vanished, or rather was converted back into its original form - spatial distortions. The wormholes enveloping his nervous system and the shroud of warped space were back. Now, with his maximum power exerted and his special ability restored so suddenly, it virtually exploded all around the two. The sombre realm of Hollows shook violently in its foundations. For a while it seemed as if it were the end of the world. But, with a single sweeping impulse emanating from Sakaala's monstrous body, the black and white gave way to garish shades of pink, bringing back the bizarre landscape he had first created during his Resurrección.

It was true that she could have killed him... but not anymore.

"I wanted to have some fun", he seethed as he lifted his right hand toward Jaromira's face. "I wanted to dismantle your defences one by one, gradually revealing the extent of my power but without resorting to techniques I could use to kill you in an instant, wards or not. Clearly, you don't like playing by the rules, though. Bummer. If anything, you've managed to prove you're unable to defeat me in a fair fight, and you've failed to impress me in the slightest. All you did was... make me angry."

He did not comprehend what the artificial realm truly was, nor was he sure why did she decide to forsake the only advantage she had been able to secure over him. All he knew was that there she was, helpless before him, while he himself was at the absolute peak of his power. The space in front of his palm seemed to collapse. Then, a sphere of impossibly pitch black hue appeared with a loud hum.

Sakaala noted that his enemy's behaviour was quite odd considering her impending doom. Perhaps she overexerted herself and fell short of finishing him off? While her power was considerable her arrogance far eclipsed it, so it was not that much of a stretch that her last words were the ones she had spoken. Defiant to the end, even in the face of obvious defeat. She wanted him to obliterate her, and he was more than happy to grant her wish.

"I'd ask your name, but I don't want to sully my memory any more than that. Bye bye", he said with a twitchy grin. "Grieta."

The black sphere erupted into a wide beam of gravitational waves, so potent that they would literally annihilate everything in their path as they destroyed bonds between individual molecules.

True to her word Jaromira's defenses fell apart once they had returned to the realm of stagnation that was Hueco Mundo. Her power didn't falter, no, for all intents and purpose its numerical scale hadn't fluctuated much at all. Like an ocean it simply flooded in and continued apace. She had accomplished a feat that was beyond most if not all mages within the Gotei 13, and even the grand majority of those within the Kidō Corps. Bounded fields were not particularly rare, but to truly replace a dimensional space with one of one's own making was something that should have killed her. A loss of control was cutting it lucky, one could surmise.

No more visible was this than the great Dankū she had set up ages ago. It withstood the shifting of realms and transitory places, but cut from its master, it shattered in an instant. Shards of, what could be best described as physical light, fell down in a light shower all around the two whilst Jaromira entered the throes of a weakened state and Sakaala entered the highs of his power.

Her veins were aglow with Reiryoku, and as before, raw, liquid energy trickled down from her lips. Energy amassed within her of a scale that could frighten the Gods. Magnitude unrelenting built up within her but it didn't so much explode as it did spill over. However, before Jaromira could deliver a most unseemly sight, Sakaala's attack billowed into her to no resistance. The world shuddered and crumpled before the might of this Grieta, and for once, so did Jaromira. Her body spent an instant in a myriad forms then. Blood, guts, ash, a distorted presence, and then... nothing.

Not a trace of her physical form was left behind in the wake of the attack. Not an ounce of flesh or a strand of hair to be seen amongst the flattened bed of an eradicated desert. Her Reiatsu, ever present before, was gone too. Not even a scrap had been left to linger. Moments like this went by, quiet, empty, unchallenged.

Then a flame burst into life. A blue, dazzling fire, sparking in the air. It radiated a light that shone in specific places, tracing an outline that turned into a network. A series of pathways encompassing a shape not unlike that of a human. A sheath flew over the network, wrapping it in a silhouette of liquid that slowly solidified and took on details matching that of the recently eradicated woman.

With full force her Reiatsu returned to the fore, like a cresting wave battering against a ship, threatening to topple it with its sheer magnitude. The colour of her form, her skin, her hair, her eyes all flooded in on that instant and so too did a rekindled glare of Reishi that matured into the form of her clothing. She was intent on baring her power to Sakaala, not her dignity.

There was a knowing smirk on her face, calculated and prideful. "Satisfied?"

Sakaala, who had since relaxed back into the natural state of his Resurrección, was clearly startled by her sudden reappearance. He widened his normal eye and swayed backward a little.

"Huh? Wait, what!?", he exclaimed, his face contorted into an intimidating grimace. "How come are you still alive!? I disintegrated your whole body! You...!"

