Breaking Barriers

This has not been a good day, Urahara Kisuke privately admitted to himself as he carefully kept his guard up in the mist he was trapped in. The watch on his wrist beeped five times in quick succession once again, and the former assassin allowed himself a sigh. I know, Yoruichi. Sorry I'm late. Again. Why is it that everything happens all at once, rather than in reasonable chunks?

Not even an hour ago, Urahara had sent Ichigo and his team to Hell in order to rescue Ichigo's family. But mere minutes later, a veritable army of Hollows had suddenly emerged in Karakura, forcing Urahara to deploy all available fighters – namely himself, Tessai, and Hachi. Ururu and Jinta had been left at home – while strong, they were still children and Urahara would never bring children into this kind of fight if it could be avoided.

The strangest part though, was that the Hollows seemed to be out for three people in particular… a pair of Shinigami and a little girl dressed in colorful, ornate, very expensive-looking robes. The girl appeared to be their charge, if the way the Shinigami had promptly abandoned the fight while yelling about getting to safe house. A noble then. I hate getting into political matters, Urahara grumbled.

And then while they had been busy taking out the Hollows – while they weren't very strong at all comparatively, they did have overwhelming numbers to work with – someone new had come along and blanketed the area in reiatsu-flooded mist, making it far more difficult to Tessai and Hachi to deal with the Hollows. They were Kid ō types through and through, and not well suited to fighting virtually blind. There was Hollow reiatsu everywhere, making it difficult for them to track with their spiritual sense, and neither wanted to accidentally cause casualties among the living humans.

But the mist meant little to Urahara Kisuke, former assassin of the Onmitsukidō. Mere mist meant nothing to someone who had been trained to kill without the use of any of their senses save spiritual. Closing his eyes, Urahara had been destroying Hollows left and right before instinctually blocking a sword that seemed to be wielded by the mist itself.

"Surprising," a voice that echoed in the mist congratulated as dark shadows began to appear around Urahara, unknown to the exile. The sword itself wisped back into mist a moment later. "You are quite at home here without your sight."

"Same to you, assassin," Urahara replied with a thin smile. "Why are you targeting that noble girl, and why are you working with these Hollows?"

"That is not for you to know."

Ah, confirmed. She is a noble, and he is working with them. "But I already know so much," Urahara complained affably. "You are after that little noble girl, who I presume came here to escape your employer with her two bodyguards. You or more likely your employer has some connection with Hollows, perhaps a treat to entice them towards her. That means she's dangerous somehow, so probably an heir.

"Your sword, while similar to a Zanpakutō, does not convey your spirit, nor does it have quite the right, shall we call it 'flavor', of reiatsu. It is artificial, yet it has powers very similar to that of a Zanpakutō. That's practically unheard of as it would give practically anyone the ability to become pseudo-Shinigami, and possibly give existing Shinigami a second set of abilities. That would make it almost certainly forbidden knowledge, so only true masters of weapons forging could have even known about the process, let alone properly forged your weapon.

"If my memory serves me correctly, then the Kasumiōji are the only nobles primarily associated with specialty weapons manufacturing," the shopkeeper continued, musing aloud. "That leads me to one of two conclusions: either you, or your employer, has or have had relations with the Kasumiōji. Given all that, it's a reasonable guess that the little girl is the heir to the Kasumiōji."

There was a moment of silence. "That's actually quite impressive," the unnamed assassin in the mist admitted. "My sword is known as a Bakkotō, and it is indeed forged with forbidden techniques of the Kasumiōji. So tell me, who are you, and why do you inhibit me?"

"Me? I'm just the humble owner of a small shop that caters to the spiritual side of things," Urahara replied loftily. "And while normally I don't involve myself in the matters of Soul Society…" His voice lowered slightly as he began to smirk. "… we are not in Soul Society, and I would like this place still standing next week."

"What do you mean, 'shopkeeper'?" the attacker queried with a mocking lilt.

