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This article, Pursuit of Frail Wings, is property of Zf6hellion |
| This article Pursuit of Frail Wings, is the sole property of Ashy and as such, please do not edit this article without my permission. |
"Is that so?" A voice could be heard within the stifling atmosphere of the Twelfth Division's Barracks. Evidently, there was little more than chaos as individuals were all conducting scientific experiments one after another without stopping. One of these people, defining himself with his astonishingly regal demeanor, was the Captain, otherwise known as Taiga Jinkō. It was his voice that questioned the report that his seated officer brought to him, which detected a familiar presence etched within the sands of Hueco Mundo.
"Captain...what will we do?" The younger officer questioned, and Taiga let out a sigh. "It appears that if we inform this matter to the entirety of the Gotei, it might be troublesome. I'll allow Akon to lead the division, while I go down and investigate the matter myself." Taiga responded with a matter-of-fact tone, causing the younger officer to gulp. Reaching his hand out, the officer gave him the device used to pin-point the spiritual energy, to which Taiga looked on, with a mixture of disbelief and intrigue.
"It appears I will be confronting the past once more. I hope this isn't a fatal mission for myself." Taiga thought to himself, as he took out a cell-phone of sorts, dialing in certain coordinates before turning around. "Ah, Akon! Would you mind keeping a track of my spiritual energy? I wouldn't want to get lost, now would I?" Akon, sighing in response, simply pressed a button near his position. "You do realize we have monitors of everyone in Soul Society, which doesn't exempt you?" Taiga, chuckling at his lieutenant's response, waved his hand and responded, "I know, I'm just testing you. I'll see you later!"
Immediately, Taiga was enveloped in a bright, green light, before disappearing from the barracks of the Twelfth Division. Within less than an instant, Taiga was descending from the air of Hueco Mundo, already noticing the spiritual signature of his target. Placing himself elegantly on the ground, Taiga stood up and began to walk his merry way, clearly intrigued at recent events.
The path before the Shinigami Captain was a long spindly road of sand, formed and flattened by many who had travelled it in the past. Though there were no footprints, residual spiritual energy teemed across its surface, a more ancient and greater defined footprint, some would say. The sands abruptly collapsed on the sides, forming a great sea of hills for miles. Directly ahead were a set of rock formations. Craggy towers of quartz, turned gold by thick layers of encrusted grains.
One such pillar exuded the tell tale signs of Kidō. Barriers, illusions, traps, all of them were woven into an intricate field meant to ward off any possible intruders, and of course, it was invisible to the naked eye and those unreliant on their spiritual senses. If one could get through them all then they would find something most peculiar.
It was a hollowed out mass, clearly much larger than the exterior made it appear. A great many devices and implements littered the corners, hard to make out beneath a massive veil of shadow that currently filled the place. In its center were two beings, the first sitting in a chair, created a chittering rhythym as his fingers danced across the white mask adorning his face. He sat just out of view of the light, hidding much of himself in the shadow. In front of him was the other being, above him sat a series of orbs, projecting several pillars of light that created a radiant intensity around him, to the darkening of all else.
"Gin...", the first figure spoke with some degree of solemnity. "Why can't you use Bankai?", he asked, his tone suddenly becoming petulant as if uttered by a child demanding a toy.
"Uh..." Gin responded with a somewhat questioning tone himself. "Dunno." His blatant response would probably confuse the other party, and he sighed outwards in a comical manner. "Probably 'cuz you messed up somethin' or the other." Gin gave another vague response, clearly having no knowledge of why he couldn't use Bankai. However, Gin lifted his eyebrows and looked outside of the pillar, sensing a strange individual within their proximity. "Oh my. I wonder who that guy is. Shall we take a look?"
Meanwhile, Taiga walked forward, particularly intrigued by the object. However, as he closed in forward, he noticed multiple spiritual signatures nearby, and he instantly recognized them. Not daring to come even slightly closer, Taiga instead sent out a small pulse of spiritual energy with a flick of his fingers, in order to test this newly found information.
"Hm?", Girado perked up, his head raising from a slouch and turning to regard the walls of his laboratory, though his mind's eye saw through those simple boundaries to percieve the presence outside. "Its a signature that reeks of Shinigami, and much too grandiose to be someone forwarding your mail to a new address", the creature remarked to his silver haired companion.
"Very well, let's go see what they want, shall we?", ascending from his perch, the Hollow swept across the floor of the cavern, reaching its boundaries in only a few moments. A sweep of his finger caused one of the wall's to cut itself into sections and open up one particular segment like an automated doorway, exposing the white being to a great quantity of light that momentarily blinded him and prevented him from seeing the incoming spell.
It hit him like an invisible slap across his entire body, the pulse covering a larger radius than his physical form, it also aggravated the various traps that guarded the lab. The flickering form of several Shakkahō spells bearing down on the Shinigami.