Blatantly shocked, and frustrated, because of that unexpected turn of events, Sakaala eventually froze for what was a moment to an outside observer. Meanwhile, a superluminal thought process occurred in his head. Wrapped in microscopic wormholes, the neurons of his brain flared up as he rewound the whole encounter in his memory. Every single event, from the moment he had approached the Shinigami woman up to her supposed destruction. He considered every detail he had glossed over previously, or must have apparently misinterpreted. Every word she spoke, her behaviour, the way she acted and reacted during their battle. Sakaala thought that she was strong, then overconfident, then delusional, but with that one last astonishing piece of the puzzle now in place he finally understood what had actually happened.

That was not an illusion. One could trick his mundane senses, even his Reikaku, but he had a seventh sense of sorts to rely upon under such circumstances. He was sure he had eradicated her, just as he was certain that she was now standing right there, unharmed. He analysed the total of her performance. The conclusion was intriguing, to say the least.

"Oh. Oooh", he mused, visibly calming down. "Now I see. So that's how it is, eh? You're an anomaly, like Kentarō-chan or I. Well, sorta. We're both crazy strong and you... you're just an unkillable piece of shit", stated Sakaala with a wide grin.

He walked closer to her, slowly, with no obvious indication that he was about to attack. He simply stopped in front of her and looked down, literally, at the petite woman before him. His tail wagged idly behind him as he continued to glare at her. For the whole duration of the battle he struggled, mentally, physically, sometimes both, with that nameless Shinigami Captain. She ruined his little play at nearly every step, survived his many devastating strikes unscathed, then reformed after complete annihilation at his hands. Interesting, most interesting.

"I must admit I'm surprised. That's a first for sure, and I've battled countless enemies, trust me. I mean, death doesn't really stick to people in this fucked up world, one way or another, but this is some first rate trick you've got up your sleeve. However, that's about it, huh?", with those words he leant toward her. "Seems I can't really win this one... but neither can you... eh, what's your name, anyway?"

"Trying to save face are we? How droll", she replied with no undue incredulity, from her own point of view. She had hardly delved into the depths of that which she could conjure, and that which she had was used largely in the form of demonstration. The "fight" if they could call it that anymore, was still so very far from unwinnable for Jaromira. Though she would never admit to otherwise even if that weren't the case.

"I'm not sure you deserve my telling it", on the one hand he had impressed her with how far he managed to take his capabilities, on the other he was annoying. The typical trite egotistical Arrancar, only this one wouldn't shut up. To see he lacked that determined spark that she loved to toy with didn't help her opinion much. But she wasn't entirely without favour.

"You know the name of my Zanpakutō, I'm sure if you're really interested you can find out, though the mark it left on you might be enough of a reminder", she smirked again when referring to the powers of her subsumed blade. Its effects would almost certainly have worn off, especially on someone as strong as Sakaala, but in a more sinister twist, the kernal of its effects would remain deeply rooted within. Simply awaiting Jaromira's command to become active a second time, or worse to advance to the next stage.

"How rude", replied Sakaala, although he did not seem particularly offended. "I think I know enough, though. Definitely. I could play with you for a while longer. I could kill you, time and again... maybe I'd come up with a way to get rid of you permanently? Or not, but it would be fun anyway. For a time. I've got a better idea", he mused, now looking to the side with a dreamy smile. "Hmm. You've certainly piqued my curiosity, Shinigami-chan. Or, should I say, Twelfth Division Captain?"

With those words he turned around and began walking away, abrupt as usual.

"Not so unfettered now, are we?", she said, amused, talking literally and figuratively, given their exchange. She wasted no time in treating Sakaala's exit as a cue to make her own, however, and in a rather matched motion, she had turned to walk in the opposite direction. A small distorted Garganta manifesting not far ahead of her. "Something to look forward to, I suppose".

"Funny you mention that", replied Sakaala. "Though the fetters I'm gonna latch onto are yours, I'm afraid. You see, killing's just the final touch. What I've always enjoyed the most is... breaking people. Whether it's one of your "resources" going missing, an experiment failing, or your barracks being replaced with a smoking crater... whatever it is, whenever that is... Well, I think we'll meet again, eventually."

He stopped and turned around to cast a side-glance at the woman. He had not exactly employed the full extent of his powers either, the thing was, he was somewhat tired of fighting after a millennium of nigh-constant ordeal in the bowels of Hell. Tormenting people was his favourite pastime, and he had serendipitously come across a very intriguing specimen to work with. How quaint. He wondered if one Kentarō Akiyama was still struggling in this oh so imperfect world, as that would provide plenty additional entertainment for the Arrancar. In fact, that was his next goal: to make an excursion across the Soul Society to find out what was going on in there presently.

"See you... someday", he winked at Dragan.

Then he seemed to be consumed by space around him, vanishing without a trace. With the source of colossal spiritual pressure gone, the environment soon began returing to the sombre black-and-whites of Hueco Mundo. Nevertheless, the process would take a while to complete, given the severity of alteration.

The tension in the environment faded as well, with the red-headed Shinigami's departure. The air returned to a mild cool and the land settled into quiet, not fit to nurse the scars that had been bored into it today.