"You would be well advised to know Kurosaki Ichigo calls this place home," Urahara answered. "Perhaps you've heard of him? Orange hair? Giant sword? Invaded Soul Society a few months ago to save a noble girl from execution? Killed Aizen, which not even Yamamoto-sōtaicho managed? Is the name ringing any bells yet?"

"What does he have to do with anything?"

"He went to war with against Soul Society for the sake of one noble girl he barely knew before. Can you tell me why he wouldn't again?"

There was silence for a moment. "For all his reputation as the defender of Karakura, Kurosaki Ichigo certainly hasn't made an appearance despite all the Hollows. He isn't here, is he?" the voice asked shrewdly. "After we all felt his reiatsu at the Berean mansion, it suddenly vanished. I thought he had returned to the living world, but apparently for once it seems the rumors flying around about him have some substance behind them."

Urahara swore under his breath. He knew where this was going.

"Kurosaki is currently in Hell, rescuing his mother," the assassin guessed, before laughing assuredly. "Even if he manages to escape from Hell, he'll probably still go to war against Soul Society anyway for threatening his family! My actions here won't hurt that situation at all. In any case, I've wasted enough time here."

"So have I. Sorry," Urahara replied in a too-calm voice, "but I can't afford to play with you anymore today. Awaken, Benihime."

"You're a Shinigami!" the mist user exclaimed. "No matter. My body does not physically exist in this mist unless I will it."

"You are mistaken. Your body is this mist until you consolidate yourself," Urahara corrected. "Time to recompose yourself, or die. Hadō 58: Tenran!"

The moderately powerful Hadō, in the hands of Urahara, blasted the majority of the mist up and away from himself and towards the fray of various combat spells being used by the Kidō masters Hachigen and Tessai. Urahara could see several bursts of Byakurai and Shakkahō, with a few Raikōhō tossed in as well.

Suddenly from within the mist, a shadow emerged, and then a whole body materialized, with some mist still emerging from the sword it wielded in its right hand. The assassin dressed all in black – long-sleeve black shirt, black pants, black facemask that covered his nose and mouth… the only things not in black were the dark pink armor he wore on top of the shirt, and his brown hair. He promptly flickered down to a short ways away from Urahara. "I shall have to remember that tactic in the future," the man complimented. "My name is Kuzu Ryū, assassin. May I have yours?"

"Urahara Kisuke, exile."

Ryū nodded. "As I have no real strategy against someone who can counter the mist, I will retreat for now." And he Shunpo-ed away.

Urahara did not bother to follow. He had bigger problems – Yoruichi needed a portal back to the living world several minutes ago. He too vanished and reappeared back in his shop, before Shunpo-ing back down to the underground training room and immediately casting the same spell that had opened the portal to begin with.

He could feel the spell take hold, could taste Hell's reiatsu, yet for some reason the portal did not open. Releasing the spell and attempting it a second time, with the same results, Urahara frowned and turned to his computers that were monitoring Hell and its connection to the living world. "Hell is just as close as before," he muttered. "But there's… damn."

If the founder of the R&D Institute was reading the data correctly, he'd found the source of the problem. Mayuri had managed to set up a barrier between the two worlds that severely inhibited the use of dimensional travel between them through use of any means save the purification inherent in a Zanpakutō. And to add insult to injury, Mayuri had used the very same principles Urahara had implemented for swapping Karakura with its fake in Soul Society!

Urahara took off his hat and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. His old colleague could not have had worse timing. It was now impossible for him to open a portal to Hell except for finding a Hollow whose old human life had been evil enough to warrant Hell. Or killing such a human myself, Urahara corrected absently, but he had no such intention.

Hachi and Tessai walked in then, each a little tired from having defeated the onslaught of Hollows. "What has happened, Urahara-dono?" Tessai immediately asked, seeing Urahara's pensive expression.

He quickly explained what he'd learned in the last few minutes. "We're going to try to break through anyway."

"How?"

"We attack the weakest link in the barrier. The Gates of Hell. Mayuri had to leave the barrier there intentionally weak in order to allow for Hell-bound souls to make the transition," Urahara outlined. "Once we summon the Gates, they should open on their own, but if they don't, we all attack with our most powerful Hadō and force it open."