"Ooooh, Kidō!" Taiga noted in glee as suddenly he recollected the exerted energy into a potent, yellow shield that appeared to shift positions as each combustion faded away from his person. "So that's who you are! I apologize for the slapping sensation, I suppose I got a bit carried away with attempting to discern your fascinating construct here. And, ah! I sense that same presence. Are you, perhaps, the creator of this Reigai here?" Taiga asked, genuinely curious to meet someone of a similar stature to himself.
Girado, following his recovery from the invisible force, regarded the chipper-seeming Shinigami with his singular yellow eye, blinking several times to ensure it wasn't a mirage. They're usually far more stodgy, he thought to himself.
"Why, yes, he is one of my marvelous creations!", Girado boasted suddenly, though he dialed it back a bit when realizing what he was referring to. "One of the lesser marvels though, not every experiment can be a complete success", he shrugged with exaggeration his head turning back in order for him to regard Gin.
"Lesser marvels? In what way could you believe that!?" Taiga was astonished. The Arrancar had quite easily created a Reigai of Gin Ichimaru, and he scoffed it off as a lesser marvel? "Is there some defect? Something that I could help with, perhaps? We definitely don't want you to be disappointed with such a marvelous creation, now do we?" Taiga enthusiastically asked the man, eager to help despite the individual before him being technically considered an enemy.
Girado straightened up, a reflexive motion as he reeled inwardly. Somewhat taken aback by the curious man before him. He had grown used to the typical ravings of the Shinigami, all that hurrah with their Zanpakutō, he usually needed rope to get them to agree to a casual conversation let alone the idea of cooperation. It was unsettling, but Girado knew how to play the risk taker. His yellow eye squinted at Taiga as if attempting to discern more than he could already see, he drew towards him, his spindly form arching forward.
"Yes...", he spoke contemplatively. "You might just be exactly what I need".
"Typically, I mark something as a failure and move on, such things should be discarded, we can't have them cluttering things up, too many beings dwell on the mistakes, we even have an entire dimensional plane filled with failures!", caught up in his own sway Girado shook his head in order to draw himself back.
"But, if I consider Gin here a work-in-progress, then this could be most fortuitous, I daresay the assistance of a Shinigami, especially one exuding such... exuberance, could be a great boon", Girado reclined once again, turning back into the cave's entrance, a swing of his hand to direct Taiga inside wordlessly.
Taiga began to follow the being clad in white before him. As he did so, he responded to the notion that he brought up, "Marking something as a failure, as a scientist, is in our nature. However...isn't that why we stretch ourselves with even more experiments? Looking at every realm of possibility to convert that 'failure' into a success?" Taiga had rambled slightly and realized his folly, "I apologize for the outburst. Science is my passion, you see!"
As Taiga had justified his claims, he also looked around the area that he was going through. "Oh, excuse my manners! Fellow scientist, may I know of your name?" Taiga asked with a strange cheerfulness, a mood one could rarely see him in.
"I am... Girado, Riendo, Mariposa!", he replied rather dramatically. His arms had burst out forward as if he was a conductor instructing his name to be sung from the Heavens themselves, each part of his name was delivered with a minute pause in between to grant them the emphasis they clearly deserved in his eyes. His outstretched arms also beckoned ones attention towards his lab, a pair of chairs sat in the middle of the room whilst all of the corners were filled with a variety of apparatus. Technology, both modern and old, organic and mechanical. A few pieces were clearly from Soul Society, some from the Human World, and even a unique derivative or two.
"But you are correct", his arms dropped to his sides as he returned his gaze to Taiga, and his ramblings. "Our failures must be built upon, to bring about their own successes, that is why fate smiles upon me when they decided to carry you here, a second opinion is ripe for opportunity".
"But I digress", he twirled a hand about, a gesture of moving forward. "We know my name, now what should I call you?", he asked with no small amount of cheerful curiosity.
"My my...that's a mouthful, isn't it?" Taiga chuckled slightly, as he listened to the next question of the man before him. "I am known as Taiga Jinkō." He had responded with far less enthusiasm, walking within the area and noticing some of Soul Society's own research materials ending up here.
"Say," Taiga paused for a moment, "How did you come across some of these materials?" The bespectacled man asked, clearly curious as to the individual's motives, despite clearly enjoying the fact that someone besides his eccentric instructor had possessed such devotion to scientific progress.
"As you might have guessed, technology is woefully hard to come by in Hueco Mundo, Hollow mechanics are sorely rare, and more obstinate than you can imagine", he joked, making his own way through the lab to survey the various apparatus up close. "I have made brief forays into Soul Society for millenia, usually to observe, but there are the rare occasions where I need a tool or two", Girado explained whilst turning back to face Taiga. He wasn't sure how the Shinigami would react, knowing a Hollow could breach the defenses of the Seireitei time and again and never be caught.
"No one has ever died though, it would be terribly messy, and I'm sure people would find out if a guard or two were suddenly missing", he continued. The truth could be such a dangerous little tool, though Girado was far from worried. Curious was more probable, like a scientist testing the reactions of a creature it didn't understand; his explanations were as a cattle prod.