"What if that doesn't work?" Hachigen couldn't help but ask.

Urahara was silent as he traversed the room to a box he rarely kept out of his sight. He picked it up gingerly, knowing what was held within. "Desperate times call for desperate measures. One way or another, the Gates will open. After they do, Tessai, you need to use Bakudō 77: Tenteikūra to tell Ichigo and Yoruichi to return to the Gates. Hachi, your job will be to make sure the Gates stay open. I'll deal with whatever tries to interfere."

"Understood," the two Kidō masters acknowledged.

They left the shop for a nearby field – the Gates of Hell were simply too large, even for Urahara's underground training room. The three of them stood evenly spaced in a triangular fashion, with Hachigen as the focal point. Hachi summoned his Hollow mask, and as one, they began to chant the forbidden incantation, each of them focusing on summoning the Gates of Hell.

They summoned the bottom of the doors first, the barrier fighting them, but they repeated the chant, over and over, devoting more and more reiatsu. It took several minutes of non-stop chanting and a great deal of reiatsu, but the Gates of Hell finally materialized. As there was no damned soul to claim, they stood steadfast, refusing to open.

Taking a breath and attempting to recover from the effort of summoning the Gates through the powerful barrier Mayuri had placed, Urahara took his hat off and wiped the sweat from his brow, just before an intensely familiar reiatsu rocked through the vicinity. He turned to see Mayuri, Kyōraku, Ukitake, and Yamamoto stepping through a Senkaimon.

Mayuri was showing off every one of his white teeth in a gleeful smile, while Kyōraku and Ukitake looked rather concerned and uneasy. Yamamoto, however, wore an expression of thunderous anger. "Urahara Kisuke!" he roared. "You dare to disrupt our solution to protect the living world from Hell itself?"

Urahara found himself standing straight, looking icily at the sōtaicho as he endured and ignored the fire-oriented reiatsu of the millennia-old Shinigami. "Yes," he replied softly, coolly. "I dare. I dare to take the high ground and do what I feel is right. I dare to do whatever is in my power to those I care for from Hell. I dare to place my faith in Kurosaki Ichigo, and damn the consequences!"

The words seemed to strike a chord with Kyōraku and Ukitake, who glanced at each other significantly before walking quietly to Urahara's side, turning to face Yamamoto, whose body language shifted in surprise for a moment. "Both of you," he stated more than asked.

"Both of us," Kyōraku confirmed anyway. "Ichigo-kun has always defied the odds, Yama-jii. I won't be the one to take away his chance to save his family."

"Ichigo has done us a great service, sensei," Ukitake pleaded. "He has grown so strong, stronger than any of us. If anyone can venture into Hell and save his family, he can. We owe it to him to let him try."

"You fools," Yamamoto muttered, before raising his voice. "You cannot understand! By entering Hell he has doomed himself! Hell does not so willingly let its souls leave! By now Kurosaki Ichigo's sisters and mother have fallen to its effects and become Togabito themselves, if they had not already been eaten by the Kushanāda! The air itself will force his Hollowification and he will lose himself!"

"Yet he has recovered from full Hollowification not once, but twice without ill effects," Urahara corrected with narrow eyes. "He has since been able to fully Hollowify without losing his mind, case in point in his battle against Aizen in Soul Society!"

"You do not know… you could not know what having such a powerful person in Hell will effect! It is forbidden knowledge, far beyond the clearance of taicho! I only gained clearance from the Zero Division after I became sōtaicho!" Yamamoto bellowed angrily. "The best case scenario is that Kurosaki and his family all die in Hell and remain trapped there!"

"You must be joking, Yama-jii," Kyōraku commented, shaking his head. "If that's the best case scenario, what's the worst?"

"Complete annihilation of the living world by Hell itself."

"All the more reason to get Ichigo out of there before that happens!" Urahara decided. "Hachi, Tessai! Get those Gates open!"

"Hai!" they replied in unison.

"You youngsters need to learn your place!" Yamamoto growled as his cane's outer shell promptly incinerated, revealing his Zanpakutō. "Kurotsuchi-taicho, deal with Urahara Kisuke! Reduce All Creation of Ash, Ryūjin Jakka!"

Kyōraku and Ukitake wordlessly brought out their own Shikai – each of their incantations were far too long to properly incant when fighting their sensei. "You are wrong, Yama-jii!" Kyōraku called out strongly.

"Ichigo has been wronged far too long for us to deny him a chance to save his family!" Ukitake joined in.

Kurotsuchi's smile was impossibly wide as he drew his own Zanpakutō. "You have no idea how long I have wanted this, Urahara Kisuke."

"I beg to differ, Mayuri-chan," Kisuke murmured, taking off his beloved bucket hat and tossing it away. He could not afford to be an eccentric shopkeeper for this fight. His eyes hardened as they met his successor's gaze. Urahara was once more the taicho-level assassin of the Onmitsukidō, genius founder of the Research and Development Institute.

"Rip asunder, Ashisogi Jizō," Mayuri murmured almost lovingly, his blade warping into a golden deformed trident, with curved blades, the middle one being longer than the other two. Where the blades met the handle was a golden baby's head with eyes half-open.

Urahara promptly vanished and reappeared a scant moment later directly behind Mayuri, releasing his Shikai wordlessly as he charged it with energy. "Shibari, Benihime!"

Mayuri smirked, not bothering to move. "Bakudō 81: Dankū."

The black-and-red webbing hit the invisible barrier before falling to the ground, useless. But Urahara was already gone, Shunpo-ing a short distance away. "Kamisori, Benihime!" He unleashed a small, but powerful crescent of red energy that sliced its way through the air towards Mayuri.

Urahara's successor shook his head. "Useless. Bakudō 73: Tozanshō." Just before the attack could hit him, an inverted azure pyramid materialized around Mayuri, the bottom buried in the ground he stood upon.

Urahara scoffed at the snap judgment. "Tozanshō, Mayuri? Is that really how you want to play this?" Shunpo-ing once more above, Urahara flashed to above Mayuri's position. He snapped his left hand up with his palm facing the exact center of the pyramid, where he knew it would be furthest away from the five points of power that made up the spell and therefore should be weakest. Urahara instantly lined himself up behind his hand, as though as though to shield himself, while making subtle movements with his right hand. "Hadō 88: Hiryū Gekizoku Shinten Raihō!"

For only a moment, Urahara's left hand glowed bright electric blue with swirling reiatsu, before a truly massive typhoon of lightning-infused reiatsu, more than twice as wide as Urahara was tall, erupted with enough light to nearly blind the scientist. No wonder Tessai always wears those sunglasses when he casts this, Urahara couldn't help but think, just before the spell crashed down on the pyramid barrier.

Unable to withstand the raw power, the Tozanshō cracked, splintered, and then finally shattered, allowing the rest of Urahara's Hadō to hit the ground. There was hardly any more power left in the spell after breaking the barrier, however, and all it did was leave an admittedly large scorch mark in the ground.

Urahara frowned – Mayuri had disappeared, but he knew that the taicho would not abandon his chance to silence his predecessor so easily. But where is he…?

He was suddenly taken by surprise as a hand clasped his shoulder, before promptly exploding on contact. As the smoke from the explosion began to fade, a camouflaged figure walked forward from on the ground behind Urahara, his skin flaking away to reveal Mayuri's usual appearance, minus his left arm. "Did you forget about my Nisehada and Jabarakaina, Urahara?"

"Not at all," came Urahara's voice from the smoke as the last wisps were taken by the wind. He was completely unharmed. "Did you forget about my portable Gigai?"

"Hmph. Hardly," Mayuri scoffed, casually reaching into his coat and pulling out a vial of green serum, injecting it into his shoulder. Immediately, his whole arm regenerated, taking mere seconds to return him to full functionality. Stretching it experimentally, he shook his head. "You truly infuriate me, Urahara Kisuke."

"I live to serve," Urahara mocked. "Shall we continue? Wait, I'm sorry. We're already done."

"What?" But suddenly Mayuri was caught in the webbing of Urahara's first technique, Shibari, wrapped from head to toe. He fell to the floor painfully, glaring up at Urahara as the former assassin landed gently on the ground. "You purposely left your technique active," he accused. "You quietly fed it reiatsu and made it spread across the ground while I was inside my barriers, and talked to me to buy time to finish the job!"

"Guilty as charged. Now, I don't deny your ingenuousness, so I'm sure you would figure out a way out of the webbing sooner rather than later. So I'll give you a choice." He placed Benihime just above one of the links of webbing that were spread along the ground. "Either you use your useful turn-to-liquid trick, or I blow you up."

Mayuri growled at the former assassin angrily. "Damn you, Urahara Kisuke!" Sealing Ashisogi Jizō, Mayuri managed to pierce his side slightly with his sealed Zanpakutō, before promptly turning into a pea-green liquid and easily passing through the webbing.

Urahara let the Shibari spell collapse, before Shunpo-ing away – there was little time, and he could tell that Tessai and Hachi had not yet managed to open the Gates of Hell! He could tell that Kyōraku and Ukitake were fighting Yamamoto still, judging by the rapidly rising heat in the area, but they were apparently keeping him busy.

Reappearing next to Tessai, who was in the middle of quietly chanting the full incantation of what was no doubt an extremely high level spell, Urahara channeled a large portion of his remaining reiatsu into Benihime, charging up for a powerful attack to add to Tessai's own. Urahara quickly recognized some of the lines that Tessai was chanting, and he began to smirk once he realized what Tessai was doing. Master of Kidō indeed.

Suddenly, surprising Urahara and Tessai and nearly making them lose their concentration, Ukitake appeared next to them in the tell-tale flicker of Shunpo. "Whatever techniques you're using, use them now!" he cried out. "Now, Sōgyo no Kotowari!" He thrust forward with his right hand, unleashing an enormous blast of flames…. Yamamoto's flames.

"Nake, Benihime!"

"Hadō 91: Senjū Kōten Taihō!" Tessai bellowed, throwing both hands up to aim at the Gates. "Hadō 88: Hiryū Gekizoku Shinten Raihō!" From his left hand came the same powerful lightning attack that Urahara had cast mere minutes before, and from his right more than a dozen pink spears of light shot into the lightning, merging and changing it. The lightning wave broke up into several smaller pieces, each piece coating the highly explosive spears of light with its electric blue energy, which then turned a vibrant violet as they shot forward towards the Gates of Hell. "Combination Hadō: Lightning Crash Destroyer of Heaven!"

The three attacks coincided at the barrier guarding the Gates, and then there was silence for a brief moment before the world as Urahara knew it exploded.

Meanwhile, down in Hell, Ichigo and the Vizard were finishing their genocide of the Kushanāda. Very few yet remained after the breathtaking display of raw power had annihilated their brethren. Perhaps a couple of dozen had survived due to various outcroppings and sheer luck, but they made no attempt to move forward and continue the attack. Instead, they were… retreating? Yes, Yoruichi observed, they are. But to where?

The Hollow Ichigo had become screamed his triumph, the Hollowified Vizards behind him echoing it briefly before falling still. With his main priority complete, Ichigo lifted his mother to his eye level. She had fallen completely limp.

Ichigo made a querying noise, a blend between a grunt and a thoughtful hum. Getting no answer, Ichigo turned around and walked past the Vizard, who parted for him without a sound. Karin stared at Ichigo as though seeing him for the first time, but she didn't move. For the moment, Ichigo deposited his mother in front of her, and then turned his attention to Yuzu.

Yuzu was on the ground, lying still. Too still. Ichigo stabbed Tensa Zangetsu into the sand, then knelt and picked her up. The clink of a chain caught his ear and he twisted her around until he could see the cause. There was a chain coming out of her chest. He did not know why, but he suddenly hurt. Inside him, there was pain. Why? Why was the chain bad? Why did the girl not move?

He yelled wordlessly at her, trying to provoke the girl into moving. She did not. He did not understand. Why did he hurt? Ichigo made a frustrated noise. He felt as though he should know this.

… What the hell did you get yourself into this time, King?

What? Noise in his head! Ichigo spun on the spot, quickly dropping the girl off with the others, and brandished Tensa Zangetsu in a defensive fashion.

Huh. Weird… Ichigo, you there?

More noise! Was this an attack?

OK, seriously, answer me! And what's with the reiatsu?

It didn't sound like an attack… just more noise. More questioning than anything else. Ichigo grunted and decided to ignore it till it went away.

Ichigo, I swear that if you don't start talking THIS INSTANT I will take over! Right now! I'm serious! Fine, you asked for it!

Cazador de la Luna opened his eyes, blinking a couple of times as Ichigo's body changed slightly to reflect the change in ownership. He dismissed the Resurrección, not sensing an enemy nearby, but he got the nagging sense something was wrong. He turned around, and spotted Ichigo's family. One of them just continued to stare creepily at him until he shifted around uneasily. "Oi. Karin, right?"

"I-I-Ichigo?"

"No. I'm the Inner Hollow, Cazador."

Karin suddenly got up, her apparent state of shock and surprise giving way to genuine anger. "Let me talk to Ichigo!"

Cazador backed up a pace. "Hey, I would if I could! He seems to have checked out, though, and I've got no idea what the Hell is going on. Mind filling me in?"

"Now's not the time, Cazador de la Luna," Yoruichi's voice replied instead, walking towards him alongside Soifon and someone Cazador didn't really know. Damn, what did I miss? "We've got to get out of here before she dies too."

"What?"

Yoruichi looked at Cazador stone-faced. "Kurosaki Masaki and Kurosaki Yuzu are dead and have been claimed by Hell. Check their chests – there are Hell-binding chains. If Karin dies in Hell as well, she will be claimed too. Let's move."

Cazador's head whirled, and he felt a distinct ache in where his heart should be at the news that his mother and sister were dead, but he knew he had to protect the remainder of his family. Protect first, vengeance later.

But then a rumble started nearby, the reiatsu that lingered in the air suddenly intensified a hundred-fold. Cazador shivered – something was coming, and he had the sinking feeling that it was coming for him. "Hey, you!" he pointed at one of the Hollows – who were they anyway? This one had a very familiar-looking mask, like an Egyptian pharaoh. His body was yellow-white as desert-scorched sands, his bone-straight blond hair down at shoulder level. The Hollow was also wearing an ivory sleeveless robe-like garment. For a few moments, Cazador could swear that there was something appearing and disappearing on the robes, but it was either too soft to see, or he was hallucinating. "Take Karin, Yuzu and M-Masaki." He stuttered on the last name, instinctually wanting to call her Mom but with Karin not recognizing him as part of her brother, that didn't feel like the best time to bring up that can of worms. "Follow one of them to the living world and guard them till I get there." He didn't know how he knew, but he could feel deep in his bones that they would obey his orders.

The Hollow nodded, picked up Karin bodily, ignoring her protests, before shifting her under an arm so he could take the other two under the other. Then he looked at Yoruichi expectantly. "Soifon, you show him the way back up," Yoruichi ordered after a moment.

"Hai, Yoruichi-sama!" She Shunpo-ed away, and the Hollow Sonido-ed quickly after her.

Yoruichi looked at Cazador curiously. "Interesting choice, picking Shinji."

Cazador blinked. "Wait, that was Shinji? Hirako Shinji, as in the Vizard?"

"Yep."

Cazador immediately took another look at the other Hollows. Now he could see the connection between the Hollows and their Vizard selves. Kensei seemed to have bulked up in size a fair amount, and had several thick white cylindrical things sticking out of his back. His hands had grown even bigger in proportion to the rest of his body, and was covered in a white armor. His mask, which usually took the form of a hockey faceguard of sorts, had grown to cover the top of his head as well.

Love, who Cazador could identify only by his enormous afro and mask, seemed to have taken the Oni motif to its logical conclusion. His Shikai, though not visible at the moment, was a gigantic spiked bat, his mask was that of an Oni, so to Cazador it was rather predictable that Love's transformation had completed the process. Love had become more broad-shouldered, but not as large. His skin had turned dark blue, much to Cazador's private amusement, and his shirt was irrevocably torn up, giving him a savage look. He too had formed claws and talon-like feet.

Rose, as opposed to Love, had grown in a hard-to-predict way. His mask prior to Resurrección had, to Ichigo's thoughts, always resembled the mask a doctor from the Renaissance era would wear to prevent themselves from falling ill from whatever was ailing their patients. It had been a class assignment once, Ichigo had explained later, and he truly could not think of anything else it could be.

But Cazador knew that Zanpakutō and Hollow were inextricably linked within the Vizard, and shared a common theme. Cazador himself centered around the theme of the moon with Zangetsu. And Rose's Zanpakutō, did not look like something a doctor would use. Rose's Shikai was a golden, flower-tipped, whip-like weapon, and Ichigo had first-hand experience in its musical abilities. Music was the theme here – Rose was a pianist. So while his Zanpakutō had become the instrument of death, Rose's Hollow took the pianist's features to their extremes.

Instead of growing in size, Rose had instead become almost skeletally thin, his bone-white arms and fingers growing longer, sharper almost. His thick, long, wavy blond hair straightened somewhat and reached past his shoulders, and his own Hollow hole appeared in the middle of his torso, underneath where the heart would be, about where the diaphragm was. His Hollow mask, too, had grown to cover the entirety of his head, giving him a distinctly disturbing look.

Mashiro, however, had never showed Ichigo or Cazador her Shikai. All Cazador knew about the nature of her powers was that she had a hornet mask. To Cazador's disappointment, even her Hollowification did not reveal very much – her legs and waist had grown white armor, now appearing very insect-like from the segmentation of the armor. Her mask had not grown around her head like the other Vizard, either. When he looked harder, Mashiro's hands had also acquired a little white armor, but all in all there was little to be gleaned.

Lisa had apparently become a Valkyrie, if Cazador's first impression was correct. Her original mask had been diamond-shaped with two slits, one horizontal and one vertical, which came together to form a cross. Her Resurrección mask, like most of the others, had grown around her head, but hers had left the top of her head open, which to Cazador was rather unusual. Then again, nothing is usual about this.

Remembering Lisa's Shikai, a very large and long pole arm with a monk's spade on the end, Cazador noted that her Resurrección had almost completely covered her old clothes, garbing her in a highly functional bone battle skirt and an ivory breastplate.

Cazador was completely unsurprised about Hiyori's transformation – she was all about offense, so of course she'd gained more weapons from her body. But was Cazador was surprised about, was that not one of his fellow Hollowified Vizards-turned-Arrancar still had their Zanpakutō.

But there was no more time to think on it, as the sands no more than a dozen yards away from Cazador exploded upwards, the reiatsu of Hell becoming stronger and thicker once again. "Who are you?" Yoruichi demanded.

The sands fell, and Cazador could now see the being. He appeared human, light-skinned with shoulder-length, blood-red hair. He was tall, and broad-shouldered, though his muscles looked deteriorated, as though he'd recently gone through a very severe starvation. Dressed only in rags that barely covered his legs, his red eyes nevertheless glittered with arrogance and malice. "I should thank you, Hollow," he said with a mocking bow, ignoring Yoruichi entirely. "You have resurrected me after thousands of years of torment. I think I will make you a general in my new army. Mm, yes, I'm feeling quite generous, I'll even let you keep your own soldiers."

"Just who the hell are you?" Cazador questioned forcefully.

The being laughed. "Oh, funny with words are you? Even better. I'll give you a hint. You've just slaughtered and freed thousands of fragments of my soul and will, allowing them to rejoin and give me form and power once more."

The ally who Cazador still did not recognize looked particularly taken aback as he connected the dots. "No… you can't be…!"

The reiatsu grew once more, alongside the stranger's brutal grin. "Oh yes. I am Hell, and welcome to your damnation."